(ID:11654900 / MotionElements)

Videos are what you need to grow your business with.
Video marketing helps you bloom, promote ideas and visualize brand image for online audience.

We have a lot of numbers and studies clipped to convince this inevitable trend, but let’s start with why people might prefer image over text already.

If we get philosophical about the success behind video marketing, we can look into how images generally help with our understanding in context. After all, a video is basically a bunch of images animated into multiple frames.

Jacques Derrida considered that ‘the image plays the role of a supplement to the text’ in Of Grammatology, whilst Preminger and Brogan further noted,

“An image opens an empty space to be filled by the activity of the reader’s imagination. Ideally, it completes the text in the reader’s mind, in the world it projects, in the ‘spaces’ between its words.” – The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics

Visual information is, scientifically, easier to be processed by human brains, and with the growing trend of video marketing, we are looking at such figures from reports as:

79% of consumers would rather watch a video to learn about a product
84% of consumers are convinced to make a purchase after watching a brand’s video

Sounds intimidating? No worries. You can start checking out what people would put together for business templates.

We also suggest 3 types of videos to be adopted for any business to start the game.

Type 1. Brand video = who you are

Brand video, quite explanatory, is all about your brand.

This type of video aims to raise brand awareness via well thought out branded content. Ideally, a good brand video should make viewers associate your brand with the curated messages, the core values, and they finally become loyal audience, who would continue their visual experience with your brand.

It’s an epitome of your company, your brand image, and your ideas.

Do’s

Show business culture + values
Spotlight!

A good idea for creating brand videos is to bring out the best of you under the spotlight: be it your business culture or values, you want to find the audience who resonate it and take actions beyond.

(Source: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies)

Let’s say as a non-profit organization, it is a firm marketing point to call out for attention on what you do. You aim to get this point promoted and well across via video content.

It’d be sufficiently effective to include core yet simple messages and showcase some cleared missions to leave a strong impression on the viewers.

keep it short and sweet
For a brand video, we also suggest that it’d be best to keep the idea short and sweet, so that viewers can focus on the curated content.

Scientifically, people have shorter memory span than a goldfish, up to 8 seconds top. Practically, the popular length calculated for videos across various media platforms falls in 30 secs ~ 2 minutes.

Let’s not push the idea too far.

Don’ts

don’t make it promotional
As much as we want to convert everything into final purchase, it’s not the right place to do so in a brand video.

It’s an art to not let audience close any advertisement, and the marketing world still sits around for a solution to this behavior. A report from IPG Mediabrands’ Media Lab suggests that 65% of audience skip online video advertising, and they would close the promotional material right away based on inherited habits.

We would want audience to understand our idea, perceive who we are through our brand video, rather than identify it as heavy advertisement.

Don’t kill the vibe, don’t make your audience turn off the video.

Type 2. Explainer video = what you do

Video marketing is also great for engaging audience with important information. An explainer video is literally to explain what your company does and how your product works.

The best thing is, a well-executed explainer video saves you a lot of time and money on customer service and cold-call marketing, as it might explain quite a lot, and it is accessible for a broader, potential audience.

Do’s

make it simple
What makes the best notes? The simple points do.

Remember the good, old school days when we need to take notes off the blackboard? Takeaways are often concluded into bullet points, charts, or anything simple enough for us to go back to study further.

(Source: Airbnb)

All size of screens are like digital blackboard to put the marketing points on. To encourage the audience to try your product/service or follow the explainer video when using the product along the way, combine clear visuals with simple points for viewers to take away.

keep the style consistent
We are pretty sure you have more than one function to promote in the video, so a foreseeable series called ‘hello this is how it works’ should stick to the same theme, same intro/outro, same music to make it recognizable for marketing purposes.

Don’ts

your heart should NOT go on and on
No, no – you are not Ryan Reynolds and Celine Dion is not invited to star in your video – don’t overdo it, don’t go on and on about your product/service, because no one has the patience.

Explainer video is like a visual manual. You want people to read (watch) it through, chapter by chapter, one video after another, instead of exiting right in the middle for losing focus.

If there are 5 awesome functions to show, make 5 awesome videos.

Type 3. Testimonial video = how good you are

How much do you trust online promotion? And how much more do you trust it after reading some testimonials from customers like you?

Yep, word of mouth always work.
This is why businesses today need testimonial video for better video marketing.

Instead of waiting for customers to do organic search (and possibly come across some unwanted bad reviews) about you, it is clever for businesses to present good reviews to win people’s heart.

Bring the customers that have something good to say onboard in a testimonial video.
Let others know how good you are.

Do’s

make it loud + clear
All opinions matter – but they must be heard.

We are talking about the audio quality here. Be very careful with the audio output when layering background audio with people babbling aside.

Don’t let music overshadow what loyal customers have got to say.

Don’ts

NO random people (from your own company)
Testimonials are trustworthy for video marketing because they are a collective of genuine reviews from customers.

Well…..it is not so convincing anymore to bring your own people onboard to promote the company, is it?

We also suggest this tip: try to find the right customers and put their name tags on.

If you are a stock media marketplace company *wink wink*, you’d want your targeted audience, video creators, artists, and media creatives, to show up in testimonial videos, so that more of targeted audience would associate and identify themselves as potential customers.

Oh, don’t forget to put the name tag on the screen to pop their profession out for viewers to relate.

It’s more than ‘this is great!’
Just how great is the greatest? You tell us.

We think linking what exactly prompts customers to leave good review could make all the difference.

(Source: ‘So, we tried Slack…’)

Slack’s testimonial video, in our humble opinion, is an excellent one.

They build up a nice user scenario for potential targeted audience – where would you use Slack, an office friendly communication software, other than…in an office? (note: it’s NOT Slack’s own office!)

They bring the right people in and let them share what function applies to their daily tasks – great promotion done subtly. Many whys and hows are also aptly presented in this testimonial video.

Your business needs videos

We’d like to assume no more convincing is needed that, if you are running a business or organization, by all size of it, video marketing is of great help to promote what biz you are on about, and raise engagement by reaching more online audience.

If you don’t know where to start with video marketing, some free business templates can kick off a good one.