It can be incredibly frustrating to put in all the hours of planning, filming, posting, tagging and sharing your business video, only to see it perform poorly in terms of views.
The good news is that sometimes this is due to issues with the video itself, SEO execution or cross-platform marketing that are relatively easy to address, both with your existing videos and those you develop in the future.
Before we get into that, though, there are some non-negotiable elements and characteristics that every business video needs to successfully generate organic views.
Your video needs to meet certain quality standards or people simply will not take the time to watch it and continue watching it. This means the audio needs to be clear and speakers need to be easy to understand, the lighting cannot over- or underexpose subjects and settings, and the editing needs to ensure transitions and graphics do not interrupt the video’s flow.
We’ll assume you’re on top of all of that. Now let’s talk about some specific things you can do to increase organic views of your business and marketing videos. These tips assume you’re posting your videos to YouTube first.
Improve Utilization
The first reason business videos might not be getting a lot of views is they’re not being implemented properly. This is where most businesses struggle.
Unless you have a significant YouTube following already, or if you’re still in the process of building your subscriber list, just uploading the video isn’t going to accomplish much. To get more eyes on your videos and gain subscribers for your channel, leverage your other web-based platforms:
- Website
- Blog
- Social Media – Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc.
- Email Marketing
- LinkedIn – Your business page as well as your own and team members’ personal pages
Chances are you have a larger audience on these platforms, and even if you don’t they’re much easier to grow compared to your YouTube channel.
For example, let’s say your company is releasing a new product or service. A great way to let people know about it is to feature the new product or service in an e-newsletter. An even better way is to feature it with a short video embedded in or linked to from the email that demonstrates the quality, usefulness or value of the products or service. Your email list already contains the people who have indicated they like your company, products or services – they wouldn’t have subscribed to your email list otherwise – so they’re more likely to watch the video than a more general audience. What’s more, they’re more likely to share your video with friends, family and co-workers.
Another way to get current fans of your company and new prospects to watch your videos is through LinkedIn. Sharing on your business page is a given. First, it’s how you reach your company’s fans, and second, you’ll reach new prospective customers when the evangelists among them share your post with their LinkedIn connections. There are also some things you can do, with alt. text and hashtags, for example, to reach people who have an interest in your general business category. All of this is multiplied when key employees write about the new product or service and share a link to your company’s webpage that has the YouTube video embedded.
To inform your decision about which platforms or message delivery channels will be most successful in channeling viewers to your video, use Google Analytics to see from where they are already coming into your website.
If you see that most people are coming to your site through blog posts, for example, embed a video that is closely related to the post’s topic near the top, or shoot a video specifically for that purpose if you don’t have one already. In addition, look at the sidebar (which is usually a sticky bar) and embed an About Us video there. That way, when people search Google and end up on your blog, they'll see the video right away and quickly be introduced to your company. You also can use this marketing tactic for product pages, About Us pages and pretty much anywhere else on your website that a video will help nudge people further along in their buying journey.
Simply embedding videos on your website makes impressions and video views skyrocket:
Embedding videos also improves your SEO because people who watch them spend more time on your site, and that’s a key metric for Google.
Provide Value for Viewers
Another common mistake businesses make is creating videos that are too salesy. No one wants to sit through a three-minute-plus sales pitch, and it can actually become a double whammy; the YouTube algorithm does not push out videos with low engagement rates.
On the other hand, people will watch a video that provides some sort of education, entertainment, information or inspiration. Examples of value-based videos include:
- Education – how-to videos, videos that tackle new approaches or technologies, address misconceptions or give your company’s take on trending industry topics
- Entertainment – this encompasses vlogs (video blogs), short sketches about your company, product or service or anything else your audience might find enjoyable
- Information – videos that feature product comparisons or reviews and the industry topics for which most people are searching
- Inspiration – Motivational videos, videos that demonstrate a situation your target market might be facing and how another person overcame the challenge (using your product or service, of course)
Improve SEO Optimization & Search Targeting
The key here is to focus on the words and terms your customers and prospective customers actually search for.
Chances are the majority of your target audience doesn't know of your company, so they’re not going to search for you by name. Instead, they search for the solutions they need. This is called “search intent,” and by matching your video content, alt text and descriptions to match it, you’ll generate more views and the business results that come with them.
To figure out what the specific search intent is, we recommend tools like Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, TubeBuddy and your YouTube analytics.
Just updating the SEO in this manner can take a video that hasn't seen views in months to a video that gets recommended organically on YouTube.
Business and Marketing Video Misalignment
In addition to those easy fixes, it’s important to align your business and marketing video content with your goals and set reasonable expectations for yourself, your team and your management.
As much as we’d like them to, the vast majority of videos are not going to go viral. The fact is most companies will not see tens of thousands of views on their traditional marketing videos.
Keep in mind that for some videos only subsets of your full target market and the industry as a whole will be interested. It’s not likely that every single person in each subset is going to watch a specific video, and even if they did, your numbers would still be short of a viral video. This is especially true for niche products and services.
In addition, About Us, behind-the-scenes and customer-testimonial videos appeal to prospective customers who are further along in their buying journey. Again, that’s a small subset of everyone in your target market, so views are going to be low.
At the same time, however, they are high-quality, high-conversation views that are more valuable to your company in the short- and long-term.
For more organic views, you need a bigger audience. If that’s your marketing goal, then rather than creating videos that specifically address your core customers’ needs and desires, look at the entire industry. Ask yourself:
- What challenges do people in the industry typically face?
- What do they usually search for?
- What do we offer that will solve their problems?
With some reflection, more multi-channel promotion and a few tweaks here and there to the technical aspects of SEO, you'll get a lot more views and introduce a lot more people to your business, products and services.
Thank you for spending some of your valuable time with Capture. If you have any questions, please comment on our YouTube video or get in touch.
