How to Use Video to Promote Your Business

Making a gorgeous video for your business takes resources, time, and skill. Regardless of whether you’re creating the video in-house or with a team on the outside, the video creation process can be time-intensive and costly. The worst part is that many people overlook the key ingredient – the promotion strategy, after putting all of that effort into making the final product.

It might be the case that you’ve gotten good at promoting your blog posts – but video promotion is a whole different ball game. Of course, it’s a known fact that video marketing is extremely effective. In fact, if you just stick a video up on your landing page, you can increase conversions by as much as 80%! So it’s worth the time, but you must make the effort of driving people to find and watch your video.

Below we’ve outlined nine video promotion ideas for getting more views on your videos. With these tips, you’ll know that your effort to produce beautifully made videos won’t go to waste.

 1. Don’t Forget to Smile!

The video thumbnail is crucial in determining whether or not someone will click open your video. The fact is, more often than not, people do judge a book by its cover, which means that your video should give the best first impression possible.

The best way to ensure that people will play your video is by including a smiling person making direct eye contact. The simple reason for this is that people relate to other people. A picture of a smiling person is more compelling than a bunch of dull text on a book cover, and the same principle applies to video thumbnails.

By including a smile on your thumbnails, you’re likely to get more clicks and plays.

 2. Do a Twitter/Facebook Video Campaign

The best way to get people to check out your video is to offer some kind of freebie. The ideal place for doing giveaways is social media. People will freely spread the word for you and create hype around your giveaway. This will result in more people visiting your landing page and getting more plays on your video.

 3. Create Share Buttons in Your Video Player

Everyone knows how effective social media marketing is. Many marketers begin and end every single day on various social media websites. This might not make every marketer happy, but it’s the way things are, so you must make sure that your video can be shared easily on social media.

Finding a video player (such as Wistia) that includes a share button is a good idea. That way, interested people can share a link to your video directly from the video player.

 4. Ask people to like and share your video

This might seem like an obvious point, but people often underestimate how powerful liking and sharing actually are. Liking is good for the algorithm and for social proofing.

As for sharing, even if you just ask your close connections (like family and friends) to share your video, you never know whom they are connected to.

The bottom line is that a share can go a long way, so don’t limit yourself to who you ask!

 5. Link Together Your Email Marketing With Your Video Marketing

Video is a potent ingredient in the email marketing recipe for success. According to the data from Animoto, just putting the word “video” in your email subject line can:

•         Boost your open rates by 19%
•         CTRs by 65%
•         Can limit the number of people who unsubscribe by 26%

 6. Invest Into Video Promotion on Social Media

Most of these tips have been given with frugality in mind. Now let’s talk about making use of some of that pocket change you’re carrying around. Putting some money towards your video marketing strategy is always a good idea, especially when you do it on social media.

Advertising your videos on Facebook and Twitter isn’t that expensive. Furthermore, your promotional campaign could be a great success if you pay attention to your campaign and audience settings. Success with video promotion is defined as getting the right people to your content and receiving a fantastic ROI.

 7. Make Your Video Part of an Event

Many of us have had experience sitting through dull speeches at industry events. Most of the time is spent staring into space or keeping busy on our smartphones, trying desperately to stay awake. However, it’s actually even worse for the speakers.

As a speaker, if you see that your audience isn’t engaged, you’ll likely become more and more nervous.

An excellent way to overcome this is by playing a video.

A video would be beneficial for two reasons – one, it gives the speaker a break, and two, it provides the audience with a break from listening to the speaker the entire time. Even the most outstanding speakers at TED talk conferences employ videos during their speeches. Videos allow their audience to “recharge” their attention for the next portion of the speech.

It doesn’t matter how engaging the speaker is; playing a video during industry events will always be beneficial. So why not fit your video marketing into it? It’s the perfect opportunity for you to reach your target audience.

 8. Twitter Tip – Put Your Video Front and Center

This means pinning your video tweet to the top of your personal (or company) Twitter feed. This will ensure that your video won’t get buried under the constant barrage of new Tweets. It will also bring more engagement to your valuable video tweet.

 9. Don’t Forget about Online Communities

Social media can end up taking all of our attention, so it’s worth mentioning the value of sharing your videos with online communities. These communities can also exist on social media. For instance, your industry might have a significant presence on Reddit, Twitter chat, or a LinkedIn group.

So don’t forget to engage with these communities and spread your video content whenever appropriate.

When is it appropriate? Whenever you happen to be part of a conversation where someone is experiencing problems or struggles, and your video fits into that somehow. You should then share your video with them, and it will assist them in the most engaging way possible.