CRA Business Marketing Explored – USA
By Michael Dunne
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For many small business owners with a shoestring marketing budget, just managing a website and a presence on social media is almost more than they can handle. When they hear someone like me offer advice about how to improve the effectiveness of their digital marketing, they may be inclined to plug their ears and say, “Enough!”
But what if the solution were simple, practically free, and a real game-changer when it comes to enhancing your business’ website and presence on social media platforms? Shooting simple videos, mostly using a smartphone, is such a solution.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a 30-second video is worth 10 times that. That simple video could capture a quick chat with the company CEO, or take a visual tour through your business’ production facility. Maybe one of your delivery drivers could talking about logistics. All of these would add interest to your website.
Visual aids
The average customer reads about 20% less than what they read just 10 years ago. A text-heavy website, honestly, is basically an invitation for potential customers to leave. However, video elements that are low on production but high on authenticity will help to attract customers, keeping them engaged for a longer time on the business website, and thus, more apt to patronize your business.
Additionally, shooting and posting video is going to help to deliver your brand proposition more quickly than if you relied on text or graphics to do the job. Video forces us to be succinct and stick to the point. Sixty seconds of video should be more than enough time to showcase why you and your company are a better choice for potential customers than your competitors.
A number of advantages
Video is not only inexpensive, but it’s also an easy way to help you stand apart on your website and social media platforms from similar businesses in the industry. While marketers universally laud video as a successful marketing tool, it remains underused, and so, by incorporating video into your online marketing, you just might be way ahead of your competition.
Search engines love video, too. It’s dynamic content for which their algorithms search, so even a simple video is going to increase your search results. The same holds true for social media platforms. Just uploading a simple video to Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram will help to drive more eyeballs to your posts.
For busy people (which defines all small business owners), the amount of time they can spend on marketing and communications is often very little. Imagine if in your busy week, you only have about an hour to devote to marketing your products or services. Take that hour to shoot some good quality, do-it-yourself video; it will be much more successful in driving interest to your business than would devoting that hour to writing text or designing content.
Video also provides a great opportunity to personalize your brand. It takes real skill (often expensive skill) to communicate a brand through text and graphics. However, a somewhat fun and personable video can communicate more effectively for any business or industry, thereby avoiding the need to hire expensive consultants or in-house marketing talent.
Finally, take a page from TV advertising. Most readers probably wouldn’t remember their 10 favorite magazine ads, but would easily recall any number of television commercials. Video gets remembered.
In many ways it’s a simple concept. We remember and respond to motion. Still photos, text and graphics have their place, for sure, but the simple motion of video activates our eyes and our minds. For pennies on the dollar, a little video might just be the biggest bang for your marketing buck.
Michael Dunne (michaeldunne541@gmail.com) is a long-time PR manager who has worked for both large and small businesses, and PR agencies. He believes that in business, what you say and how you say it are just as important as what you do.
Article Credit to The Register-Guard.
