If you're like most business owners, you'd probably love to double your sales right now. Imagine what you could do with all that extra money! You could take more trips, buy a new car, and reinvest some in the business! You might think that there's some complicated, secret method to improve sales that much. In reality, though, there isn't. The secret is promotional product videos.
Yes, videos. That's it!
It's no secret that using videos can improve sales. What you may not know, though, is the impact that they can have. Research shows that including video can lead to doubling your sales (or even more) due to increased engagement, people spending more time on your site, and the fact that people love to share video-based content.
You might notice that practically every website has an explainer video now. There's a good reason for that. Despite the upfront cost to do these videos right, they can significantly boost sales!
If DOUBLING your sales sounds interesting to you (and we're going to guess that it does), read on to see how promotional product videos might help you achieve that goal more quickly and efficiently than you believed possible!
What Are Promotional Product Videos?
As you can guess from the words, a promotional product video is a video that aims to market a specific product. That product can be anything - a new toy, a service you provide, a car, whatever it is that you or your company sells.
Many people believe that these videos are sales pitches, but the vast majority aren't straight sales pitches because they have abysmal performance overall. Once people deduce that your YouTube video is a sales pitch, they'll skip it. Think about what you do when the ads come on your TV. You either fast forward, if you can, or you get up to get another snack. You rarely sit intently watching those ads.
Therefore, the term "promotional product videos" encompasses everything video that you'll use to promote your product. Those explainer videos? Yes, those are promotional videos. They're telling people how your product or service will help them (by the way, 83% of businesses say that these explainer videos are useful marketing tools). Similarly, a video that shows you the brand new concept car that your favorite automaker is developing is also a promotional video.
There are plenty of different promotional product videos. Given that 88% of video marketers are satisfied with their ROI, 70% of businesses are creating more videos this year than last year, and 96% of marketers devote at least some ad spend towards video, it's clear that these videos work.
The trick, then, is discovering how you can use promotional product videos to increase your sales dramatically. Fortunately, there are five secrets about video marketing that, once you know, your sales could skyrocket. Here are those five tips!
Tip #1: Product Videos Need To Be High Quality and Have Real Content
This tip might sound like "well, duh," but it's important to remember when creating these videos. Lousy videos that don't have professionalism or a compelling story will wind up hurting your brand more than helping it.
It's unlikely that a quick video shot on your phone will double your sales. With video, people are very conscious of the production quality, and they're far more likely to tune out something that doesn't match their expected level of professionalism.
Along those lines, your video must be compelling. It needs to explain to the prospective customer the benefits of your product without feeling like a sales pitch.
There are a few ways to make your video compelling. One of the most common ways is to use humor. Think about many of the most viral marketing campaigns or the ads that you know about the most - they're probably humorous (many people probably remember when the funny ad for DollarShaveClub.com went viral).
What makes that advertisement so compelling, though, is not just that it's funny (that would be a comedy routine, not a promotional product video). Instead, it's powerful because it's informative and funny. You'll remember the ad because it's humorous, and you'll remember what the site does because the ad's content was informative.
That's an ideal video!
So, when creating a promotional product video, it must be of high-quality, both in terms of production, professionalism, and content. It can't be a sales pitch. It must be something memorable.
Tip #2: The Product Videos Must Explain How Your Product Solves a Problem
Describing a product isn't usually enough to sell it. Instead, it's best to showcase how your product will benefit the customer. Fortunately, videos are quite useful for this.
As noted earlier, you've probably seen explainer videos before. You load up the website or search on YouTube, and an animation or a real-life video is talking about how the product works, how it solves your problem, and why you should get it.
These types of product videos are effective at selling. One study showed that a $16,000 explainer video led to a return of $142,000, nearly 8x the original investment!
Of course, explainer videos alone are not enough, and your mileage may vary. This example shows how a powerful, compelling video that explains how a product can help a customer will likely lead to a significant sales boost.
Tip #3: Promote Your Videos on Facebook and YouTube
Now that you've got your high-quality video that explains how a product will benefit the customer, the question becomes, where do you distribute it?
Most companies put it on their website. That's a great place to start, and you should put it there. However, it's not the only place.
Marketing companies tend to spend quite a bit of time and significant capital advertising on two main sites: Facebook and YouTube. Indeed, as of 2018, Facebook commanded 24.5% of all video ad spending and will have an estimated 87% share of U.S. social media video ad spending.
Professional marketing agencies love Facebook video ads for a few reasons. The primary reason, though, is that videos have significantly more engagement. Research shows that people multitask less and "consume [videos] thoroughly" more than any other content type. 62% consume videos thoroughly. By contrast, only 27% will consume content like this blog article entirely - 73% will skim it instead.
Videos are immersive. They captivate the audience and make them interested in what you're telling them. If you get the video right, it's a lead generation platform unlike anything else out there.
Facebook has the ultimate video platform in many respects. You can target people quite precisely, so you won't need to spend any money advertising to people who are uninterested in what you have to offer. Then, once you find the right people, you can draw them in and have their undivided attention for a minute or so (with a good video). It's hard to replicate that level of immersion anywhere else!
The other place, of course, to put your videos is YouTube. When you think of search engine rankings, what do you think is the biggest search engine? If you answered Google, you'd be right! What's the second? Most people tend to answer Bing, but that's not the correct answer.
At over 3 billion searches per month, YouTube is the second largest search engine. To connect with your audience, you need to have a presence on YouTube. The best (and only) way to do that is - you guessed it - through video marketing! Just like you would want to be high up on Google's rankings, you'll also want to have quality content on YouTube that people can find and discover.
To illustrate as an example, imagine a company that sells a fantastic glue product. They upload videos on YouTube. Maybe one video shows how it can hold a figure together. Another one might explain the right way to apply the glue.
Now, someone breaks a priceless figurine. This person then goes on YouTube and search for something like "putting figure back together."
If your videos come up, you've just found the perfect customer! They'll happily consume your content, looking for the right way to put their antique figurine back together. And, of course, they'll also probably buy your glue as opposed to a competitor!
Ultimately, promoting your videos on Facebook and YouTube will help lead to doubling your sales!
Tip #4: Videos on Your Site Improves Your Search Engine Rankings
You should also put your videos on your site. One of the little known facts about video marketing is that it boosts your ranking on Google. Since YouTube and Google are connected (they are, after all, both Alphabet companies), when YouTube discovers that your video is useful and has high natural engagement, Google will make changes, as well. It will also pick up your video content and rank your video and site higher within its search results.
That's not the only connection that will boost your rankings, however. Putting a video on your web page will increase traffic from search engines by an average of 157%. Additionally, it will lower your bounce rates, and Google will know that people will spend twice as long, on average, on a page with video than without any video content.
Since people will spend longer on your page, Google knows it's more valuable. That makes your site rank higher, assuming, of course, you have other quality content as well that keeps people sticking around.
By including video on your site, you might increase your organic traffic and engagement. That's almost always going to lead to an increase in sales!
Tip #5: Use Videos in Email Marketing Campaigns
One of the best things about video content is how versatile it is. You can use it practically anywhere - on your site, on YouTube, or even in email marketing campaigns. What makes videos so powerful in email campaigns is that it significantly boosts click rates.
How much will it improve your click rates? According to research, by 300%.
Videos are the perfect medium for email marketing. You've already established some rapport with the customer - otherwise, they wouldn't have given you their email address! So when you send them an email with a helpful tip or a new product, they're much more likely to open the email up and watch a video than they are to open it up, click on a blog post, read the post, and so forth. It's easy and convenient.
One other significant advantage to video within the context of email marketing is that it works wonders on someone's mobile device. Consider that over half of the emails that people have opened are done so on the phone. That means people are more likely to open your email on their phone than they are on a desktop or tablet.
People often look at their email in between meetings, on buses, as they're heading out the door, and in other short-time situations. It's the perfect time to consume a short video passively (include captions on your video!) while they're waiting for the bus, checking their mail between meetings, or waiting for the kids to get done with soccer practice.
They're looking for entertainment - and your email campaign can provide it!
Used effectively, video in email campaigns can significantly boost your click rates and considerably increase your bottom line.
The Secret To DOUBLING Your Sales Isn't a Secret
There isn't some special secret to doubling your sales with product videos. The secret is using them in the first place! When you have high-quality, compelling videos that explain to the customer precisely why and how your product will benefit them, the rest is distribution. Use Facebook, YouTube, your site, and email marketing. Put the video in front of anyone who will watch it and encourage people to share it with friends and family.
If the video is good (like the DollarShaveClub.com ad), your video will significantly boost your sales. It's not a stretch, by any means, to suggest that you could double your sales and expand your business profile in ways that you probably would not have otherwise imagined!