Demand of using video as a marketing tool is increasing as video is employed by many organizations in telling targeted consumers and audients their story, getting the word out about a new product or service, as well as recruiting employees or vendors. So, how can a service business benefit from video?

Before exploring the benefits of video marketing, there are several facts to know about using video in business:

• 65% of millennials classify themselves as visual learners.
• 59% of millennials will watch an entire one minute video.
• Syndicast predicts that 74% of web traffic will be video by 2017.
• 65% of executives have visited a vendors’ site after watching a video. (39% have called a vender after watching a vide)
• 92% of mobile video viewers share videos with others
• The  average internet user spends 88% more time on a website with video.
• 64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it.

1. Attracting new customers or targeted customers– An explanatory short video on homepage or social media pages enables new customers to understand a business’s products and services easily.
2. Facilitating announcement of a new product or service– Video is a great way to get the word out and generate buzz for a new product or service. Moreover, an effective product/service announcing video will encouraged viewers to visit the product’s homepage for detail information, thus bring in traffic.
3. Moving the customer through the business’s sales cycle– Effective video will move customers from attention and interest to conviction and action, thus boost company’s sale. Therefore, a deep thoughts on effective marketing video are necessary while making video marketing.
4. Recruiting new employees/ inviting vendors– Having a video that feature company employees, show team working with business vendors, promote the culture of an organization can be very influential and effective in reaching the right and suitable employees or vendors. Here is a recruiting video from Apple Inc.
5.  Validating business– Having customers to tell their story (customer testimonials) in the form of video provide an easy way to help validate business, build positive buzz about services and also create element of social proof. HP is one of the organizations who employed customer testimonial on its HP toner in form of video. Moreover, such video not only show who the business target demographic is, how customers were served well, but indirectly helps the business in reaching it targeted customers and excluding the customers they don’t want to work with.
6. Sharing best practice– Both live and recorded video can be used to create a community for business’s clients by bringing its vendors and suppliers together for sharing best practice. This is also allow business to maintain a long-term and healthy relationship with its clients.
7. Facilitating website’s search engine rankings– Video is searchable content on the internet and thus help in search engine optimizing.

1. Company overview video
2. Video bio
3. Explanatory video
4. Training video
5. Educational video
6. Video press release
7. Website FAQ
8. Email video
9. Presentation video
10. Call-to-action video
11. Trade show video
12. Lobby video

In general, most companies and businesses want to optimize the visibility of their portfolio to as many consumers as possible. However, it might not be the case for small bespoke service providers due to limited recourses and capacity. For example, most bespoke wedding planners accept limited number of wedding a week, therefore they are more likely to target valuable customers rather than large amount of customers. The following content will start with some approaches which are widely employed by small service businesses in order to increase visibility of company’s portfolio, and then some social media marketing tips and measurements to guide small services providers.

1. A website-Before getting into optimizing business’s portfolio visibility, an accessible and  visible company website is necessary. The benefits of having a website include gaining credibility, having a place to showcase your work and another 8 reasons why a small business needs a professional website. Moreover, the design of a webpage is also important in enhancing the online consumer’s experience especially for the creative businesses including advertising, architecture, designer fashion and the performing arts which website is a main platform to show or advertise their works or services. Therefore, it is helpful to apply Valacich JS, Parboteeah DV and Wells JD (2007) Online Consumer’s Hierarchy of Needs (OCHN) framework in evaluating your current e-commerce experiences and thus optimize the web page design.
2. Go Google (SEO)-In order to stand out online, wisely manage your business website and submit it to Google are the first step for most small businesses. “Go Google” is more then ranking in the top ten in google search, but to utilize the services and tools or even Google’s advices in optimizing the visibility of your company’s portfolio to targeted or potential customers. For instance, Google Webmaster tools enable your website to Google for indexing and also to view the kinds of search queries that are driving traffic to your site. Here are six simple ways to guide you in increasing your site visibility in google search results which I found it is quite comprehensive as well.
3.  Social Media– also plays an useful role in small-business visibility. A business’s social media pages will be indexed by search engine, and searches for the company name will turn up results for all of these sites (Null,2013). For example, frequently updated the content of your social media platforms might make your website to be the top result in a search for your company name, together with your company Facebook page appear next, and your Pinterest page to be the third. Other than facilitate visibility on search engine, being visible within the social media platform is crucial as it will attract in more users and encourage engagements thus increase brand awareness for services. However, before you start boosting visibility of your social media, you might want to have a look on the “12 ways to improve your social media profile” to ensure your profile in all social media is consistence and impressive. Now here are some tips for Boosting Visibility of Social Media Profiles.

References:

Davis, J. D., 2012. The 5 Easy Steps To Measure Your Social Media Campaigns. [Online] Available at: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/social-media-measurement/ [Accessed 28 January 2016].

Null, C., 2013. Make your business shine online: 8 steps to boost visibility. [Online] Available at: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2029636/make-your-business-shine-online-8-steps-to-boost-visibility.html [Accessed 28 January 2016].

Valacich JS, Parboteeah DV and Wells JD (2007) “The online consumer’s hierarchy of needs”, Communications of the ACM, Vol 50, No 9, p84-90 [online in: ACM Portal]