Tips For Using Video For Branding

If you want your brand to stand out in a crowded field of competitors you need to start using video for branding, traditional marketing methods may no longer be effective. The 21st-century marketplace is increasingly complex, demanding new and innovative ways to make an impact. A video is an emerging marketing tool for establishing and strengthening a unique brand presence.

Here are some effective tips for using video for branding:

Connecting Counts

Today’s customers don’t just want to be informed. They want to learn, grow and be inspired. From entertaining animated videos to “how to” and informational videos, there are infinite ways to creatively incorporate videos into your marketing strategy.

More engaging than static text, videos appeal to the average person’s short, visual attention span, and let you tell a compelling story through an ideal delivery method; in doing so, customers have the unique opportunity to connect with your company and brand through an immediate platform.

In demonstrating a consistent and genuine personality through online videos, you imbue your brand with a rare authenticity that can’t be easily captured via the written word.

The personal element that can be achieved in mere minutes in a video is difficult–if impossible–to replicate through text-based blogging alone. In delivering a better personal connection, you also deliver a more trustworthy sense of your company, products, services and comprehensive brand.

Be A Stand Out Brand

Online video branding can help separate you from your competitors by establishing your business as a unique, recognizable and memorable brand. The visual nature of videos is powerful and leaves behind an enduring impression.

Online video branding not only helps capture your audience’s attention, it also helps maintain it. The more engaged your clients are with your video content, the longer they will remain at your site. And the longer clients remain on your site, the more familiar they become with your brand.

Putting the YOU in YouTube

For better or for worse, our collective attention span is growing shorter. Put this fact to work for your company by creating interactive, visual content in video form.

What takes 10 or more minutes to convey in a blog post can take just a minute or two in a video. And while people may feel like the investment is small when viewing a video, the potential payoff is huge for businesses, particularly if you harness the power of YouTube.

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While posting a video on your company’s website can have a beneficial impact, posting to YouTube can be transformational. Hundreds of thousands of videos are viewed every day on YouTube.

Imagine how many new viewers–and potential new customers–can be engaged by sharing your content on YouTube. Viewers like to click through embedded links, so by linking from YouTube to your website, you’ll generate even more traffic to your site.

Furthermore, YouTube now falls behind only Google in terms of search engine rankings. In fact, as Google owns YouTube, it’s no coincidence that YouTube videos rank so highly in Google search results.

A well-executed video can skyrocket to the first page of results, while a basic blog post can get lost in the crowd of also-rans.

Also, view our YouTube Ranking Tips to boost your rankings.

Post a video every day

By continually posting videos you generate fresh content, an approach that will keep you at the forefront of Google’s ranking analytics. This is a win-win: your current clients will appreciate your consistency, resulting in enhanced brand loyalty.

Meanwhile, an entirely new audience can be captured through increased search results visibility generating even more traffic to your website.

Today’s search engines not only index videos beneficially, but also respond to the positive bounce rate and average user’s length of stay, further enhancing your website’s metrics and improving your search engine rankings.

By sending more potential customers to your site and creating a consistent brand, online videos also deliver a boost to conversion rates.

According to KISSmetrics, videos now account for 70 percent out of the top 100 search results, and those who have watched product videos are up to 85 percent more likely to make an online purchase.

Additionally, visitors are more apt to linger on a site for over two minutes. While two minutes may sound negligible, it is huge when multiplied by total visitors.

Invest in Video Marketing

The cost of video marketing is within reach of most medium and small-sized companies, particularly when you consider the potential payoff. By hiring the services of a professional video service or SEO service provider with a video marketing component, you further enhance your brand by the delivery quality that helps inform your customer’s perception of your brand.

A look at online video branding services shows that costs are refreshingly accessible. If the price is truly prohibitive, it is possible to make a video on your own using tools already at your disposal, such as a smartphone, home video camera or standard video editing software.

Another option is to contact your community radio station or local high school to seek out near-professional talent at a discounted cost.

The Red Wing Shoe Company: A Compelling Case Study

Let’s hop on to our time machine and go to June of 2011 where Gene Rebeck wrote a piece for the “The Twin Cities Business Journal” titled “Seen on Site,” in which he detailed the company’s incorporation of online videos into their marketing strategy.

Their goal was to authenticate their All-American brand persona through a series of four professionally-produced online videos, including a three-minute tour of the company’s production facility and a humanistic portrayal of its employees. Red Wing launched the videos through social media; less than four months later, they’d exceeded 100,000 views.

While these numbers may sound small compared to what you might find in a viral YouTube video, they had a significant impact on Red Wing’s brand.

Video-related Facebook posts increased by nearly 50 percent, while the increase in website traffic was only slightly less at 45 percent. Visitors not only increased but also stayed longer–by about two minutes and 30 seconds; in other words, the approximate length of each video.

The company launched the video branding campaign to counter some potentially damaging press about offshore production.

The authenticity presented in these videos countered the detrimental and then some; at the time of the article’s writing, Red Wing’s brand was on the rise; the company was hiring new employees, increasing production, and adding new potential clients every day through its online video branding efforts.

Some Don’ts Amidst the Do’s

Now that you know why and how videos can help your brand, here are some things to avoid when creating your online video branding campaign. First, keep videos short and sweet–under three minutes to be exact. By telling a brief, simple story, you provide a wholly digestible capsule of information for viewers.

Even the shortest video should have a professional appearance. Positive branding depends on a positive presentation; it’s not worth the effort if it’s not done well.

Poor videography or production work can detract from your brand by delivering an inferior impression of your company. Keep in mind that while content creation is critical to an effective social media strategy, your brand is only enhanced through a high-quality material.

Remaining competitive means getting in front of and staying in front of the competition. According to comScore, 180.1 million internet users in the United States watched a whopping 36.6 billion online content videos.

If your business hasn’t yet incorporated online video branding into your marketing strategy, you are missing out on a major opportunity. Thinking outside the (text) box by creating online video marketing can vastly enrich your brand identity.