5 Ways to Encourage Customers to Watch Your Videos
November 5, 2018
Whether on social media, YouTube, or your main website, videos are a huge untapped advertising market for many businesses. You can use videos to show off new products, explain upcoming promotions, or just to draw traffic with unique and interesting things for your customers to watch.
If you’re new to the video marketing concept and are finding it difficult to draw in a crowd, you’re not alone. Many first-time video creators struggle to collect views. Fortunately, there are some easy ways to make your videos more accessible and more desirable to your target consumer base.
1. Bring the Noise: No, not the volume level, the hype! If you make a video, upload it, and just wait for the crowd to come view it, you’ll be waiting a long time. The problem for most new videographers is that their consumers don’t even realize it’s there to view. Sure, you can post it on Facebook, but often this isn’t enough. When a new movie is coming out in cinemas, filmmakers don’t just send it to movie theaters and hope for the best, they advertise, market, and tell their customers what’s coming, when, and where to find it.
Use your Twitter feed, Instagram account, Facebook page, and even LinkedIn to market yourself to your audience. Tell them that a new video is coming out, when to expect it, and how they can benefit. For example, if the video explains a new contest, let them know there are prizes to be won. Marketing for a marketing campaign might seem a little redundant, but it will help create some hype and make your video totally viral-worthy.
2. Go-Live or Go Home: Live videos aren’t new, but they’re becoming more popular, and it’s not difficult to see why. During a live video, consumers can see everything in real-time, comment and react to what’s going on, and even communicate with your business as you make the video. This is a great way to humanize your company and create some brand loyalty among shoppers.
During a live feed, you can introduce clients around the office, show prizes to be won in a contest, or simply have a personalized conversation. Many celebrities use live videos to draw in fans and help their online presence.
3. Make Sure You Have a Good Thumbnail: Consumers scroll past hundreds of videos a week, so what makes yours so special? The thumbnail you use to promote it is what makes it special. It needs to pop out at social media users and make them want to click it. The best thumbnails include short but catchy descriptions. Remember to be careful about making the description or the video title sound too much like click-bait, as most social media platforms have begun cracking down on this type of marketing ploy.
Make your thumbnail relevant to the subject discussed in the video and use positive keywords to draw the eye to your link. Once you’ve published a few videos, you’ll begin to see a pattern form among your followers and know what they like and what they don’t.
4. Don’t Neglect Your Keywords: Just because it’s a video and not a written piece, it doesn’t mean you should forego search engine optimization altogether. In fact, if may be more important, because the keywords in a title and description may be the only reason an internet user clicks on your link. If your title is vague and your description has no common or popular keywords, consumers are likely to skip over it in favor of something that seems more relevant to their search.
Remember that the average searcher isn’t looking to click on seven links before finding what they want, and most won’t stay on a site more than 60-seconds if they can’t find what they’re looking for. So, if you’re video isn’t described as being what they want to see, they may not venture in to watch.
5. Don’t Be Shy: A mistake some businesses make when creating video content is to stay out of it entirely. Your customers want to see you and they want to see the product. Having a face to put to the brand makes that brand more trustworthy and relatable, not to mention interesting. Another faceless product on a shelf or service in the phonebook isn’t what sells. These days, consumers are used to seeing what they want when they want it, being able to order it online to their home in a matter of minutes.
Tech savvy consumers are looking for that edge that sets one business aside from the next and they won’t get that if you’re too camera shy to introduce the brand properly to them.
Still not sure if making videos is your cup of tea? Visual tools are the future, and most consumers want to see things rather than simply read about them. If you’re not sure whether videos will take off with your target market, try a few. You might be surprised to see just how popular they can be, and the difference they can make to your brand.
If you have a social media manager handling your online presence, they are likely knowledgeable about videos and their impact on a marketing campaign. Explain to them what message you’re trying to get across, or actively participate in the creative process and see what you come up with. The great thing about videos and online marketing is that thanks to social media, it’s an extremely affordable way to advertise.