7 Video Marketing Ideas to Promote Your Website and Increase Traffic

As a small business owner, you may not be able to compete with a large corporation’s marketing budget for brand awareness; However, with innovative video software tools, you can produce low-cost, yet good-quality videos for your target audience that can give you effective results and improve your Google rankings.

Whether the excitement around YouTube has motivated you to buy a Flip camera or webcam on your computer and video editing software like Adobe Premiere Elements or Sony Vegas (Imovie if you own a MAC), you may not know how you can use these tools to promote your website or product. Here are some ideas to get you started producing videos that will engage your customers and increase traffic.

1) Customer Recommendations – With your customer’s permission, of course, schedule 2-3 interviews with your best customers to videotape their satisfaction with your product or service. These videos provide a great deal of credibility, especially if your customers are excited and convey the benefits that you or your business provide.

2) Screen Projection How To – With free tools like Screenr and Go View, you can set up a software how-to video that answers your customers’ pressing questions. For example, suppose you are an accounting service and are proficient in Quickbooks accounting software, you can record a video of a particular software problem your clients need answered and post it on your website or YouTube channel. This service positions you as the trusted advisor your clients can trust.

3) Live Video Streaming Streaming – Vpype and Ustream are software companies that offer their pre-release software for free so you can use live video streaming for your business. These services allow you to provide your customers with real-time video experiences that they might not otherwise be able to take advantage of due to time or travel constraints. Live video streaming is especially popular when you stream industry conferences and other events that many people don’t have access to.

4) Slideshow – There are services like Animoto, and many competing companies offer similar services, where they take photos, video clips, and images of a customer and create a slideshow set to music. This type of service is excellent for a real estate agent who wants to market a particular property with the best images of the interior and exterior of the property with descriptions of the property’s best features to prospective clients.

5) Seminar Preview/Speaking Engagement – If you are a speaker or consultant, this is a great format to produce to whet your clients’ appetites and give them a virtual experience of your speaking ability or expertise.

6) Interview – Customers love interviews with subject matter experts who enhance or add to what they are already buying from your business. For example, if you are a web programmer and you set up an interview with a good copywriter to talk about website content development and then post it on your blog or website, you are providing added value for your clients that your competition is not.

7) Product demo – mini infomercial – This video format is the type of video most people are familiar with after watching this type of video (usually 30 minutes long) used to sell juicers, makeup, kitchen equipment, and exercise equipment. As a small business owner, you can produce shorter two- to three-minute demos of your product with a traditional call-to-action and test the results of your video ad.

Hopefully, this list will motivate you to start producing videos that will improve your marketing and boost your small business brand just like the “big guys” do.