Video sales proved its worth during lockdown and is continuing to help businesses strengthen their customer relationships through online sales. In the B2C market, video content already plays an essential role in brand communication and sales, and the B2B market is rapidly catching up.
The pandemic accelerated the number of people that regularly viewed digital videos around the world. A UK survey from March 2022 suggested that over 50 million people viewed a digital video at least once per month – that’s over 75% of the country’s population, and this has huge implications for both B2B and B2C businesses.
The first rule of sales is that you have to meet your customers where they are, and if they are spending more of their time watching online videos, that’s where you need to engage them. If your sales team isn’t using video in 2022, therefore, you could be missing out on valuable sales and engagement opportunities.
Here are the main reasons behind this trend and why you should be using video sales.
- Video is attention grabbing: On a webpage full of words and static images, video immediately draws attention, captivating viewers in that crucial first few seconds that are essential to making a first impression.
- Videos are easy to digest: Video content is an excellent way of putting across messages quickly, with HubSpot’s 2022 statistics on video marketing suggesting that short form videos of between 20 seconds and three minutes in length are the optimal length for encouraging engagement and the best ROI.
- Videos are mobile friendly: Video content seems ready-made for small smart phone and tablet screens, providing an accessible way for mobile viewers to engage with your business when working from home or away from the office.
- Videos are shareable: Video content ties in well with social media marketing and sales strategies, encouraging a larger number of shares and likes than other content types. Again according to HubSpot’s latest stats, 59% of respondents claimed to have created a video that ‘went viral’. Viral content is any material that generates a large number of shares in a domino effect over a short period of time. It’s hard to plan viral content and it doesn’t always translate into sales, but a viral video is an excellent way of extending brand recognition and authority within your market.
- Videos are cheap to produce: Video content used to require expensive studio equipment and production software, and a sales video could take 2 to 3 weeks to produce and cost thousands of pounds. However, high quality smartphone cameras, intuitive preproduction and video editing software (e.g. Adobo Premier Pro), and cloud-based video hosting services (e.g. Vidyard) have drastically reduced the cost and time scale for producing video content, especially if you focus on short form content.
- Videos are versatile and customisable: You don’t have to aim for an epic with every video you produce. Video content is extremely versatile and can be tailored to your sales and marketing requirements. For example, you can record sales and onboarding meetings through MS Teams and Zoom for training and communication purposes. Or you can broadcast live from a trade show using just your iPhone, or record a short ad hoc product demonstration directly from your workshop. The possibilities are endless, and you don’t need to be bound to any particular production style to make an effective video.
- Videos are cheap to host: Compared to text and image files, video files are enormous and take up a huge amount of website hosting space. Pre-YouTube, when businesses had to post everything on their own web server, file size restrictions severely limited the quantity and variety of videos you could use. However, YouTube and Facebook now provide excellent free hosting platforms for a wide variety of business video content. You can upload your videos to your YouTube channel or Vidyard account, for example, and then simply embed a link in a webpage or blog, or marketing email, without having to host these large files yourself.
Find out more
To learn more about how to engage your audience through targeted video content and how it can support your sales initiatives online, please call one of our video marketing specialists today on 01332 343281.
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