fbpx

Local Video Marketing Tips and Strategies

Local video marketing is a very powerful way to engage with a local audience, get your message out cost effectively, generate highly targeted and relevant leads and most importantly, get more sales or customers.

If you or your business is not using video in your marketing mix right now, you are leaving a lot of cash on the table for your competitors to swipe under your nose! The power of video can no longer be ignored. It is the best and the most economical way of engaging your prospects and to also build trust very quickly.

Here are some staggering stats which will hopefully convince you to get started with local video marketing…

  • 88% more time spent on a website with a video – Forbes.

  • People are 4x more likely to convert to a call to action with a video.

  • For eCommerce websites, 65% of your local audience is more likely to make a purchase after watching a video.

  • 82% of Twitter users watch a video – Wordstream.

  • Almost 50% of users search for product-related videos before visiting a local shop/store.

As you can see from above, video marketing is a must for any sized business. So let’s jump in and see how you can start using local video marketing for your business.

There are two ways you can promote your videos locally:

  • Organic or Video SEO (free)

  • Paid Ads

Organic or Video SEO

From what I have seen on YouTube, most businesses or channel owners are uploading videos the wrong way. They may create a great high-value production video, but if they don’t upload their video the right way, it won’t get found in search, and no one will see the video!

YouTube is the world’s 2nd largest search engine and is owned by Google. Using YouTube to generate views & traffic is comparatively very easy as compared to trying to rank on Google page 1 for your keyword or keyphrase.

If no one sees or views your videos, then there is no point in creating videos! Here are my top tips on how to upload your video to your YouTube channel the right way:

  1. Do Keyword Research

The first step is to do thorough keyword research. One of my favorite ways is to use the YouTube Search Suggest feature.

Type in your keyword, in this example it is ‘dog training’, and then just type in ‘a’. You will see a list of keywords/keyphrases. Then delete ‘a’ and type ‘b’ and ‘c’ and so on. You will see a lot of keywords and select the one/s which are relevant to you.

These are actual phrases which are being searched on YouTube already. I would also recommend you use Google Trends and Google Ads Keyword Planner to identify popular keywords or phrases to maximize traffic to your video or website from search results.

2. Target Low-Competition Keywords

If you are just starting out in video marketing and don’t have channel authority to rank for highly competitive keywords, you need to start with targeting the low-competition keywords, so your videos start to get ranked in YouTube, and you slowly but surely start to build up your channel authority.

Use the free Tube Buddy Chrome Extension to find keywords, which has a good number of search volume and low levels of competition.

3. Title / Description / Tag

Make sure you have your keyword in your Title, Description & Tags. Ideally, I would also recommend the ‘area’ your business in as part of the keyword. So if your business is a dental practice and you are based in North London, I would write the Title something like this:

“North London’s Best Dental Practice”

Most local business owners who upload videos to YouTube don’t do this, and hence their videos never get indexed in local searches. Writing the title, description & tags with keywords can help viewers find your video quickly and easily.

4. Subtitles/Closed Captions

Transcribe your video with a service like Temi or Rev and upload the transcripts. You also open up your content to a larger audience, including deaf or hard-of-hearing viewers.

Paid Ads

Video Ads on YouTube and on Google Display Network (GDN) via Google Ads is one of the best & fastest ways to get your message out there. Your video ads can be in front of your audience in a matter of hours.

The best thing about running video ads is that the advertiser only gets charged by Google Ads when the viewer watches your video ad for more than 30 seconds or engages with your video, like clicking on a call-to-action overlay, a card or a companion banner.

My favorite strategy to build engagement & take my brand, message, service or product in front of my audience is this:

  • Create a high-quality educational blog post with a video on it.

  • Link your YouTube account to Google Ads.

  • Run Trueview in-stream & search ads.

  • Build up a remarketing list of those who viewed or watched your video.

  • Remarket to them via image & other video ads on YouTube & GDN.

With this strategy, you can quickly build up your authority as the ‘go to expert’ in your local area. Don’t just create sales videos; people don’t like being sold all the time.

Create a video which solves other people’s problems, and you will find that when someone does contact you, they are a warm or a hot lead and the conversion rate for becoming a paid client is very high.

There are a few types of video ads you can create. (I am not talking here about the image or display ads which can also appear on or alongside the video).

Image courtesy of Google Ads

Skippable Video Ads

These are ‘skippable after 5 seconds’ video ads which appear on monetized videos before or during the main video; this can be a video with a direct call to action, promote a product, showcase a workflow or demonstration/presentation. 

Non-Skippable Video Ads

As the name suggests, these cannot be skipped. They appear before or during the main video. These can only be between 15-20 seconds in length, depending on regional standards.

Bumper Ads

These ads are also non-skippable and must be 6 seconds or less. They appear before a video can be viewed. These are great for branding campaigns and work really well in conjunction with a video or display ad campaign.

Here are a couple of Bumper Ads examples of our clients.

Types of Videos

If you are wondering what kind of video content you need to start with and are struggling for ideas, here is a list of the types of videos you can create.

Brand / Meet The Team / About Us Videos

Introduce yourself and your team to your audience. I would highly recommend this type of video as it starts the trust building process. Ideally, keep it to under 2 minutes. These are ideal for embedding on your website & sharing on social media.

We used this strategy to create & set up the team videos on the About Us page for one of our clients.

Here’s a video we created for Nikon for one of their worldwide advertising campaigns ‘I SEE LIFE’.

Explainer / Product Demo / Software Walk-Through Videos

These videos are one of the best ways to demonstrate your expertise to your audience. Below is an example of how I upload walk-through videos on my YouTube channel and have built up a subscriber list of over 3,000 in only 7 months.

So far to date, this video has over 23,000 views and is one of the most popular videos on our channel.

You can read more about how to get started with your video marketing with my 90-day video marketing challenge here.

Behind The Scenes

I would highly recommend you shoot a BTS (behind the scenes) video if you get an opportunity. It just fascinates people to get a rare glimpse into the creative & production process, be it a movie, photo shoot, set up at a trade show or any event.

Client Testimonials

Testimonials have got to be the most powerful video types. It is one thing to rave about yourself, but another thing when one of your clients comes on video and says nice things about you! Your potential website audience or visitor will start to trust you a lot more and very quickly.

Top Tip: Don’t script or tell your clients what to say. Keep it very informal & natural so that the message stays authentic.

The easiest way to make a testimonial video is to ask the client if they would be happy to send a video testimonial to you. Don’t stage it or make it look like a high-production video. Your client can use their own smartphone to record the video and send it to you. You can then add your branding, and you are ready to upload.

Conclusion

So now you know how to get started with video marketing. Video has got to be in the marketing mix for any sized business. Please don’t think the video is only for large corporations. Small businesses can leverage as much as any big business out of this channel, and you only need a smartphone and equipment costing around $100 to get started.

If you feel nervous in front of the camera, you are not alone! The secret is to get started, and the more you shoot, the more confident you will become. Just get started with video marketing right now; you will thank me forever 🙂

All the best!

Uzair

Translate »