This post is a guest post from Victoria Greene, freelance writer specializing in growth and eCommerce.
Online video is a popular medium, but how can it best be harnessed for your consulting business?
In what ways can it improve your website, drive your online presence, and create a stellar client experience?
Anyone with a smartphone can use video and add to their marketing gravity. With LinkedIn’s new native video tool, you’re given more opportunities than ever to get in front of prospective buyers so that they can get to know you, like you, and trust you — from seeing and hearing you through their screen.
The first rule of video marketing: have a strategy. An ad-hoc, piecemeal approach to video marketing will be unlikely to yield results. Be really clear on what you want to achieve, and create video content that fits in with your wider digital strategy.
Here are five ways in which you can harness the power of video for your consultancy business in order to find, satisfy, and keep more clients.
1. Up online engagement levels
These 16 video marketing stats from Hubspot go to show how essential video has become to online business — and how demand for video is on the up.
Video, whether it’s a background video, or an explainer, adds a new level of texture to your website. Instead of having to piece information together from the copy on your site, video is an engaging and easy-to-understand format. Mixing visuals, sound, and storytelling, makes video the perfect punchy medium for a “TLDR” explainer on what it is you actually do.
Having video on your website will encourage users to stick around longer, but remember to keep things short and snappy. Hubspot found that 56% of online videos are less than two minutes, and the ones you share on social, need to be even snappier.
2. Create an awesome client experience
Video is not just there as a way for you to push your services on people — it’s also a great way to inform, educate, and share knowledge. By creating a content library of helpful online videos, you can help business owners and leaders tackle thorny problems.
Targeted video series delving into key issues like financial problems, staff engagement, market research, and digital marketing can become excellent ways to engage your clients.
Off the back of a great video, you can create stills, infographics, blog posts, comics, and tweets. By having video as a central content spoke, you can cost-effectively impart your expertise through content.
Shooting videos in-house is easier than ever, but you can also speak to a local video agency or freelancer for some advice on shooting and editing a business video. And with any newer smartphone, you can simply record yourself in a “vlog” style video for ongoing and frequent content to establish a personal connection with your audience — with a near-professional quality.
3. Improve your SEO
From a search perspective, the more digital angles you’ve covered, the better. Video can help your website come up in more online searches, and improve your chances of picking up clients from inbound marketing.
In order to make the most of online video for SEO purposes, you will need to get your video embedded on as many external sites and and blogs as possible. An informative video can be a great way to start a digital PR campaign.
You should also do some keyword research to ensure that the topics you’re covering are of interest to your audience. Always include a transcript of your video so that search engines can understand and index it, as they aren’t yet able to process video content in quite the same way as copy. You can find transcribing services on Fiverr for less than $10.
4. Demonstrate your expertise
Video is an emotive format that helps build trust with clients and customers. Use online video to your advantage and showcase your expertise, and share your happy client and customer stories.
A video testimonial is a great testament to your business, so make sure that you get a couple for your website. Talk to your most trusted and long-standing clients, and see whether they’d be up for it.
Videos can also be used as part of any presentations, events, or talks you attend. Share a live video, interview other speakers, or document your own journey as a conference speaker with fun and engaging videos. Speaking is one of the most effective business development strategies for consultants.
Event organizers are always super grateful to anyone who creates valuable content, so you will be able to take advantage of their PR and media reach.
You should also any timely videos on YouTube and promote them from there. Here are some crucial YouTube video metrics to help you make the most of the platform — which is the second largest search engine.
5. Dovetail with your online marketing
Online video is a format that works really well on social media, and can be leveraged across different content platforms quite easily. Why not include a video in your latest e-shot, or share a series of vlogs on Facebook?
Getting more comfortable with video will pay off when you’re able to ‘go live’ on Facebook or Twitter at the drop of a hat and just go out there and share your message with the world. Online video marketing is all about being real, reactive, and brave — the perfect attitude for social media marketing.
Online video is the digital format of the day, and you need to make the most of your expertise and charisma in front of the cameras too. Use video as a powerful medium to engage, educate, and sell. Getting in front of the camera for the first time can be nerve-wracking, but with so many people doing it, it’s becoming increasingly normalized. The whole point of online video is that it’s not a polished news broadcast, but more like a documentary.
Victoria Greene is a content marketing expert who loves to help businesses grow. She’s also a freelance writer and runs her own blog at victoriaecommerce. Big advocate of fast and furious content marketing that cuts straight to the point.