Video for Business: Why It’s Important and How to Use Video to Grow Your Brand

Are you a content creator, business owner, or professional marketer seeking to grow your brand? Video marketing is one of the most powerful ways of growing your brand and increasing business. Not only is a powerful format in delivering content, more and more people are watching video online.

Not only does it create more exposure to your brand, but it also creates an atmosphere of relatability and lets you be in charge of telling your story and educating your potential customers. 

For some ideas, we’ve gathered a variety of different ways you can use video for your business, as well as a few different video formats for inspiration. 

Why Video Should Be a Priority for Your Business

Videos Explain Your Business and Industry

Video is perfect for not only telling your business’ story but educating your potential customers on your industry in general. With the flexibility of video and social media, there are many ways to tell your story, from a single video on your landing page to an entire series on YouTube.

Videos Can Reach Prospective Customers

Video marketing is an excellent tool because many people prefer the ease of watching a video rather than reading blocks of text. 

Posting more videos about your brand will help you attract new customers, especially those interested in how you can help solve their problem or job to be done.

For instance, if your business sells bowties for men, creating an educational video about bowties, occasions where someone would look great in bowties, and how to tie a bowtie will help attract customers looking for bowties or formal wear.

Types of Marketing Videos

Educate on Various Issues and Topics in Your Industry

Educational videos are a great way to capture potential customers researching your industry who are not yet aware of a problem they have or are not entirely seeking a solution.

Demonstrate Your Product as a Solution

For people aware of a problem and are searching for a solution, a product or service demonstration is a great way to present your brand as a solution to their problem.  

Videos tend to have a personal impact on customers because it allows them to relate to the product or service you offer. 

Instead of announcing on your social media platforms or website that your business just launched a new product, you can use a video to demonstrate how the new product works. 

Demonstrate Expertise and Preview the Customer Experience

One way of showing your customers that you are an expert in a particular field related to your business is by posting a video demonstrating your expertise. 

For example, if you are a dentist, with your patient’s consent, you can record your day showing how you consult with patients, how you check their teeth, and how you deliver your dentist services. This will help you to show your customers what they will experience after signing up for your services.

Giving people a sneak peek of what happens in your business will make them feel like they know you and this will help you build credibility with your audience. 

Demonstrating your expertise on video will also allow more people to reach out to you and ask questions. Ensure that you always encourage your audience to reach out to you in the comments or directly through a contact page in your videos. This invitation will allow more people to feel less intimidated about approaching your business.

Tell the Story of Your Brand

As humans, we all love a good story. Every brand has a story. 

How did your brand come to be? What was the motivation for starting? What problem are you trying to solve? 

By giving your brand a story, you give it personality, and many people are drawn to people and businesses that have character.

Creating a video that illustrates the story behind your business’s formation will motivate many potential customers who will understand your business’s purpose and make it stand out from the competition. 

So, what story about your brand are you willing to share?

Feature Customer Testimonials

There is nothing as powerful as a positive testimonial from a satisfied customer for your business. Many people are rightfully hesitant of being scammed, especially with an online business. Social proof in the form of video testimonials is a powerful way to put people’s fears at ease.

Do you have clients you worked with in the past that expressed a lot of gratitude and satisfaction with your services? You can reach out to them and request testimonials in the form of videos, where they record themselves talking about how valuable your product or service was to them. 

This will help you build the authenticity of your brand and attract more customers.

Comment on Trending Topics

Videos are a good way of addressing any trending topics or news articles that relate to your industry. For example, if you produce and sell yogurt and then an article cites health risks with yogurt, you can address these claims through a video. In the video, you can explain to people why the trending claims are false and teach your customers the benefits of drinking yogurt.

Different Video Formats for Businesses

Although we have established that videos are valuable for your brand, they can become monotonous if they have the same format all the time. There are various forms of video formats you can use to keep them exciting and alluring. 

Some of the best formats of web video for business include:

Real People on Camera

Whether it’s you, someone on your team, or a professional actor, having a human face on camera is the best and strongest way to build rapport with your audience.

Talking to the camera will create an impact on your audience. To the audience, it will appear as if you are talking directly to them. People are more likely to pause and listen to a person who seems to be addressing them directly on their social media feed. 

To keep your video engaging, you want to make sure your video is edited so it flows smoothly and includes many visuals, such as titles, images, and videos.

Looking to get started recording video yourself? Check out our guide of the best DSLR and mirrorless cameras under $1000.

Voice Over Videos

Not ready to go on camera? You can still create great videos with just a microphone. Using screen recording software, you can create a narrated demo of your product (works best if you’re a SaaS company or have some type of website or software to demo). This is also an excellent way to create tutorials that solve a specific pain point people might be searching for.

If you don’t have a screen-based product, this is still a powerful format. You can create slides filled with text and photos to visually explain your message. Then just screen record and click through each slide. Engaging and simple.

For more on recording your screen, check out our thorough guide on how to record any presentation app or screen on any device.

Animated Videos

Animated videos are great for explaining complex topics and workflows. They’re also a great alternative to full-on video production with live people.

These are best for landing page videos and overall explainers. They get expensive and time-consuming when trying to create a recurring series with animated videos. Plus, their style can get monotonous.

There are many tools you can use to create animated videos such as Powtoon and YumYum Videos.

You can also hire freelancers and agencies to create imaginative animated videos for your brand. Animated videos are entertaining and comical.

Live Videos

Live videos provide a direct stream of what is actually going on in the business to your customers. You can show them the services that your business offers by streaming live. It’s also great for building real-time communication and answering any questions.

This will make your audience feel special, like they are a part of your business, which will encourage them to engage with your videos through comments, likes, saves, and shares. The more engagement you get, the more your video will be pushed to a larger audience with similar interests in your business.

Where to Host Videos for Your Business Website

There are various platforms that you can upload and host videos for your brand and website.

If your videos are longer than a few minutes and part of a larger video content strategy, YouTube is an absolute must for uploading.

The downside of YouTube is you have very little control over embedding the video and how t displays.

So if the video is for a landing page, you want to use a hosting service that gives you full control over how the player looks and has extra call-to-action features, like buttons and email intake.

The best services for hosting video on your website are:

• Vimeo
• Wistia
• Brightcove
• Dacast
• Spotlightr

Read this article for more video hosting solutions.