Why Make a Promotional Video for Your Business?

The golden age of photography as content is over. Today, video has become an unavoidable and essential pillar of every company’s marketing and communication strategy — in fact, 85% of marketing professionals now use it (Oberlo).

It’s an effective, captivating, and impactful format that users particularly appreciate, since it combines sound (sometimes optional), image, and text — making it easy-to-consume content in a variety of contexts. If you haven’t jumped on the promotional video trend yet, here are 5 reasons to convince you to do so!

1. Promote Your Products and Services

The first reason — and probably the most obvious one — to make a promotional video is to promote your products and services. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words: video is a great way to communicate a creative, different vision of your product or service. With this format, you can show your customers what you do in real time — demonstrate your product and highlight its advantages and the benefits your target audience can get from it, such as ease of use.

On Etsy, for example, research has shown that having videos on certain product listings added a layer of transparency that increased buyer confidence while conveying information a still image couldn’t (Etsy, free translation).

For promoting a less tangible service, the image can create a feeling or emotion experienced through it. Sparking emotion is always a winning move. It’s a great way to showcase your added value and stand out from the competition! For example, this IKEA ad lets viewers see their decor and furniture pieces in context (the size of the watering can in a child’s hands, the thickness of the blanket on the bed) while also conveying an emotion: shopping at IKEA makes you feel creative and inspired.

2. Video = Visibility

As we all know, video is the most widely used and most effective communication medium for getting a message across: viewers retain 95% of a message when it’s shared as video (Oberlo). It’s also a format that’s easy to share across multiple communication channels, especially social media, which favours video content over images and text. Using the same video across several channels lets you reach a wider audience. Your content, your website, and your social media channels all gain greater visibility and better organic search ranking as a result.

The statistics don’t lie. This Sprout Social article clearly shows the importance of video across various communication channels.

That said, be sure to adapt your video’s length and format to the platform you plan to publish it on.

Vertical format (9:16) is the most commonly recommended, especially for TikTok videos, Stories, and Instagram Reels. As for length, it varies: 60 seconds maximum on TikTok, 15 seconds for Stories, and 90 seconds for Reels.

To learn more about the different formats and lengths to follow, here are two guides that can help:

• Social Media: All the Formats for 2022 https://www.youlovewords.com/reseaux-sociaux-quels-formats-pour-vos-videos/
• Social Media Video Specs for 2022 | Always Up-to-Date Guide https://influencermarketinghub.com/social-media-video-specs/

3. Showcase Your Expertise

To position yourself as an expert in your field, nothing is simpler than a how-to video, a tutorial, or a training session. On one hand, it builds trust with your customers since you’re demonstrating your knowledge and skills. On the other hand, it gives them useful information about your products and services.

Tip: to get started, list the questions that come up most often and think about the solutions you can offer your customers. That will give you a good idea of which videos to make first.

The most important engagement factor on social media is content sharing. A tutorial, tips and tricks, or videos featuring high-value content are more likely to get shared. Also think about topics related to your industry. A company that sells tires could offer a tips video on how to change your tires at home each year, or on how to store tires efficiently in different types of homes.

4. Recruit New Employees

Attracting new talent is a major, current challenge in many industries. Once again, promotional video can help with this, since it’s an excellent way to showcase your company’s DNA.

What we want is to spark emotion and create an atmosphere!

In a short video, candidates can learn more about you and your company: the atmosphere, your way of working, the job conditions, and so on. With this format, they get an inside look that job descriptions can’t always convey. Quick tip: stay authentic! For example, you could interview your employees and ask them what they like most about working at your company.

5. Improve Your Organic Search Ranking (SEO)

Thanks to Google’s Hummingbird algorithm, video has become a great way to improve your organic search ranking. This algorithm helps Google better understand user queries: instead of focusing on keywords, it tries to understand the user’s actual intent in order to offer the best answers, by analyzing consumer behaviour, sentence structure, and recent search history. As a result, Google increasingly features results with videos, such as YouTube or Vimeo pages, or pages with an embedded video 👇

Our most important tip: before making your promotional video, ask yourself what question it answers, putting yourself in your ideal customer’s shoes. If it provides a relevant answer, it’s sure to rank better in search engines. Of course, spending a modest ad budget on high-value content like video is worth it, but steady, organic search ranking pays off more in the long run. To learn more about video as a marketing tool, here are a few statistics:

• 10 video marketing statistics (November 2021)
• 135 video marketing statistics you can’t ignore in 2022 (May 2022)

Feeling inspired for your next video? All that’s left is to make it! And that’s something we know well too — we even have our own production studio at Sparkling, which you can take a virtual tour of right here. Book a meeting with David to reserve your next shoot day.

ALSO READ: 5 Tips for Recording a Quality Video The Podcast as a Communication Tool: 4 Best Practices 13 Tools to Adopt for Content Creation (Part 2)