How Videos Will Enhance Your Marketing Strategy
If you don’t think your small business website could use a video – think again! There are some significant advantages to offering marketing videos for your current and future customers. Here we’ll explore the reasons why you want to incorporate a video on your website, what purpose your video should serve, and a few steps to help get you started.
Why use a video?
You’re active on social media, you have an easy to navigate website that’s optimized and attractive, and you see positive marketing outcomes from your strategy, so why bother with a video? Well, there’s a variety of reasons from enhancing your SEO to personalizing your brand. You also have the chance to capture an audience that prefers videos to words. When paired with other images and content, a video can make a greater impact on your marketing efforts.
What purpose should your video serve?
Once you decide that you want a video on your website, the next step is to find the purpose you want it to serve. Don’t just sit in front of the camera one day and start to share. Here’s a rundown of a few directions your video can take.
Introduction: You can simply have a video that introduces yourself, your company, and your values. This is an excellent way to gain the trust of customers and give your website authenticity from your competitors.
Tutorials: Don’t be afraid that if you offer tutorials based on your business such as how to change your oil or how to make salad dressing from scratch that people won’t convert. People love seeing tutorials on your particular trade because they consider you an expert. Start with something basic such as how to check your tire pressure, and move up from there.
Entertainment: Some people don’t want to use a video for any other purpose than to make people laugh or just keep them engaged in their brand for a few moments. You can do this by finding what makes your company unique and fun to work at. You can capture a good-humored practical joke, ask everyone to share their favorite work memory, or video the company picnic. Just be sure you edit the material accordingly to get rid of excess footage and leave the best parts.
Expert Interview: You can set up an area with two chairs just like you would see on your local news station and capture an interview with an expert. Be sure that you have questions prepared, and make the decision if you want the expert to be internal or if you plan to find an expert outside of your own business. This style of video creates a sense of authority and experience for your company, and the viewer will take notice.
Promotional Material: Maybe you want to establish a series of commercials to share on social media, as well as display on your website. Or perhaps you wish to take your testimonials up a notch and have them on video. You can also make a video of the latest products advancements in your particular industry. Whatever you decide when it comes to promotional material, a video will help enhance your brand and services.
What are the next steps?
For now, take the time to think about what style of video would enhance your online marketing strategy. Remember, the list above are only a few suggestions to help get you started. You can get more creative as you develop your strategy and strengthen your camera skills. Talk to those you want to be involved in the video and start to lay out a plan on paper. The more prepared you are when it’s time to get out the camera, the more professional and engaging your video will be. Next week we’ll share the best practices for making a professional grade video with your smartphone!
How Videos Will Enhance Your Marketing Strategy
Creating Content: Getting Back to the Basics
Content is crucial to small businesses both online and off. And when you’re trying to re-engage and revamp your current content strategy, you might find yourself overwhelmed with information and being pulled in multiple directions. When this happens to you, it’s time to get back to the basics. Here are a few basic content creation strategies that should never be forgotten, no matter how large or small your online marketing campaign is.
Keep your audience in mind
Remember the people you’re trying to reach and take the time to think about they need. It can be easy to get caught up in what you want when you own a small business because you’ve invested so much of yourself in it. However, this is one time to keep your potential customer in mind and give them what they ask for.
If you’re a mechanic, and people continually ask how to change their own oil, go ahead and write a detailed tutorial on oil maintenance 101. Of course, you want people to come to you to get this service done, but by offering this valuable information, you’ll gain trust and longevity with customers.
Always be informative
When it comes to creating content that gets conversions, it’s crucial you give people solid blocks of information they can apply to their buying decision. Many people are looking for further data and descriptions of your products and services. By giving your audience the knowledge they crave to feel good about a purchase, you’ll soon turn into a solution instead of a sale, and they’ll come to you over and over again when in need of similar services.
Tell a story
Not only are stories a more engaging way to get content across to your target audience, but they give your customers insight into your brand and who you are. The more your customers get to know you, the more you will build those trusting relationships that can last a lifetime in business.
Include the right keywords
While keywords aren’t more important than creating valuable and quality content, they are influential in getting found by search engines. The longer the keywords, the better your search results will be. Pay attention to how people search for the services you offer and incorporate those words into your content. You can also invest in a keyword research tool to help narrow down what words are relevant to your business when potential customers are searching.
Repurpose old content
One reason people get frustrated and lose their way when it comes to creating content is they feel like they’ve covered it all. Online content moves fast and is continually being published. If you find your content is growing stale or dull because you’re covering topics that don’t excite you anymore, then go back to the beginning. Use your most popular articles and repurpose them in the form of a video, compile them for an ebook, or have them designed as an infographic.
When you take the time to get back to the basics with your content, you’ll find that the task becomes more manageable. Better than that, it becomes fun again.
Creating Content: Getting Back to the Basics
5 Tips for Generating More Traffic to Your E-commerce Site
The e-commerce world is one of fierce global competition. Wherever you look on social media today, influencers are often calling the shots through strategic use of keywords, hashtags, product reviews and more. But every dream starts somewhere, and at one point in time, each of today’s influencers was yesterday’s wannabe. Here are 5 tips to get you started down the road to becoming an influencer and successful e-commerce professional tomorrow!
Tip #1: Offer a fun (and useful) freebie.
Take a look at your current store inventory and think of activities or education that relates to what you offer. Then create a free video, white paper or app to add value to a customer’s purchase.
Example: As reported by Practical Ecommerce, Columbia Sportswear created a Knot app to go along with its sportswear line. The free app teaches users how to tie different knots.
Tip #2: Ask for customer reviews.
Asking for customer reviews is not for the thin-skinned. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, someone won’t like something they buy from you. But in most cases, your reviews should be positive (if they are not, this too can give you valuable information). And reviews from customers is like free advertising for you.
Example: As reported by Entrepreneur, a full 88 percent of customers will trust a review they read online over other recommendation types. Reviews are worth their weight in future sales.
Tip #3: Use other tools that can send customers to your site.
Finding tools and apps to help you promote your e-commerce store evolves from knowing who the influencers are, how other companies are marketing their products and what is “hot” in your field. But suffice it to say, with new tools and apps being released daily, you won’t have a shortage of choices.
Example: LIKEtoKNOW.it is becoming an e-commerce mainstay for Instagram, allowing users and stores to connect by transforming Instagram pics into shoppable links.
Tip #4: Build your social media network relentlessly.
Social media has turned the world of e-commerce into an increasingly mobile, real-time world. Influencers on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other avenues do not outsource their social media presence to others – they show up in person to interact and are rewarded with new fans and more sales.
Example: Postcron emphasizes the importance of posting several times daily to your social media accounts, and doing so strategically (time of day, content, number of posts, competitor analysis). If this is challenging for you, tools are available to help you pre-schedule your posts at times you can’t be available online.
Tip #5: Start a blog, guest blog and blog some more.
As it turns out, there still is no good substitute for the good old-fashioned blog. Only today’s bloggers are incorporating important elements like video, social media links, reciprocal guest blogging (where you post on someone else’s blog and then they post on yours and you both get the benefit of twice the readership) and more.
Not only should you have your own blog, which give you the flexibility to post what you want and arrange for strategic alliances, but you should seek out influential bloggers and cultivate their participation in your projects.
Example: Mashable highlights several high-class, ethical ways to use your blog to generate more traffic, including well-placed SEO (search engine optimization) keywords, meta tags, hash tags, guest bloggers, an online community, link building and much more.
In Conclusion: Generating New Traffic is a Day-by-Day Process
It is absolutely normal and natural to feel overwhelmed when you first set out to increase traffic to your e-commerce site. You will experience the most success by picking your battles (for instance, if you don’t have time to be everywhere on social media, just focus on Facebook and Instagram where you know e-commerce sales conversions are high).
After you add in one new tool, spend some time really learning how that tool works before adding another. Finally, make it your goal to build a toolkit that says “you” and invest in creating communities to make friends out of your fans. In this way, your e-commerce traffic will increase daily.
Jessica Kane started her career in ecommerce and now writes about it as a professional blogger. She recommends Rakuten Super Logistics for all ecommerce order fulfillment.
5 Tips for Generating More Traffic to Your E-commerce Site
Weldas
Weldas is an international organization that manufactures welding and industrial apparel. For over 25 years they have built a reputation in their industry for having the highest quality products and best service.
This website was designed and branded by Leading Edge Communications. Once designed, we were asked to convert the design into a website including slideshows, product listings, an interactive map, a contact form, and a content management system.
Weldas
RWWC
The RWWC is a group of like-minded conservative women who get together to discuss issues, volunteer for candidates, and help their community.
We designed and built this custom website with custom graphics, event management, social media integration, blog/news, a contact form, and a content management system.
RWWC
SpaceTrak
SpaceTrak software streamlines data gathering, evaluation and management of space for facility managers, architects, interior designers and real estate consultants.
They came to us with bits and pieces of an existing website design and asked us to implement. We were able to work with their team to develop a custom design that mixed in their different requests. The most important part of that was programming the design in using the WordPress content management system. That way their non-technical personnel are able to login to the site manager and modify the design and content without having to learn coding.
SpaceTrak
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