A Guest Blog by Katie Conlon

As a business owner, you’ve likely heard that “content is king” when marketing is being discussed. Written content can be effective for many audiences, but in 2017, visual marketing is a much more powerful tool if you’re looking to increase interactions, conversions and sales.

Integrating video into your marketing strategy is the best move for your business and not just because it’s a popular choice today. Video offers advantages you can’t get from written content.

Here are 4 of the many reasons why your marketing strategy should include video:

Rank Higher on Google

Google’s algorithm considers more than 250 different factors when creating search rankings. One of the more important ones is called “dwell time,” or how long visitors stay on your website. We don’t have access to this data, only Google does, but the idea behind it is that if consumers and viewers are spending a lot of time on your site, it must have high-quality content. One of the best ways to attract and keep visitors on your site is with a short video of high quality content.

Reach More Potential Customers

One of the benefits of using video in your marketing campaign is the expanded reach that comes with it. Video marketing provides both business owner and customer, access to free, high traffic sources like YouTube, Vimeo, and Daily Motion. These platforms may be the most cost-effective way to get your product or business out to the masses.

If you create a video and post it on youtube, embed it on your website and share it on other social media platforms, you will also reap the benefits from a Google Ranking perspective. Those video links with high-quality content, will help boost your reach and rank locally, which, in turn, will broaden your reach and increase your rank.

Infuse Personality Into Your Brand

Video is one of the best ways to inject your personality into your message. It can establish trust, and connect with potential customers on an emotional level–which is something written copy struggles to achieve. This is partially because most written copy comes across as boring or sterile, and when marketers try to hype it up with exclamation points, capitalized words, and italicized sentences, it looks childish and unprofessional.

Your visitors are looking to do business with a company they know, and trust. If you’re a genuine business person who provides a great service or offers a great product, relying on a nice logo and anonymous web copy will only lump you into a mediocre group of your competitors. Video will help you stand out amongst the crowd, and be recognized for your merits.

Professionalism

Integrating video into your business strategy and onto your website shows your viewers your company embraces technology, and is both adaptive and creative. Viewers will equate the quality of your videos with the quality of your product or company. This is why video marketing is crucial to your business, but it’s also why you need to hire a professional videographer.

Your marketing videos need to show a high degree of professionalism, one that is not easily attained by an amateur. Trust a pro to set up the right shots, stage the perfect lighting and achieve the highest production value. A videographer has both the expertise and the proper equipment to shoot a perfect marketing video for your business. Tools like a lighting rig, a gimbal stabilizer, camera monitors, and camera jibs, are all necessities. An iphone just won’t cut it these days, because the success of your business is on the line.

Video marketing will make a lasting, human connection with your customers; you can use it to show visitors you’re more than just another faceless online operation and relate to them on a deeper, more emotional level. This pays off in the form of extended reach, credibility, and relatability, which will in turn lead to more sales.