Your business needs video. Of course, every business owner already knows they need video, but in many cases it has been priced out of their reach.
SMBs have to keep ROI foremost in their marketing spend, and too many production shops and agencies tend to sell their clients brand videos or lavishly produced promos with slow motion pans & zooms, special effects, and a cool soundtrack that don’t give any value to their customer base.
This type of video is often just a vanity project that gets oohs & ahhs from a couple of viewers, but doesn’t result in name recognition, increased search visibility, homepage visits or… sales.
Social media has taught us (among many other things) that online video works best when you are not trying to make ads and promos.
Content does not have to fight for attention. This is a fallacy. Videos can be designed to capture the right audience without smoke and mirrors - often it’s as straight forward as providing your audience something of value. And knowing how to seed this content online.
Social Brain is not afraid to recommend these ‘less sexy’ educational approaches if they are the best way for your business to reach your audience. Customer insights & conversion outcomes always dictate the type of video that we recommend to clients.
First, a business must ask ‘do we really want views as our primary measure of video success?’. Views can be - and often are - ‘goosed’. 3000 views of a video via paid ads or through thumbnail deception can doom a Youtube page, and besides, most businesses would rather have conversions.
After more than a decade of running Youtube channels for SMBs and corporates I can comfortably say that a view by someone matching a customer profile is worth more than 1000 views by randoms.
When I touched down in Melbourne from Japan a couple of years ago I discovered that many professional service SMBs were hiring intermediaries to host conversations with them about their business. This may seem like a good approach to Edutainment video content but, frankly, this is an ineffective model unless you're talking to a celebrity.
Why? Because the interviewer has limited expertise and has to read forced questions that do not resonate with target audiences. In this model the interviewer hosts the video on their own Youtube page and what little lasting SEO juice is generated from it goes largely to the host. In all likelihood they will not generate much interest as the wild variance in business owners they talk to will dilute target relevance.
This is a play by the host to become a business influencer - essentially in an old school linear TV format.
When a business pays to appear in this type of video they’re paying for access to the host’s audience - an audience that probably has only limited crossover with their own target.
Brief spikes in traffic or conversions should come from an appearance with an established influencer, but in all likelihood it will be an expensive flash in the pan.
Basically, this is a great model if you’re appearing on a TV business show, but low ROI if you’re online.
Tax Assure's Youtube page is an SEO optimiser and client referral machine. The videos are SEO tuned to find real potential customers, and the content has utility meaning the referral rate is high.
Social Brain has a video service called SoapBox that has been capturing the full conversion potential of conversational/ educational video for SMBs.
By pairing business owners with partners, clients and other experts in their field, great video conversations can be recorded remotely, in 20 mins, and turned into content that speaks directly to a business’ potential customers.
And importantly, our clients’ Youtube channel is prepped, content is copywritten for positive SEO outcomes, and the channel is seeded to appear in search results.
Owning and running the Youtube channel well yields all of the positive long term results.
Youtube content, unlike content on other social platforms, has a long tail. Videos that speak to their audience remain visible and will appear in searches for years - not fade away in hours like instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. And these videos will generate SEO value in Google & Bing searches.
This is ideal for B to B organisations.
Youtube videos can be embedded in homepages, again boosting SEO performance and pushing traffic to a business’ main branding and conversion site.
And most importantly these SoapBox videos scale - there is minimal production time, they work on a slim budget and topics can be explored in macro or micro detail as suits an audience -making it a great choice for businesses whose audiences don’t know which questions to ask or what a solution looks like.
Presenting your potential customers with insight and expertise as video conversations makes for a high ROI sales channel for specialty businesses, and it addresses target's questions while it strengthens relationships within business networks.
SoapBox allows a business to get multiple wins and lasting results from an SMB's marketing budget.
Stay tuned for more about SoapBox video production and some specifics on Australian client’s results.
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