Let’s face it — reading is no longer the dominant and preferred form of consuming online content. Millennials and, let alone the Gen Z public, have made YouTube their morning news channel, and Netflix and the likes are now their 24/7 movie theaters.
YouTube, Vimeo, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Facebook feed, and Instagram Stories, Snapchat, and live broadcasts — all of these sources combine to form our outlook on the world, events, and trends. If you are a growing business or a promising startup with a strong desire to spread the word about your products or services, missing out on video marketing would be a huge mistake that you don’t want to make.
What’s the value of video marketing for tech startups?
Video marketing beats conventional methods in a number of ways, which mostly deal with human psychology and the way we learn and process information.
Ease of perception
To start off, most people are visual learners, which means that one good video will be worth a thousand words for them, even if this text is backed by amazing infographics and feature highlights. This concept becomes especially important for startups and tech companies developing unique, innovative, and complex products.
It’s way easier to demonstrate the mechanics of a user interface or a user’s interaction with a product by making a video rather than writing up a long story.
High-precision targeting
Going forward, video promotion has a solid potential of boosting your user acquisition, especially with good targeting in place.
You can tailor your videos for various audiences and marketing channels to deliver highly relevant messages in the most suitable format: from Instagram Stories and viral Facebook videos to commercials and animated explainer videos on your key landing pages.
Deep user engagement
However, your marketing efforts should not be limited to showcasing your product only. If you are not yet a market leader with a solid reputation, you have to gain some media exposure — and that’s where video marketing shines in all its glory.
For example, you can reflect your company’s life and growth in a series of video episodes featuring product demos, expert reviews, customer testimonials and success stories, interviews with your team, how-to videos and tutorials, corporate vlog entries, presentations, and much, much more.
How it can help tech companies?
Videos are amazing at visualizing products and concepts that may not even exist yet, and it makes them one of the top marketing tools for startups. Here are just a few use cases for startup video content marketing:
Demonstration of new products
Whether it’s a pitch for a private investor or a Kickstarter demo reel, videos have the unique ability to present complex ideas in a highly visual, concise, and easy-to-understand manner. Complex descriptions full of business cliches and even your traditional PowerPoint slides don’t stand a chance against a dynamic video highlighting the product’s USPs and presenting information in a 1–2–3 format.
Verification of ideas
Videos let startup companies present their vision of their product or service long before it’s ready — or even before starting its development. Early-stage feedback makes it possible to verify the overall concept, re-prioritize features or even change the product focus altogether, ultimately saving time and money that would otherwise be wasted on pursuing wrong goals.
PR and media coverage
Getting public recognition or even helping potential customers attach a company name to a product is extremely important for startups that are just gaining momentum on the marketing field.
Education of current and prospective customers
Finally, videos ideally fulfill the educational function, enabling you to demonstrate the work with your product in the most realistic way possible. Tutorials and how-to videos are a very sustainable channel of regular communications with your users, which, among other things, also helps boost customer loyalty and brand awareness.
Video vs. traditional marketing tools
All things considered, creative video marketing has the most powerful effect on your target audiences compared with alternative approaches. At the very minimum, it offers the following perks:
- Highest viewer engagement.
- Massive educational potential.
- Reusability: the same video can be used for pitching to investors, featuring on the website, and applying for contests, to name a few examples.
- The most effective method of conveying complex concepts to the audience.
- Considerable chances of a video or a series of videos to go viral
- Adaptability for multiple video platforms and devices
As you can see, none of the typical concerns and fears about embracing video marketing are fully legit. Which naturally brings us to the final question…
Launching your own video marketing campaign
If you are a company owner or startup founder, you may be thinking somewhere along these lines:
- Video marketing is expensive and we can’t afford it at this point
- We can actually try to handle startup video production on our own
- Videos for mobile apps are not that necessary — we can achieve the same with other types of content
If you also think along these lines, you may well be a tad off course. Let’s take a look at each of these points and try to see if they are fully valid.
Cost
Indeed, video production is not cheap but can potentially yield an excellent ROI in the form of new orders generated pretty fast if you push your creativity to the limit. According to the same infographic, videos typically demonstrate very good conversion and generate a steady stream of traffic to your site.
If budget is an issue (and it usually is), consider hiring a professional video production studio that will come up with a marketing plan with incremental deliveries that will pay heed to your budget-related concerns without compromising on quality.
DYI approach
You can be a rock-star in the world of blockchain or mobile applications, but it does not necessarily mean that your home-brewed videos will be just as amazing.
No matter how confident you feel about your creative potential, it will make sense to entrust this task in the hands of professionals. Opting for a specialized video production service is a surefire way of avoiding rookie mistakes and making sure that emphasis is placed on the right selling points.
Ready to start with video marketing for your startup? What’s the next step?
Find a team that shares your values, understands you and your business, and provides the highest degree of comfort throughout the production process. We at SLON Media cover the entire video marketing circle: from idea verification to hypergrowth. Write to us at hi@slonmedia.com
