Video marketing is an exhilarating way to tap into your creativity and showcase your business’s story. For many business owners, they know it’s the obvious step in taking their marketing to the next level because more and more consumers are turning to video to become educated and make buying decisions but are overwhelmed with creating videos.
As a senior digital marketing strategist, I have spent the last three years at KWSM helping clients in all industries understand the benefits of small business video marketing strategies.
In this blog, I will share how we helped one US-based plastic sheeting manufacturer increase their blog performance on their website, improve social media engagement, and convert high-quality leads from email marketing campaigns by using video.
How Can Small Business Video Improve Your Customer Connections?
Videos have continued to grow in popularity over the past several years. According to Facebook, users on its platform view over 100 million hours of videos daily. A strategic video marketing strategy can help businesses authentically engage with their audiences and get more products and services in front of the right consumers. Many businesses are leaning towards shorter-form videos such as Reels and Shorts that show the audience who they are and what they offer to instantly connect with these customers.
“Everyone loves the movies. It’s the compelling journey that the characters on screen take that locks our attention in. Sharing your brand’s story through video Reels and Shorts can engage audiences and convert ‘views’ to ‘buys.’”
– Casey Dean, Video Producer, KWSM
A video marketing strategy helped my client connect with their audience. Below I share an in-depth case study on how we implemented these videos into their marketing strategy.
KWSM Small Business Video Case Study
For the past several years, we have been working with a US-based plastic sheeting supplier, executing content on their social media channels, creating blogs, and developing email marketing campaigns.
Since plastic sheeting is a highly competitive industry, our team was looking for a way to get ahead of the competition and showcase why our client was the best option in the industry. Through all of our content, we aim to bring in high-quality leads from construction professionals and those owning or working on farms that are looking for plastic sheeting solutions. We believed that video content would help our client stand out.
The main goal of our video campaign was to provide resources for construction professionals that were working through harsh winter climates. These customers needed a durable solution for protecting their job site from inclement weather. Our team created concise and informative videos to reach and educate the right audience.
We then took these videos and cut them into 15-second to 30-second clips in the vertical format that is popular in Reels. We took clips we created and began sharing those on Facebook and as YouTube Shorts.
After testing the performance of the videos we picked one that resonated most with our target demographic, embedded it into a blog, and created an eblast that targeted construction professionals specifically.
Adding Video to Email Marketing
To focus on this specific builder audience in our email marketing campaigns, we used an informative video where an Account Manager talked about a plastic sheeting cover and how it helped with weather protection. We then created an eblast around this video that expanded on the topics covered, and embedded the video into the top of the email. Our call to action was to contact this Account Manager directly to place an order or talk more about the customer’s application.
We tested this video against the other emails in the campaign that were distributed from other Account Managers’ emails. As a result, the email with the embedded video received three leads. The other Account Manager emails in the campaigns without videos received zero leads. Each of the leads brought in from this email was worth thousands of dollars per sale.
It’s clear that the personalization and visual representation of the client’s team helped to increase high-value leads and overall engagement on the email content.
“Drawing from research and industry best practices, we decided to create videos featuring the sales team discussing specific products and addressing commonly asked questions that would greatly resonate with our target audiences.”
– Niamh Varian, Content Creator, KWSM
Embedding Videos in Blogs
As part of this client’s regular marketing strategy, we create weekly topical blogs to address FAQs from their audiences. We saw this as an opportunity to expand the information in the weather protection blog we included in our email campaign.
To do this, we embedded the same weather protection video into a new blog that talked about this product and its common applications. With the embedded video, this blog received an average time on the site of 5 minutes with only a 30% exit rate. The previous blogs we posted that same month for this audience that did not include videos had an average time on site of 30 seconds and an exit rate of 42%. Additionally, the previous week’s blog did not receive any phone call leads while the blog with the embedded video received three.
From these results, you can see that adding video to the blog increased audience engagement and high-quality leads from this construction audience.
Creating Social Media Videos
On this client’s social channels, we aim to reach both their growers and builders audiences. On Facebook and YouTube, we shared multiple Reel-style videos from Account Managers talking about greenhouse and construction products with the goal to increase overall channel engagements.
YouTube
On YouTube, we shared these videos as Shorts. From the posting of our first Short in January 2023, we saw an increase in individual video views. This weather protection video received 155 views. This was 50% more views than previously posted videos. We continue sharing Shorts MOM. In February, we shared a Short on light deprivation and received a total of 385 views, a 474% increase in views from the clients’ previous longer-form channel videos.
We continued sharing Shorts throughout Q1 and Q2 of 2023 and saw that our shorts continued to outperform the previous channel’s videos. From January 2023 to May 2023, we saw a 68% increase in overall channel views as a result of consistently posting Shorts.
In January of 2023, we began sharing Reels in our weekly content. We immediately saw increases in the number of views on our posts. Our Reel on greenhouse covers received 915 views!
The several other Reels we shared throughout the rest of the Q1 and Q2 of 2023 continue to receive several hundred views per posting. Through the implementation of this strategy, we saw a 1745% year-on-year increase in post engagement on Facebook from adding video content.
Small Business Video for Your Company
Adding video to this company’s digital marketing strategy has helped increase blog performance, engagement, and leads. Your business can also experience great results by adding a video strategy to your current marketing plan. Start by defining your company’s goals and where to reach your audience. Then you will have a better idea of what your customers need and you can start brainstorming some topic ideas.
66% of consumers find short-form videos to be the most engaging.
KWSM has an in-house video team that will help give your brand the human face and generate the results you’ve been looking for.
Complete the form below to learn more about adding video to your digital marketing strategy.
