So you’ve started your business, you have an innovative new product and you and your team are buzzing with excitement.
Although working in a startup can be exhilarating, more often than not, getting the business to “work” i.e. becoming a sustainable and scalable entity, can be a long and testing process.
Of course, you need to have a product that your market wants (aka product market fit aka PMF). But you also need to be skilled at communicating how your product helps your market in an engaging way.
Enter the role of video marketing. Using video strategically allows you to dynamically market your offering whilst being human and building a relationship with your potential user base.
Here are some ways in which you can use video to your advantage:
Encourage user generated content (UGC) for feedback.
So your product is launched. But that doesn’t mean it’s the finished article or that it is necessarily doing exactly what your user needs it to. You need to work in iterations and step by step build a better product.
Product launch specialist Jeff Walker always talks about the importance of having a conversation with your market. This allows you to understand their core needs and build your product to fit that, all the while developing your relationship with your audience.
Yes, you have your analytics to draw upon but there is also power in complimenting that with qualitative data – and in doing so you strike up a more personal and powerful relationship with potential buyers.
Why not invite your user base to make videos and send them to you via social channels with their thoughts and feedback…and you respond via video as well! Twitter video would facilitate this really nicely – give it a shot.
Use an Explainer Video
OK, so this is a bit of a given – but explainer videos can be really effective at getting across your core message in a fun and interesting way.
A study by Wyzowl (2016) discovered that 74% of users who watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service went on and purchased it.
Pro Tip: Rather than having your explainer video standalone, best practice is to tie it into an overarching objective. Like getting people to sign up for trials etc. then you can set metrics and KPIs and track ROI.
Video on Landing Pages
If email capture is a part of your strategy, then having a video on a landing page can be a powerful method of upping your conversion rate.
We’ve produced videos for clients who A/B split test landing pages and in the vast majority of cases the page with the video has a greater conversion.
Keep your landing page simple, and place the video above the fold (it’s best for play rate). Then, remember in your video as well as on the page, have a strong call to action, directing your user what it is you want them to do now.
Video Ads on Facebook
Video on Facebook is huge. Ads on Facebook are incredibly effective. Blend them together and you get a lovely video ad cocktail of engagement and clicks!
Aside from the advantages that come with the targeting on the ad platform, allowing you to be laser targeted, you have full control over what you spend. You can start on just a couple of pounds a day and experiment. Once you find what works, you scale.
Video and Facebook’s ad platform could well be a winning formula helping you increase your reach, engage your audience and convert.
Make a Demo Video
Grab some screencast software and make a demo of how your product works – like a walk through of the features and the benefits that it brings to your user.
This is very simple to do but often overlooked.
Dropbox launched their product in this way, using a super simple and rough around the edges video. But it didn’t matter because their product was so innovative. Reportedly, that video back in 2007 got them around 75 000 subscribers overnight.
While we can’t promise that level of success, we do know that demo videos can have an important role to play in fuelling your growth.
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