A recent HubSpot survey uncovered lots of compelling statistics that illustrate how popular video has become as a marketing tool. Just to pull out a couple of striking numbers, 87 percent of consumers said they’d like to see more videos from brands, and 68 percent said they prefer the video format to all others for learning about new products and services.
Video also often gets considerably more engagement—including likes, comments, click-throughs, views, and shares—than other content formats. High-quality, informative, and entertaining video is a powerful way to boost your brand awareness and trust, and your marketing campaigns.
But a lot of brands aren’t sure about the most effective ways to use video for marketing. There are plenty of options, though. While not all are applicable to every brand or industry, anyone can find multiple opportunities to incorporate video marketing into their larger content strategy.
And once you’ve decided on a few ways to use video for marketing your brand, there are also numerous places to distribute your video marketing materials.
Ways to Use Video for Marketing
- An explainer video that introduces your brand to leads and new customers or clients is a more engaging alternative to standard About page text. Make sure you get into your value proposition and your brand story, rather than just rattle off a recap of your history or meaningless cliches about being the best.
- Have team members shoot short introductory videos instead of publishing written bios on your Staff or About page.
- Create demos of new products or services. As noted above, consumers like this.
- Film simple, helpful tutorials and/or troubleshooting guides for your customers.
- Convert older written blog content into videos to repurpose it and give it new life.
- Video testimonials are a highly credible trust signal to post on your website and share occasionally on social media.
- Brief thank you videos for customers or clients can be a nice touch at the right times (e.g., following a large purchase, a significant increase in a standing order, a referral, a milestone as an existing buyer, etc.).
- Take advantage of live streaming features on social networks to broadcast your special events.
- Host a live Q&A session online with a representative of your brand or an influencer or other person of interest to your target audience.
- Make educational video presentations relevant to your industry to boost your brand authority. They can be for consumers or other noncompetitive enterprises in your field.
- Shoot some footage of the people behind your brand and show off your company culture on your website and social media accounts. This humanizes your organization to consumers and can be great for recruiting new talent.
- Use an engaging video in your onboarding process for new hires.
- Create a behind-the-scenes tour of your organization if you have something interesting to showcase (like a unique production process).
- Document customer or client success stories using your products or services.
- User-generated content is a powerful marketing device and form of social proof, so give your consumers a platform to share their own videos of your products or services in use.
