10 Reasons Why Small Businesses Need Video Advertising
Have you watched a video today? We sure have, and we bet you have, too.
After all, the average person spends 100 minutes a day watching online videos, and videos make up over 80% of online traffic. So what does this mean for small business owners? An advertising channel with a lot of potential.
Making videos is easier now than ever, thanks to easy-to-use online tools like Promo. So if you’re not yet investing in video advertising, there’s no better time to start. Want to know why? We’ll give you ten reasons.
What Is Video Advertising?
In a nutshell, video advertising is the practice of using video ads to promote your business, products, and/or services. Your video ads can be displayed in several places, including websites, social media platforms, as well as on your own website. There are several outcomes that you might seek to achieve with your video ads, from raising awareness of your brand to getting more social media followers to making sales.
The best part is that video advertising is tremendously versatile, giving you room for creativity and self-expression. Your videos can be serious or funny, long or short, obvious or subtle – whatever you decide works for you and your brand.
Why Your Small Business Needs Video Advertising
The bottom line is that video advertising is incredibly effective. Indeed, there’s a reason why 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. Actually, there are at least ten. With the power of video advertising, you can accomplish the following:
1. Sell More of Your Product or Service
Let’s pause for a moment and think about why we’re bothering with all of this advertising and marketing in the first place. Your ultimate goal is to sell more of your products and services, right? After all, that’s why they call it the bottom line.
Well, it turns out that video is a powerful sales tool. A whopping 80% of video marketers report that video has helped increase sales. With its ability to make personal connections, explain complex topics, and even cut deal cycles, it’s clear that video is a great way to supercharge your sales efforts.
So whether you’re using videos like a traditional commercial or going with more subtle forms of advertising like collaborations with influencers or video tutorials, this engaging format is great at helping you boost your sales.
2. Increase Traffic to Your Website
Your website is a powerful sales tool. You can give potential customers information about your business and products, collect email addresses for your email marketing, and even sell your products and services directly to consumers. The only problem is that none of those things will happen if nobody visits your website, to begin with.
That’s where video comes in. It’s a great tool for driving traffic; in fact, a survey showed that 87% of video marketers say video has increased traffic to their website. And what comes with traffic? Brand recognition, customer education, and sales.
3. Get More Followers and Engagement on Social Media
It’s no secret that social media is king in 2022. There are over 4.62 billion social media users, with the average daily usage of social media being just under two and a half hours a day. Social media has become a hub for marketing and advertising. More than 91% of American businesses are using social media for marketing campaigns. And it works.
A study showed that 54% of consumers wanted to see more video content from the brands or businesses they support, and businesses who heed this preference are rewarded. Indeed, 86% of marketers say video has helped them generate leads.
This is true about all social media platforms, including:
Instagram, where video posts receive more than twice as many comments as other types of posts
Twitter, where tweets with video attract ten times more engagement than tweets without video
And Facebook, where video posts have the highest organic engagement.
4. Reach Millennial and Gen Z Audiences
A big part of effective advertising is knowing who your target audience is, and chances are pretty good that at least part of your target demographic includes Millennials and/or Gen Zers who, together, make up 65% of consumers.
If you want to effectively connect with either of these two generations, video is one of the best ways to do so. In fact, half of Gen Z and Millennials report that they “don’t know how they’d get through life without video.” That’s right, the video love is real, and their time spent watching online videos reflects it: Millennials watch online videos for 2.4 hours per day while Gen Z averages 3.4 hours a day.
The bottom line? If you want to get the attention of 65% of the world’s consumers, video is a safe bet.
5. Show Up More Prominently on Search Results
Another highly effective way to get the attention of potential consumers is to show up on Google’s search results. As the world’s number one most visited website, processing over 8.5 billion searches per day, Google holds a lot of power to help people find your website. Nearly half of all product searches (46%) start on Google.
So what does all of this mean exactly? If you want your business and its offerings to have visibility on the internet, getting high rankings on Google is one of the best ways. And how can you improve your likelihood of showing up prominently on Google’s search results? Yep, you guessed it: with videos.
Forrester Research showed that video results are 50 times more likely to be organically ranked in Google than text-based results. If your page only has text, its likelihood of being displayed on the first page of Google is 500,000 to 1. Add a video, and that probability skyrockets to 11,000 to 1.
6. Make a Personal Connection With Your Audience
You might be wondering why exactly short online video content is so popular, to the point that 6 out of 10 people prefer watching online video content compared to television.
Short-form videos can be particularly good at storytelling. By using them on your social media handles, you can make a personal connection with your audience and create an emotional effect. By showing human faces, telling stories, and using emotionally emotive music, you can make your audience feel something – and that’s valuable. One study showed that customers with an emotional relationship with a brand have a 306% higher lifetime value. Connecting with emotions can mean connecting with the wallet.
7. Have More People Read Your Emails
How many times a day do you check your email? If you’re anything like the average person, that number should be around 15. That might be one of the reasons that email continues to be a very popular marketing channel, with 81% of small businesses relying on it as their primary way to acquire customers.
Yet it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, with the average email click-through rate being only 10.29%. Of course, as you’ve probably been able to guess by now, this number improves significantly when video is involved: emails with videos in them can improve click-through rates by 300%.
8. Help Your Audience Better Understand Your Product or Service
Another thing that video is particularly great at is educating and communicating information. After all, research shows that 65% of the general population are visual learners, meaning that they will be better able to process and internalize information when they see it in a video rather than when they read it. In fact, in one study, viewers retained about 95% of information from a video compared to 10% of information reading text.
You can leverage this powerful educational ability of video to create a variety of video types, from explainers that teach consumers how to use your product to educational content that is so helpful that it draws people to your website who might go on to give you their email address or buy one of your products.
9. Convert Leads Into Paying Customers
According to the buyer’s journey model of sales, paying customers start out as leads who need to be nurtured, educated, and advertised to, later on, convert into actual sales. That’s why conversions are considered a great measure of the success of a particular sales or marketing initiative: they tell you whether or not your efforts actually translated into real sales.
Well, it may come as no surprise that the ability of video ads to convert leads into sales is strong. According to research, including a video on your landing page can boost your conversion rate by up to a massive 80%. To illustrate it slightly differently, sites with no videos have an average 2.9% conversion rate, whereas sites with videos have a conversion rate of 4.8%. Meanwhile, another study partnered with Facebook and Nielson found that video ads increase conversions by 20-30%. So, do you want to make sales? Well, it’s a great idea to start making videos.
10. See Your Investment Pay Off
Many small business owners hesitate to use video marketing because they believe it’s too much of an investment. And yes, it does require some time and money to get started with a video advertising strategy. Although not necessarily as much money as you think, online video makers like Promo offer a very affordable alternative to the traditional video creation process of hiring professionals.
However much you decide to invest in video advertising, chances are you’ll be glad that you did. A whopping 89% of video marketers say video gives them a good return on their investment. Not only that, but more than half of marketers say that video is the type of content with the best ROI out of all the types they’ve used.
So don’t hesitate to invest in video advertising. The research shows that it pays off.
3 Video Ad Templates to Get You Started
If you’re as excited as we are about video advertising but aren’t sure about where to get started, we’ll lend you a hand by sharing our three favorite video ad templates from Promo. With just some searching and selection, you can easily edit these to be relevant to your business and branding. In just a matter of minutes, you can add your brand logo and a strong CTA, and you’ll have a polished video you can share on your website or social media accounts.
A Hot Deal
One thing that short videos are great for is announcing promotions to your audience. After all, who doesn’t love a sale? This “hot deal” video template is one of Promo’s most popular, using a simple but effective visual of burning flames to represent the fiery deals you’re offering your customers. No matter your business type, you can easily customize this template, add your brand’s logo, and share it on your social media platforms.
Product Sale | Slideshow
Another great way to use video ads is to show off your products to get your customers excited about your offerings. Rather than showcase a single item, you have the opportunity to show off all your products on sale. With Promo, you can easily add photos and videos of the products or services you want to highlight, and add them to any template. The best part is, they’ll be saved and waiting for you to use whenever you feel like it!
Summer Sale
A big part of video advertising is staying on top of trends and special occasions. While it may feel intimidating to come up with inspiration 365 days of the year, Promo is always uploading new templates for you to make use of for your video marketing. In addition to our template library, Promo offers a social media calendar with video content for every day of the year. This Summer Sale template makes the most of the video medium’s abilities to effectively advertise your business, all you need to do is customize and share!
Ready to Create Winning Video Ads?
No matter the size of your business or budget, you can take advantage of the power of video advertising to help you get more traffic, make more sales, and grow your presence on social media. The above are just three examples of the thousands of templates you can find in Promo’s video maker. In addition to those, you can also find templates specifically made for your interest or in honor of an upcoming occasion. Whatever your goal may be, Promo has the templates you need, and our Getty Images library will ensure your business stands out with video.
