It's 2020, and every new year brings along unique opportunities to establish your brand and products. Its time to get your offerings the elusive attention they deserve. In today's world, brand recognition is a must. A strong brand is what separates you from the rest of the pack.
If you don't have a strong brand, you compete on price, and having the cheapest offering is not sustainable.
Why is brand awareness so important?
Brand awareness refers to the extent to which customers can recall or recognize a brand. Brand awareness is a fundamental consideration in consumer behavior, advertising management, brand management, and strategy development.
Having a special or unique offering along with a solid plan for marketing the brand's identity allows you to charge your worth. In essence, the reason brands like Nike, Apple, and Starbucks can demand a high price tag is because of the perceived value associated with the brand. The key is perception. Even the most exceptional product in the world means nothing if you don't recognize it because it's hard to consider a product of value if you've never heard of it. To be clear, having a great product is essential because even with great marketing, a bad product will ultimately fail. Still, the key to success is combining a great product with a solid marketing plan that gets it the recognition and acumen needed to win at scale.
The Trust Element
As a company, the best types of leads are referral leads. Why is that? We're inclined to say its a trust thing. Think about it if you're in the market for X product, and a friend refers you to a company that stocks them chances are high you would buy it from that company. We trust a friend's judgment and feel at ease committing to their recommendation. Branding does this at scale. It creates trust, loyalty, and brand advocacy.
People are willing to pay more for brand name products because they trust them.
Using video to establish trust
A testimonial video may be the next best thing to a friend's recommendation. While testimonial videos can be highly polished, the production value should not be your primary concern. Your focus should lie on filming genuine and insightful testimonials that make prospects buying decisions easier. Take us as an example; we run a Miami based video production company and have a page solely dedicated to client testimonials. We know how reassuring it is for local businesses to see how we have helped other local businesses. Nobody enjoys risk; some tolerate it, but nobody likes it. Showing proof via a testimonial video that prior companies have had positive experiences with your brand is a winning formula.
Using video to create brand association
What is "brand association"? Easy when you "Google" something. Search is associated so profoundly with Google that people don't search for things they Google them. Brand association should be what you wish for next time you blow the candles on your birthday cake.
Film a comedic skit dramatizing the replacement of actions or products with the name of your brand. It may sound silly, but you'd be surprised at the things that catch on with just a little nudge. The video is just the start, follow it up with a social media campaign encouraging customers to partake in the skit. The goal is to create a snowball effect.
Building Brand Equity with video
Brand equity equals brand value, and nothing influences brand equity as much as consumer perception. The more good experiences a customer has with your brand, the more they'll value it.
Taking the positive experience one customer had with your brand and sharing it with the world in the form of a testimonial video can improve your brand's perception at scale.
A Deep Dive into Video Marketing
If you run a business, you know the importance of marketing. It's truly the lifeblood of your business as it showcases how fantastic you and your products or services are. There's a good chance that you're already spending money on various platforms. You may be spending on social media channels, search ads, blogging sites, television, or radio. Any channel that gets the name of your business in front of customers is fantastic.
However, while entrepreneurs readily think about where they market, they put a little less thought into their holistic advertising goals. Smaller businesses, in particular, often focus on advertising a specific product or service. Perhaps you've just released Widget 2020, and you run a Facebook campaign about how great this new widget is.
There's nothing wrong with marketing products. There is, however, a value in mixing it with brand marketing. Forbes had a fantastic article going into the nuances of what the term "brand" means, but, in essence, it is what your customers think about when they hear your name. You don't want only to be known as the maker of Widget 2020. Instead, you want to be known as a business that only makes the best products. The Mercedes-Benz and Apple brands invoke a perception of being the best out there.
You want that same perception for your brand and all the products you produce or services you provide. The way to get there is to spend time and effort to kickstart your brand's marketing.
The Fastest Way To Communicate With Customers Is Video
Before looking at how companies can kickstart their brand's marketing, it's essential to understand that there are two fundamental ways to market to consumers.
The first way is through text. You can put up a website, blog post, or social media ad extolling the benefits of your brand. For example, maybe your company does X, Y, and Z better than the other companies.
Text is a great way to communicate, but it lacks a few critical elements that make it difficult to use as your only marketing tool. For starters, words lack emotion. You can write words like "happy" or "sad," but it doesn't elicit the same response as seeing someone that is happy or sad. It also takes a long time to read, which can be a problem for marketers who have to appeal to people with limited attention spans of 8 seconds.
You can also use images to market. However, images can showcase your brand, but they cannot tell a story. A picture alone can't show a sequence of events, but rather what the state of the world was at a particular point in time.
Finally, there's video. Video is the best form of communication with potential customers. It lets you convey a lot of information in a short amount of time. You can be concise and to the point. Within eight seconds of video time, you can introduce yourself and explain what the video is about and why the person should watch it. A well put together video can show your brand's logo, what it stands for, and why people should support it. People can get a glimpse at your core values and choose to direct their money your way.
If you want to reach customers in today's world, the best way to do it, hands-down, is video.
Research Shows The Importance Of Video In Marketing
Recent data also shows the importance of including videos as part of your marketing strategy. Consider the following statistics:
85% of the US internet audience watches videos online.
92% of video viewers on mobile share with others.
51% of marketing professionals said that online video had the most significant ROI.
Video on social media generates 12 times more shares than text and images.
Organic traffic increased by 157% due to higher placements in search engine rankings.
These four facts alone (there are dozens more like them) show the importance of videos in any marketing effort. There's no other medium that reaches 85% of the internet and is shared by 92% of users. On top of that, it's excellent for your results in search engines. Google knows that the best brands take the time to create videos (there's even a specific kind of videos for this purpose, more on that later).
It's no wonder, then, that video has such a high ROI. The great news is that your brand, like others, can take advantage of this immensely powerful method of marketing.
Five Ways To Kickstart Your Brand's Marketing Effort
If you're looking to kickstart your brand's marketing effort in 2020 and be part of the video revolution, here are five ways to do that.
1. Create Explainer Videos
Explainer videos are short videos that appear on the landing pages of your site, explaining what your product or service is. If you've browsed the internet long enough, you've likely encountered these. Usually, you'll click on the play button, and somebody will talk about the problem they had, and how the company's product can solve it. These videos are direct and to the point. More importantly, they're short.
Explainer videos accomplish two primary objectives. First, they can boost conversion rates by as much as 144%. Second, they allow you to get in front of the camera and showcase the human side of your business. They let you look at the customer directly in the eye (virtually, of course) and give them your best pitch, while at the same time, showcasing your brand. Explainer videos allow your business not just to market a product, but to promote its principles and increase brand recognition.
2. Have Videos Showcasing Your Knowledge
Video is an incredibly fantastic way to showcase expertise and knowledge. For example, watching a YouTube video by a watch dealer showing how to change a watch battery is one of the most crafty brand marketing strategies there is. Nothing is being sold, per se, but the addition of the business' logo means that people will recognize your brand as an authority or expert in a particular problem space.
These types of videos are likely to have a high ROI because they are also likely to be shared. If you are a guitarist, creating a video on how to play the guitar would be an obvious choice. If your business produces medical equipment, you could create a video showcasing patient problems and how your products help those. The purpose of these videos is not to sell an item, but rather to position your company as the authority in the domain space.
Think about your current business. What videos could you create that would showcase the expertise and knowledge that your brand has? You can use these videos on multiple platforms, including your site, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
3. Focus On YouTube
Often, when people begin thinking of marketing for a particular brand, they feel that they need to create enough content to fill multiple channels. For example, they might want Facebook ads, Google ads, videos for YouTube, and posts for Twitter.
If you're looking to kickstart your marketing, focus on one channel first. YouTube is usually a fantastic place to start for the simple reason that it is the world's second-largest search engine. More people look for content on YouTube than on Bing, Yahoo, or any of the other search sites.
This fact means that if you don't have videos on YouTube, you are likely missing out on a lot of potential traffic. Part of kickstarting an effort is committing to focus on a particular platform. While it can be tempting to dive into search engine ads, for example, your highest ROI will likely be from content you post to YouTube.
Think about what people might watch that showcases your brand. Once you've got some ideas, putting the videos on YouTube will ensure they get out into the public's eye.
4. Use Videos In Emails
Including videos in emails is a relatively recent trend that has produced surprisingly excellent results. An email with a video has a 96% increased click-through rate.
You cannot embed videos in emails. There are too many security and other risks associated with embedded videos. However, what most marketers do is create an image of the video with the play button. They then embed that image as a link to the landing page with the video on it.
There are many types of videos that you can share in emails to customers. Success story videos often make the best ones. You might want to have a video of a customer that discusses how they used your product and how it benefited them. You can also embed an explainer video that you're already using on your landing page.
Another video idea is to have an "update" video. For example, a real estate agent might have a video updating people on the current state of the market. Or a clothing manufacturer might include a video discussing the state of the fashion scene along with their email of all the clothes people can buy.
These videos shouldn't be pushy. The main idea is to get people to click on them and have people view your brand as a source of expertise, quality, and authority.
5. Host A Q&A Session
Sometimes the best way to market a brand is to host a Q&A session. During this session, maybe the CEO will sit down with an interviewer and discuss what their product does, answer questions, and talk about the roadmap for the future. This tactic helps create a personal connection between the company and the viewer. Having a Q&A helps humanize the business and makes the brand seem more appealing to customers.
Video conveys these interviews best because it's a format that people feel comfortable with, and it is a lot easier to watch a conversation than it is to read about it.
You can use the Q&A content in an email blast to customers, and you can upload it on other channels. Putting your Q&A on YouTube will provide your business with lots of exposure that it otherwise would not receive.
Most Importantly, Commit To Using Video
No matter how you choose to market your brand, the critical thing you need to do is commit to using video more. There's an abundance of evidence that shows how effective video marketing techniques are. Videos are so widely consumed, they receive so many shares, and they're so popular that businesses are passing up significant revenue by ignoring this medium.
At a bare minimum, having some simple videos showcasing your product, your company, and the CEO will allow you to be a part of the world's second-largest search engine. Many people think of YouTube as a way to watch cat videos - marketers know that YouTube has a tremendous amount of potential that, when fully tapped, can bring significant revenue for businesses of any domain. You should also have explainer videos on landing pages so that way people understand what your product is all about. Finally, you should always make sure to include an image link to a video in every promotional email you send. With that video, you'll be able to increase open rates and increase click-through rates substantially!
Another critical benefit of video is its reusability. You can create a video for YouTube and then include it, where appropriate, in an email blast. Successful marketers can use and re-use video content to achieve maximum ROI from it. Once you have a professional video created, it becomes an invaluable marketing asset to the company.
The positive trends surrounding video marketing are likely here to stay. They have increased in the past few years and are, likely, going to continue to rise. Marketers would be wise to think of explainer videos, Q&A videos, YouTube videos, expertise-showing videos, and so on as the ultimate tool to attract, engage, and delight their customers. These videos are a fantastic way for businesses to get an edge and stay competitive in today's rapidly evolving economic environment.
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