Although YouTube has been around for more than 16 years and closely matches Google in search, many manufacturers continue to underestimate the power of video as a powerful sales, service, and support tool.
Manufacturing is one of the few industries that benefit the most from videos, giving prospects, customers, and channel partners what they crave:
product demonstrations, tutorials, FAQs, specifications, and other sought-after information based on personal needs and interests. Video is the ideal medium to communicate such information.
A common objection some manufacturers have to producing videos is the perceived cost and time involved.
However, in many cases, hiring a professional video crew that brings in lighting, lavalier microphones, and thousands of dollars’ worth of camera equipment is neither necessary nor expected.
Many manufacturers have success with more simplistic setups costing less than $1,000 that are capable of shooting higher-end videos. And, of course, if the lighting you have is decent, you could always get away with the
newest human appendage—the smartphone.
Best Practices
Of course, producing quality videos in manufacturing is not as easy as pointing a camera on a machine, hitting “Record,” and reading a script.
Viewers have become conditioned to watching content that is interesting, educational, engaging, and yes, entertaining. If your video is as dry as a lint trap, your viewers will not stick around for more than several seconds.
So, when producing your videos, consider adopting the following four best practices to deepen engagement with your prospects while gently guiding them into your sales funnel:
- Aside from features and functions, showcase the problems your product solves in real-world applications. You’ll want to make sure to cover commonly asked questions.
- Include perspectives from technical professionals, engineers, and end-users to cover your bases and add the human element.
- Explain your product and company value propositions during a demo. The company brand and product brand go hand in hand, and they need to complement each other.
- Break video segments up into bite-size specific chapters, keeping them short and to the point. Some may be able to get away with videos exceeding 10 or 12 minutes, but they do so using YouTube Chapters, allowing people to navigate to specific segments. However, you’ll be better off with 3- to 4-minute videos in many cases because you can be more targeted in content, topic, application, and audience. Plus, you’ll have more content to promote.
Results
Much like a well-balanced diet leads to better nutritional health, using video as a content marketing tool will increase your company’s SEO rankings and position you as a thought leader and expert in your particular industry.
You can have the best, most competitive product with the strongest value propositions, but if you’re not using such a mainstream content marketing tool, many of your ideal prospects will never know.
And, with using the optimal distribution channels (e.g., your website, LinkedIn, and YouTube), you will witness the consumption of your content by the people you attract.
Ideally, over time you will have an impressive library of content speaking directly to the needs and interests of your current and potential buyers. The more content you produce in various forms, the more confident buyers will be about your brand. Isn’t that the name of the game in business?
Of course, if you would like assistance with producing videos and other types of marketing content for your company, let’s connect.