Since the emergence of YouTube in 2005, the prevalence and impact of video marketing have skyrocketed. YouTube revolutionized the industry by allowing everyday users to upload, publish, and market their video content directly within the platform. Today, over 2.6 billion people use YouTube. However, YouTube isn’t the only platform with powerful video marketing capabilities; Vimeo, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram also help businesses get found through their video features.
Local businesses can leverage video marketing to drive traffic, reach more customers, and grow their online presence. Here are four strategies to build your local video marketing strategy.
The Value Of Video Marketing For Local Businesses
Video is a powerful medium for local businesses. Many might assume that video marketing is more relevant to online businesses, but there are numerous benefits for local sectors as well.
Benefits Of Local Video Marketing
- Website traffic: Publishing optimized videos online can drive more users directly to your website.
- Revenue growth: Video marketing can influence buying decisions and increase revenue for your local business.
- Brand awareness: Video exposes your business to more users across a wide range of platforms, driving visibility.
- Trust and authority: Posting valuable content can build trust with your audience and lend authority to your business.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Embedding videos in web pages can enhance site appearance in Google organic or image search.
- Backlinks: Videos can add value to your content and encourage other websites to link back to your site, improving SEO and referral traffic.
- Email marketing: Videos can increase engagement and clicks in your email marketing campaigns.
- Advertising: Video platforms offer paid advertising opportunities that can generate more clicks and revenue.
- Local presence: Publishing videos about your community or local events can attract more customers in your area.
- Relevance: Creating relevant and engaging videos can support existing marketing campaigns, educate users, and improve your digital footprint.
How To Win With Local Video Marketing
Recent studies show that 70% of viewers have made a purchase from a brand after seeing their video content. The opportunity is ripe for video marketing, even for local businesses. Here are a few ways to make video work for your local business.
1. Drive Traffic With Educational Videos
Many small businesses struggle to drive organic website traffic due to limited resources and reach. Your local business can potentially gain more visitors through SEO with educational video content. Users actively search for information online. By publishing and marketing educational content suited to their interests, you can leverage search engines like Google and YouTube to grow your website traffic. Tools such as Semrush and TubeBuddy allow you to research keywords users search for on these platforms. Based on the terms’ volume and competition level, create videos targeting these topics. For instance, if you run a small law firm, you can create educational videos on topics such as "tips for hiring a divorce lawyer," "divorce mediation tips and tricks," and specific "adoption laws" for your state. Optimizing your video title, description, and tags on YouTube for these target keywords can help increase your website’s authority.
2. Build Trust With Product Highlights
Today’s consumers are increasingly wary of scams and false advertising claims. Educated consumers prefer investing in brands they trust. Video marketing can build trust through product demos and tutorials that show the benefits and features of your products. Utilize videos to demonstrate uses and applications, sometimes seeing is better than telling! Adding product highlight videos can encourage purchases. Finding keywords to target in your video and ranking them on Google and YouTube can drive online sales.
3. Repurpose Video Content Across Social Media
Small, local businesses face unique marketing challenges, including smaller markets and fierce local competition. Additionally, many small businesses have limited marketing resources, making it essential to maximize returns. Content repurposing can help here. By “reusing” video content across platforms, you avoid creating unique assets for each platform. For example, conduct a Facebook Live session via your business’s page, download the live video, edit and publish to YouTube, save clips for social media, and share across LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Embed the YouTube video in a blog article and link this to your email marketing campaign. Transforming a single video into multiple pieces of content saves time and money.
4. Increase Connection With Company Bios And Testimonials
Customers often desire a personal connection with brands they buy from, especially for local businesses. Video content can help nurture this connection through several types of videos:
- Team Bios: Have team members share interesting facts to build a connection with your company.
- Testimonials: Request video testimonials from customers to build trust with potential customers.
- Interviews: Host sessions to educate prospects about your industry and offerings.
- Tutorials: Show your product/service in action with expert-led walkthroughs.
- Event recaps: Record experiences and add commentary for post-event coverage.
- Community engagement: Showcase your team’s work in community initiatives through videos.
- Facebook Live: Engage in real-time with users via live interaction.
Video content adds a personal touch to your marketing and may inspire visits to your business or online shop.
Use Video Marketing To Reach More Local Customers
Video marketing isn’t just for online businesses. Local businesses can uniquely benefit, building connection, trust, and engagement with prospective customers. There are many creative ways to use video marketing, through educational videos, team bios, Facebook Live, and other means. Video is a great way to bolster your online and local presence.
More resources:
- Video SEO: 10 Steps to Optimizing Videos for Search and Discovery
- New Research Shows How to Win in Local Search
- A Guide to Local SEO
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