There are a lot of very good reasons to use online videos for your company, and it has been effective for both B2B and b2c companies.  

However, the internet is littered with videos that should have never been made, and here are some obstacles that may keep you from creating a lesser video for your brand.

1. Your Boss Doesn’t Think It Is Necessary

Even if you are confident that your company can use video effectively, at the end of the day, if the decision-makers aren’t convinced, it’s not going to happen. 

You can try to explain to your boss why it may be beneficial to the company, but the reality is that videos cost money and not everyone’s going to want to spend the amount necessary to make a good video.

2. You Don’t Have a Budget

The worst thing you can do for your company is risk your brand’s reputation by being attached to poorly made content of any kind. If you don’t have the budget, don’t try to go the “cheap” route. It is much better to not have  video at all than to have a bad one. 

Video production costs money: the equipment, time and experience are all important pieces to producing a good video. If you don’t have the budget now, it’s probably best to wait until you do.

3. You Have Unrealistic Expectations

You need to be aware of how much a video can really help your business and what your expectations are for it. It is good to have clear and focused expectations. Does this video heighten brand awareness? Is it supposed to be funny? Is it supposed to be informative? How do you want people to respond when they see it? Who is going to see it? 

These are all important questions to ask to help clarify exactly what your expectations are for your video. A video you use internally can’t be judged by the same criteria that a YouTube video is. This is why it is important to know your target audience.  If you have unrealistic expectations, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

4. Your Goal Is Viral Online Videos

One way your goal can be unrealistic is if you hoping for your video to go viral. If a video goes viral, that generally means that it is being shared and re-shared by a large number of blogs, Facebook pages, and other social media outlets. 

The problem with expecting this is that it is incredibly uncommon and unlikely for it to happen to your video. While it’s true that the most popular viral video may have over 100 million views, the reality is that you only have a 0.3% chance of even reaching 10,000 views. It would be better to focus on creating a video that is sharable rather than viral.

A better goal is to make your site engaging. There are so many plugins and CMS solutions that integrate videos easily and make pages more attractive and useful. Shopify allows to add product videos which make product pages so much more effective. Here is a Shopify discount code for you to try this feature!

5. You Don’t Have a Goal For the Online Videos

Even worse than unrealistic expectations is to not have any goals at all. How are you supposed to evaluate the success or failure of your video if you don’t know how to measure it?

 It also makes it difficult to brainstorm on the creative end without having clear goals in mind. The possibilities of video are endless so having an end in mind helps narrow down what kind of video you need. You shouldn’t make a video just to make a video, so it’s crucial to be able to articulate your goals clearly.

There are plenty of good reasons to use video for your company.  However, if your  company is facing any of these roadblocks, you need to sit down and think through solutions to them before hiring a video production company.  

It’s always better to wait until you are ready to move forward and create a video than it is to rush into production and come away with a video that isn’t right for you.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

Have you ever had an amazing experience with a company and taken right to social media to express your feelings? What about a not so great experience? If you have, what were your expectations of the people behind the brand’s social media accounts?

With technology platforms on the rise, it is important to humanize companies and brand messages. It is necessary to make companies personable to foster good relations and trust, and even to drive engagement and sales. Companies also need to communicate well online because it helps people understand what they do and what they stand for, as well as stave off miscommunication and misunderstandings.

Nielson’s report estimates that 33% of users prefer to contact brands using social media as opposed to using the phone. With all of the stressors of online customer service, it is important to improve service by humanizing and communicating the brand message online.

Consumers are more likely to identify with a brand that has values in alignment with their own, and this connection will make a customer more likely to engage with the brand on an ongoing basis.

So, how can you improve online customer service by humanizing and communicating your brand message?

Lose Anonymity

A great way to help customers see a company as a personable entity, and less as a corporate business, is by personifying it and giving it a face. It also helps to garner publicity by using a company’s personality. 

It all starts with the name. Find a domain name that represents your brand and creates niche associations.

Showing personality that stands for the brand message helps to authenticate a company and increase perceived transparency, leading to customer trust and improved service. Having an authentic brand is also one of the strongest ranking factors, according to UR Digital, so being authentic will likely improve your organic search visibility as well!

Businesses can emulate personality and create brand personas by doing some of the following:

• Feature real-life employees or customers on websites or advertisements
• Post photos of the human elements of the business, from candid photos on the job to snapshots from employee functions
• Publish articles and other literature from the company’s employees on a blog or by guest blogging
• Host and/or give talks sponsored by the company that pertain to the company’s area of expertise
• Add a phone support! Even small businesses can now afford phone support with solutions like Cloud PBX.

Stay Active on Social Media Accounts

Upkeep of social media accounts is extremely important in maintaining a presence online, with 63% of millennials staying updated on companies through social networks (Leaderswest Digital Marketing Journal study).

Keeping up on accounts not only establishes the company’s existence and innovation, but also helps to stand as evidence of what the company does, promotes, and is involved in. Up-to-date accounts show the public that the company itself is online and paying attention, and shows the consumer the company is more likely to be responsive to any comments or concerns that they may have.

Some ways that a company can work on customer service via social media accounts include:

• Being responsive and have a quick turnaround time for comments, questions, and complaints
• Paying attention to what is being said about the company, and other companies in the industry
• Being interactive through new postings, trend followings, and consumer engagement
• Partaking in active listening, admitting mistakes and sharing apologies, and showing implementation of customer suggestions

“Over” Communicate

To improve your customer communication, it is a good idea to do what may seem to be over communication. Take time to ask yourself some of the following: Is your brand message clearly stated? Are there more than adequate ways for customers to contact you? Is your message expressed in terms that are easily understood?

Businesses can improve on communication by taking some of these things into account:

• Blatantly stated brand messages, or easily accessible mission and value statements
• Easy to understand language and tone (in fact, a study from Carnegie Melon showed that most presidential candidates speak at a 6th-8th-grade education level)
• Regular check-ins with customers
• Phone, chat, email, and other communication support availability and offerings at all times

Research Your Current Brand’s Sentiment

What do people think of you and your brand? Which associations does it currently trigger?

Text Optimizer helps you find answers to all those questions by searching for your brand name in Google and analyzing search snippets that show up for that search.

Here’s how semantic search works if you are curious!

Cater to the Audience

Showing interest in the audience is an important part of good communication with consumers because it often cultivates further engagement.

By incorporating and inviting feedback from customers, it not only allows for businesses to assess their target audience, but it also lets the audience feel included and important. In addition, adding content that the audience is interested in helps the audience see the company as a more human entity with a shared interest, something that will encourage the audience to take a liking to the company.

Companies can cater to the audience in many ways, such as:

• Posting things for enjoyment, not simply promotion of the brand
• Using consumer generated or created content
• Hosting audience involvement initiatives such as social media campaign competitions or giveaways
• Sharing, liking, or re-tweeting pertinent customer mentions or tags

Cultivating Communication and Humanization Habits

Taking the first steps towards brand humanization and communication is no doubt important, but it is also imperative to continue the routine of good communication with customers.

Maintaining open lines of communication with consumers is a great way to constantly improve upon the service being offered, it enables businesses to hear how customers are feeling and adjust practices accordingly.

By taking customer thoughts and feelings into consideration, customers and businesses can foster positive and long-term relationships, which culminate into giving customers the service they want.

It’s easy to be impatient, but you know you can’t expect to see amazing results from your marketing strategy overnight.

Results take time, but as a small business, you don’t have a lot of time to waste. This creates a dilemma – how long do you wait things out before making changes?

Your success is riding on a steady incline on your income graph. It won’t be too fast, but it can’t be too slow. Changing up your marketing because you aren’t getting immediate results can potentially drive you into debt.

The trick is looking at the numbers, knowing what to expect, and understanding the impacts that small tweaks can make when they’re enacted at the right time.

Keep an inquiring mind

Many businesses use survey questions with their customers. Large businesses tend to offer small rewards for feedback, but that may not be feasible for your small business. Try offering one prize through a feedback based raffle.

There is a core question you want to ask to measure your marketing success, and it’s a simple one: How did you hear about us?

This one is self-explanatory. If your customers are referring to your advertising, you know it’s reaching at least some of your desired market. Get to know this market, and tailor your marketing towards this group for maximum success.

Get smart with analytics

Analytics are useless if you don’t know how to read them. These figures, especially with social media and tracked advertisement, mean the world. It doesn’t matter how many people you’re reaching if you aren’t engaging with them.

Comments and interactions are what actually signify that your marketing plan is working. Hire a reputable digital marketing agency to help you set up your analytics and figure out the reports.

If you aren’t getting an active response, it’s time to change the way you handle your interactive platforms.

A business assessment will help you re-asses what you are doing now and come up with a better plan.

Measure your plans against your goals

You’re going to have no idea whether something is a hit or a miss unless you have a direct goal you intend to use as a measurement of your success. Before you start marketing, know what you’re trying to accomplish.

Maybe you want to see a ten percent revenue increase at the peak of your marketing campaign. Maybe you want to recruit 30 new valuable customers within the first half of your ad outreach.

Keep modest goals, but always know what exactly you’re looking for as an indication that things are going according to plan.

Make sure your demographic matches your platforms

Where are you advertising? How are you advertising? Who are you advertising to? If your advertisement is geared in areas where your target customers aren’t likely to see it, things aren’t going to work out in your favor.

Using web forms to collect your users’ feedback is a great way to find out if you are giving them everything they need. There’s an easy web form builder for you use for those purposes.

Minimal response may not be the result of a slow trickle of new customers, but instead the result of your desired customers missing your advertisement entirely. Know your demographic.

Understand how they want to observe and interact with marketing. If you’re looking for customers in all the wrong places, your return is going to be as small as possible.

If you find yourself in a marketing slump, it’s time to try something different. You need to make sure your new strategy is the right kind of different, instead of merely something else.

Look at your competitors and weigh their success against yours. Marketing success is a game of innovation, so sharpen your wits and get in the game.

Image source: Pixabay