Starting and running a small business is quite a challenge in today's overwhelmingly competitive digital business landscape. There's so much to think about. From online presence and sales to social posts, content creation, and product marketing, startups have to cover a wide range of essentials to get their operations up and running. 

Many small companies see investing in video marketing as nothing more than an additional expense, but that is where they're wrong. According to some statistics, 85% of American internet users prefer video content over any other type of content, while 54% of modern consumers demand more video content from businesses they follow. 

Video marketing can help small business owners in so many different ways. From improving your sales and brand reputation to customer retention and SEO, video marketing is a worthy investment that can benefit your company and help save time and money in the long run. 

Promote Your Business on YouTube

Many internet users aren't aware that YouTube is the second largest search engine on the web, right next to Google. It has over a billion users who all demand engaging videos daily. 

If you want to increase your online exposure and brand visibility, YouTube allows you to tap into a vast user base of potential prospects. Videos with educational content are incredibly high in demand, especially how-to videos. Fit your YouTube content into the customer's journey to get the best results. 

Improve Your Google Rankings

Google is the largest search engine in the world. If a consumer has a problem, they will use Google to look for solutions. In most cases, they will find a YouTube video in the search results. It's an excellent way to increase your brand awareness and visibility, as well as reputation. 

However, this also helps rank higher in search results across Google and other search engines like Yahoo and Bing. Adding a short marketing video to your business website greatly increases your rankings and improves your chances of ranking on the first page of Google.

Customer Education

Мodern consumers demand a customer-centric approach from businesses and brands they trust. Nowadays, some products are quite complex, requiring additional information so that your audience gets a clear understanding of how your products or services can help solve their real-life problems. 

Brands that invest in customer education to provide informative and educational videos get a fair chance to increase their sales, as almost 85% of prospects are more likely to buy after watching a video. 

Aside from increasing sales and improving customer satisfaction, customer education also helps businesses establish meaningful relationships with their target audience, attract more consumers, improve brand reputation, receive positive customer testimonials that further help promote their business, and more.

Personalized Customer Experience

Brands that approach their consumers through the medium they prefer get a chance to improve their lead generation, conversions, and customer retention rates. 

Since 80% of consumers on the internet prefer video as their favorite medium, it's not hard to conclude how valuable video content can be to both your business and your consumers. If you provide your target audience with appropriate, user-friendly video content, they are far more likely to buy your products.

Give Your Email Click-Throughs a Real Boost

Including short videos in your email marketing campaigns can increase your click-through rates by 300%. However, you can't just embed the video in your emails. The trick is to include a video thumbnail in the email body. 

That way, your consumers can view the video on your landing page or website, which can do wonders for driving more traffic to your online store and improving lead generation, conversions, etc.

Video Marketing Is Cost-Effective

The best thing about video today is that it's quite affordable. In fact, the only thing you need is a great, user-friendly video hosting platform to manage your videos, and you're good to go. These video platforms are designed to be business-centric and make uploading videos simple and easy. 

More importantly, they provide essential video analytics to measure your performance and see if your video content is resonating with your consumers. Video hosting platforms help share your video content by adding it into your intranet, emails, blogs, social media, website, and every other available channel used by your target audience to improve customer engagement.

Improve Your Social Media Presence

Social media networks like Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook can be extremely helpful in spreading the word about your brand. They help customers discover new businesses. 

Since video is becoming more popular with each passing day across all social media channels, creating attention-grabbing video content will increase customer interactions with your brand and extend your organic reach. It's an excellent way to expand your business into new markets and attract an even wider target audience.

Conclusion

Businesses that use video marketing can increase revenue much faster than companies that don't. Video content has never been more relevant in the online business environment, and it can help your business grow. The trick is to use it in the right, customer-centric way, and increasing sales and brand awareness will be much easier.