Video is a very effective way to communicate. The benefits of video are numerous. On the web, it can help you to reach a broader audience on social media channels and to increase rankings in search engines.

Even offline, it can help to increase viewer engagement and to improve retention. The combination of being able to both ‘see’ and ‘hear’ a message allows you to introduce a unique emotional element.

Here are 22 ways that your business can start using video today.

22 Ways to Use Video for Business

1. Customer Testimonials

Let third-party endorsements do the selling for you. Testimonials help prove that you’re the ‘real deal’ and are a great form of social proof. The only thing better than reading a testimonial is hearing and seeing a person saying it themselves in a video.

These could be short, stand-alone clips; they could be combined into a montage of testimonials, or; they could be included in an existing video such as a product or company promotional video.

2. Case Studies & Success Stories

Take your customer testimonials to the next level by telling the story of how your company was successful in solving a customer’s problem. Case study videos make great stand-alone marketing pieces and can be used both for lead generation and to help conversions on your website.

We will typically film these by interviewing clients on-location, in their own environment. This provides the opportunity to film supporting ‘b-roll’ footage to make the video more visually compelling.

3. Trade Show Looping Presentations

Companies who attend B2C or B2B trade shows need to stand out from the competition and fight for the attention of passing attendees. A looping video displayed prominently in your booth is a great way to do that.

Videos created for the web can often be repurposed for this (or vice versa), although there are a few things to consider. For example, in a trade show environment, you may not be able or wish to have the sound playing, so subtitles may be required or the video produced to rely more on supporting on-screen text and motion graphics.

4. Product Demonstrations

Video allows you to demonstrate the benefits of a product or service in ways that photos and text alone cannot. These videos can be repurposed for trade shows, used in sales presentations, and of course online. You could also incorporate customer testimonials, as mentioned above.

5. Dramatic Re-creations & Role Plays

When done well, dramatic recreations or role-playing works great for teaching the subtleties of social interaction. An example might be a training video for your front-line staff or sales team on how to interact with customers in certain situations.

The costs can be quite high with this approach when compared to something like an animated video, since casting and hiring of professional actors, and multiple days of filming may be required. Having said that, your staff members may be used, especially if the video is to be used for internal training purposes and will not be customer facing.

6. Corporate Documentaries

Tell your company’s story in a longer form corporate overview video. These videos may include footage of your offices or facilities, interviews with your staff, and a voice-over to help explain your company’s history and its plans for the future.

This type of project can serve as a great basis of material to be repurposed for other more targeted videos, such as perhaps a shorter video tradeshow looping video, a staff recruitment video, or an onboarding video for new hires.

7. Executive Presentations

Video interviews by C-level staff are great additions for quarterly updates and other presentations. These are also a ‘quick and dirty’ way to respond to a major industry or company event or for regularly scheduled media releases, allowing your leadership team to be presented as both the ‘face’ and ‘voice’ of your company.

8. Facilities or Equipment Tours

For manufacturing companies or those who provide services and support, a facilities or equipment tour can help legitimize your business in the eyes of potential customers. There may even be ways to film this to make the operations of a small business or team appear slightly larger than they actually are.

9. Recruitment videos

Recruitment videos can help target specific audiences, including a younger audience with whom it may be more difficult to engage. Quickly and effectively highlight your company’s culture, showcase its facilities and exciting working environment, and even include testimonials from other employees.

This would make a great addition to a booth at a hiring fair!

10. Staff On-Boarding & Employee Orientation

Video can help standardize your staff onboarding and training in a way that is much more engaging than just a manual. For larger businesses where training requires travel to remote locations, capturing your trainer on video could save on costs.

Why not incorporate a message from your CEO or other C-Level staff? This is also one way that a longer corporate documentary may be used in order to tell your company’s story in a concise way.

11. Franchise Training

The standardization of training is perhaps no more important than with franchises. The ROI can be much higher in these cases as well since video training materials can be viewed as ‘value added’ for potential franchisees.

12. Content Marketing

Content marketing is undoubtedly an effective way to promote your business on the web and in social media, and video is increasingly playing a role in this for many businesses.

In fact, video can rank even higher in organic search results than text-only content of a similar nature – reportedly, 50 times more likely to rank on the first page of Google.

13. Landing Pages

Increase conversions with a short, targeted, call-to-action oriented video right on your campaign’s landing page or even on the home page itself. Like with email, video has been shown to increase conversion rates by 80%. This could be in the form of an ‘explainer’ or testimonial video.

14. Animated Explainer Videos

Do you have an extremely complex product or service? Explain what you do with an animated video.

Animated ‘explainer videos‘, as they are sometimes referred to, can help showcase your business in a way that is easy to understand with the use of icons and images, characters and stories, or animated charts and diagrams, and it tends to be much more cost-effective than filming live-action footage.

15. Boardroom or Sales Presentations

Having a video available for meetings and sales presentations can be a great way to bring the rest of your team ‘in the room’ and to showcase your company and its products, services or facilities.

Need to get buy-in from other stakeholders on a new idea? How about providing and explanation or support of a review? A video may be more effective than a PowerPoint presentation, if your budget will allow for one to be produced.

16. Event Highlights

Preserve your next conference, meeting or event with a living, breathing video replica. The final video can be e-mailed to attendees soon afterward to reinforce their positive experience, and can even include personal remarks from the host.

Of course, a video produced in advance could be screened at the event itself to add production value and to set the tone.

17. B-Roll for Media

Occasionally, your company may have a need for ‘b-roll’ footage to be used in a news story or a video press release to respond to a timely event. Having this footage ‘in the can’ will save your team having to scramble last-minute.

Of course, you’ll want to document major events or anything that is weather dependent since you may not have a chance to film it again later.

18. Email Newsletters

Video, when included in email newsletters, has been shown to improve click-through rates more than 300%, when compared to text or illustrations alone. It provides a clear and enticing call-to-action to recipients with essentially an offer to provide them a break as they sit back, relax and watch a presentation instead of having to read a large amount of text.

19. Event Promotional Video

Increase attendance at an upcoming event with a short, targeted promotional video that has a strong call-to-action. You could even have a complimentary video produced which uses some of the same assets created to be played at the start of the event, as we mentioned above.

20. Lobby or Waiting Room Videos

Entertain and educate your clients as they wait in your lobby or waiting room with a product, testimonial, or educational video. Prepare them for a process they are about to encounter, up-sell them on another product, or simply provide added value with a branded and entertaining presentation.

21. Live Webinars

Video streaming of live events and webinars can allow viewers from around the world to interact and ask questions as though they were right in the room. You could then archive your presentation and provide it online in your content marketing, even emailing it out in your newsletter to increase conversions.

22. Video Blogging

Video doesn’t have to always be expensive and hard to produce. A weekly or monthly video blog posted to YouTube can provide excellent content for your social media channels or newsletters. If you’d like to step it up a notch, have a company like ours produce a ‘head and tail’ graphic treatment which can raise the perceived production value of the entire video and keep it on-brand.

We hope that some of these examples may have sparked some ideas for you. To learn more about how we can help your business communicate using video, contact us for a consultation today.