There’s no getting around the fact that using video on your website is beneficial in many ways. It helps increase your SEO (despite what Google might tell you); it increases the amount of time people will spend on your website; and done well, it can considerably increase customer engagement and even sales. Not only that, but it’s great content that you can use on a variety of different platforms, in a variety of different ways, whilst addressing a few different goals – from engaging with your clients, to driving traffic or even sales back to your website. Now, we can vouch for video being a fantastic tool ourselves too, not just because it’s a service we offer, but because we use our showreel (which a lot of our clients have cited as a big reason they chose to work with us) to generate interest and new work. We use it on the website, on social media, in client meetings, networking meetings and even exhibitions.

Now this is all well and good, but if you’re not already using video, where do you start? We’ve put together a few suggestions on how and what you can do to start using video in your business, some of which we’ve done for ourselves or our clients.

1. Promotional Videos
Promotional videos are without a doubt the most popular route and often the easiest way to introduce video content into your website. These videos are designed to promote either your business or a specific service or product you offer. Some companies let you into their offices and show you how they work and promote themselves and their culture. Others may just showcase their work or the new app they’ve developed; showing you how easy it is to use, or perhaps a specific service that they are currently pushing.

2. Onsite video/animation
With web standards constantly improving, it’s now possible to include video elements as part of a design. Just as you might use a large background image, this can now be video and can take a website to the next level. You can also include animation as part of the website interaction. For example, animating a button when the user hovers over it or clicks it. Little details like that can add to the overall experience of a website and make it a lot easier to use. While this isn’t strictly video, it’s using animation to elevate and improve your website for those who use it, which can only be a good thing.

3. Video tips and advice
If your industry is one people find complicated or confusing, such as accounting or financial advisor perhaps, you can offer your customers quick tips and advice using video. This is great for generating new content that your customers will respond to and want to see. These types of videos can also be great if you run a restaurant for example and want to show people how to prepare one of your simpler dishes or even show how their favourite dishes are created. If you find your customers tend to ask you how to do this one thing all the time, you could create a simple how-to video to guide them through the process; helping them and freeing up the time you might normally spend guiding them through it yourself.

4. Vlogs
Video blogs or Vlogs can be a great (and cheap) way to interact with your audience/customers. Talking to people about you or your business on a regular basis gives people a fantastic insight into what it is you do. Giving people access to a behind the scenes look at your company or events you attend or organise can be a great and easy way to increase engagement with your customers. Great examples of these can be found when looking at athletes. F1 drivers in particular seem to do this quite a bit.

5. Video testimonials
Nothing sells your business like a good customer testimonial. It’s been well documented that people will sooner trust the review of someone they’ve never meet over any ‘self-promoting’ copy on a business’ website. So get your customers talking about what you do and why they like it.

There are many options when it comes to introducing video into your marketing and these are just a few suggestions on how you could get started, as well as exemplifying how some companies have already incorporated video into their marketing, both online and offline. If you’d like to have a chat about some of these ideas or if you’d like explore some other ideas that could help your business, then get in touch today.