Using video to boost your brand

Did you know that 87% of marketers use video, with over half of all marketers saying that video content generates the most ROI of all content types? If you aren’t yet using video to boost your brand, now is the time to start. Using video on your website, in your social posts, and in your emails will help you build trust, increase brand awareness, and drive more conversions. 

Let’s talk about eight tips for using video to boost your brand. 

1. Know Your Target Audience

Your first step is knowing your target audience, as that will help you tailor the content of your videos to that audience. Knowing your target audience will also help you decide which platforms to create videos on other than your website. 

For example, while TikTok is popular with teens, it won’t necessarily be your first choice or worth spending a lot of effort on unless you’re somehow targeting teens. (Often, even if you sell products for teens, you’re targeting their parents and not the teens themselves, as most teens don’t have a lot of money). 

So, how can you figure out your target audience? Here are some methods you can use (don’t rely on any single method; it’s best to use a few together for more accurate results): 

• Look at your Google Analytics
• Look at analytics from other sources, such as Facebook Ads, YouTube (if you already have a channel), etc. 
• Create a focus group
• Go through your customer list and identify trends
• Send out polls to your email list to pick up on patterns, including behavioral platforms, such as the social media platforms they use most

It might be helpful to think of your typical customer persona. If you had to put all of your customers into one person, what would they be like? 

Would they be a married, middle-aged woman living in the suburbs or a young, single university student living in an apartment in the city? What would their top concerns be, and what would their budget be like? What would they want to see in a video? 

When you create a video, you can imagine yourself speaking to that customer persona. 

2. Have a Story to Tell

If people love your story, they will be 55% more likely to buy from you in the future. One study found that when a charity focused on storytelling, people donated almost twice as much. And that’s all with written stories! Video stories are much more powerful, as they make a deeper impact, touch people more, and are more memorable. 

Always have a story to tell in your videos. Some examples of stories you can cover include: 

• The story of how your brand came to be
• A customer’s story and how they solved their problems or saw success with your service
• The story of how you managed to add a new feature or upgrade your technology
• The story of how you managed to survive your struggles during the Covid-19 crisis

Video testimonial stories are especially powerful. They’re third-party stories from regular people — and that is why people connect to them so much. People who are going through the same things can empathize and identify with the person telling the story. 

3. Be Memorable

One of the advantages of using video is that you can be more memorable than when simply writing an article. Here are a few tips on how to be more memorable with your videos: 

• Use great graphics, animations, and intros.
• Use shocking or noteworthy data, with infographics or charts that make your point easy to understand and remember.
• Tell a powerful story.
• Touch on positive emotions, such as happiness, love, and trust.
• Touch on negative emotions, such as fear, hate, and sadness (sometimes, appealing to negative emotions can make you more memorable!).
• Showcase real people and use your real voice, instead of a robotic voice.
• Be animated and excited when talking, not boring and cold.

4. Showcase Your Expertise in the Industry

Videos can be a great way to showcase your expertise. Blog posts are good for this too, but in your videos, you can do things like answer questions live. 

When you answer questions in real-time, whether on Facebook Live or YouTube Live, you show people that you know what you are talking about and can answer any question that comes your way, without doing any research. 

You can also showcase some of the work you have done. It’s a great way to show your professionalism, work ethic, and real results you bring clients. 

Another great way to showcase your expertise is by talking about case studies or original research you conducted. It’s one thing to talk about research others have done — that can still help you position yourself as an authority in the industry. However, if you took the time to conduct an original study and came up with interesting findings, that’s even better. 

Showing how you specialize in your area and have many years of experience in the industry can also help you position yourself as an authority. 

Finally, if you received any awards, certifications, or recognitions, no matter how small, mention them in your video — but don’t talk about them too much, as you don’t want to come across as pretentious. 

5. Include Social Proof If Possible

Try to include social proof in your videos. There are many ways to do this.

One to include social proof would be to insert a testimonial from a client. This testimonial does not have to be long or take up the bulk of your video — it could be a few sentences long, with the client only saying a single sentence. Featuring a few of these short testimonials throughout your video can help build trust and improve your brand image. 

A more subtle way to include social proof would be to encourage users to follow you on social media while showing a quick screenshot of your social media profile, while clearly showcasing the number of followers you have. You can also showcase a social media post you created if it got a lot of likes or retweets. 

When viewers see that your social media profiles are buzzing and attracting massive amounts of engagement, they will view your brand in a better light.

6. Have a Professional Video Quality

Video quality does matter. If the audio is bad, the video quality is poor, or there is a lack of professional video production, people won’t look at your brand the same way. 

Make sure you are using top-notch equipment to record your videos. Also, consider hiring a professional video editor who can cut out white noise, fix up video and audio quality, and cut out gap words such as “um” and “ah” to make the video flow more smoothly. 

A video editor can also add animations, break up the video into segments or chapters, and add intros and outros between segments. 

7. Optimize for Different Devices and Media

Make sure your video is optimized for both desktop and mobile devices. Here are some things to keep in mind: 

• Remember that mobile screens are smaller and may not show the whole video if the aspect ratios are optimized for desktop. This is especially important when uploading videos to your site.
• Consider making a video that can also be played without audio, as many people view videos on mobile at work, on the bus, etc. while muted. Consider adding captions, for example. 
• When uploading your video to a third-party site, make sure to choose one that optimizes videos for mobile. YouTube is a great choice. 
• Keep your video short and sweet. Mobile viewers often have short attention spans. 
• Try to hook the viewer within the first few seconds. 
• When uploading the video to your site, make sure it loads quickly.

8. Promote Your Video in Different Channels

Finally, promote your video on different channels. For example, if you upload a video to YouTube, there are many ways to promote it: 

• You can embed the YouTube video in a blog post. 
• You can share the link on Facebook, Twitter, etc. 
• Likewise, you can share it in your emails and even SMS messages. 
• Link to a top video from your local citations, if possible. 

You can publish videos on multiple video sites, including YouTube, Vimeo, and TikTok. While you can theoretically upload the same video on all channels, a better approach would be to create unique content for each one. 

Summary and Final Thoughts

To sum it up, here are the eight things to keep in mind when creating videos for your brand: 

1. Understand your target audience and tailor your content accordingly.
2. Tell a story, or showcase a story from a customer. 
3. Be memorable — try to elicit an emotional reaction. 
4. Showcase your expertise and position yourself as an authority. 
5. Include social proof, including testimonials. 
6. Make sure you are not forgetting mobile users. 
7. Promote your video on all of your channels. 

Use videos on all your channels, including your blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. In addition to pre-recorded videos, consider doing live videos and webinars — Facebook Live is especially helpful for increasing engagement.