If you are in marketing, you know how important it is to incorporate video into your marketing strategy. But coming up with video ideas that actually work can be tough. Maybe you’ve tried interview style, montages, or live videos… but your results are coming up short. You’re just not seeing the results and engagement you expect.
If that sounds like you or your marketing team, then maybe you should consider creating a vlog for your business. It can easily be the best investment you make this year. Need proof? We’ve put together 5 reasons why your business needs a vlog. After reading this, you should come away knowing how powerful a vlog can be for your business.
What Is A Business Vlog?
If you don’t know, the term “vlog” comes from combining blog and video. It’s basically the video form of what blogging is. A loosely-structured discussion, idea exercise, or instruction on a particular topic. But instead of writing about it, you are filming yourself speaking or showing it. Vlogging it.
Vlogs first started mainly for personal use and personal brands. It’s one way many influencers started. At the time when vlogs first started gaining popularity, it was largely due to the personal feel of it, which was uncommon due to the nature of overproduced and scripted content. The real and raw nature of the vlog is what people were drawn to. A business vlog simply adds the business component to the structure of the content.
A business vlog can be many things - A day in the life, behind the scenes, customer interactions, or even daily vlogging. But there is one thing that all business vlogs should have to ensure long-term success. Business vlogs need to provide value to your audience, either in the form of education or entertainment.
This example above is a business vlog we created as part of a Grilla Grills product launch campaign. We focused on education, by providing the viewer a recipe and an explanation of how new products work. By doing this we were able to capture the viewer, all while still delivering a marketing message to them.
If you focus on value for your audience, we can guarantee that vlogs can be the best marketing investment for your business. There are just so many advantages to this type of content, now that video is everywhere you go on the internet. Now that you know what a business vlog is, here are 5 reasons why your business needs a vlog.
1. Vlogs Are The King Of Building Trust
Building trust with an audience is what every marketer strives to do. You want your brand to be approachable and authentic, so the customer will feel comfortable with your brand. While you can certainly achieve this with traditional videos, it can prove difficult.
A business vlog, however, is one of the best and easiest ways to create genuine trust in a brand. Why? Because vlogs give a day-in-the-life look at your brand. A real, raw look at your brand. Consumers usually can tell when a video is overproduced or scripted. With a vlog, they'll know exactly what they’ll be getting when choosing your brand. You’ll even notice that your audience will start commenting that they love this type of content and that you should create more.
By creating a vlog that provides genuine value for your audience, you'll build trust in your brand, all while delivering a marketing message.
2. Vlogs Are Incredibly Cost Effective
The unique advantage of business vlogs is that the “bar” for acceptable quality is lower compared to other forms of video content. What does that mean? Well you don’t need a huge crew, you don’t need expensive lighting setups, and don’t need to spend as much time in pre-production to deliver the same marketing message. All you need is great audio, with well-paced editing to create an effective vlog.
Your audience understands that they are watching a vlog, so they won’t care if it doesn’t have perfect lighting, or if there are small errors. They will actually prefer the “realness” of a vlog compared to more produced content. By creating a vlog, you can communicate your marketing message at a much lower cost.
3. Vlogs Are An Endless Source Of Micro-Content
You know how difficult it can be to consistently put out content on social media. Business vlogs can help your team be more consistent, by using short clips from portions of the vlog as micro-content. Perfect for TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube shorts.
You can cut highlights from the vlog, separate it into different topics, pick out the best sound bytes, and even use out-takes as micro-content. A good tip for micro-content is to add captions to the video, so that your audience can read along without audio. This increases the engagement of the video significantly. At the end, make sure to include a call to action for your brand.
By repurposing vlogs into micro-content, you’ll be able to interact with your audience more often, and improve the return on your marketing spend.
4. Vlogs Are The Best Way To Increase Subscribers & Followers
Business vlogs are one of the best ways to get more real followers and subscribers. Again, because vlogs are “less produced”, your audience will actually gravitate towards this type of content if it’s providing genuine value to them. Pro tip - your audience will often comment on what type of content they like best! You may notice they're wanting more and more vlogs!
You can see that 54 subscribers were gained from a single vlog. If your average spend for producing a vlog averages around $1,500, then you are effectively paying $28 for a new subscriber, which can be a very high return on investment depending on the price point of your business. In this particular example, a typical purchase from a customer can easily exceed $1,000, with the high probability of becoming a repeat customer. Don't forget, most people do not subscribe! So your return on investment is likely significantly higher.
The only disadvantage of vlogs is that they have a shorter shelf life compared to traditional videos. The way to combat this is by being consistent with your upload schedule. Your views and ROI will increase as you publish more vlogs. More subscribers mean more people will see it, and in return, net you even more followers. Essentially, the more consistent you are with vlogging the more effective it will be.
5. Vlogs Are Easy To Create (And Fun!)
Another advantage of business vlogs compared to other types of video is that vlogs are easier to create. A vlog is mostly what you do on a day-to-day basis, just with a camera, so it should be more routine than traditional videos.
Start planning a vlog by deciding what you would like to tell the audience about. Maybe you’d like to show them how a product is made? Or what the team culture is like? Once you have an overall goal, find someone who would like to be the “tour guide” for that particular topic. Have them walk around your facility, guiding the viewer through the process. Make sure to capture b-roll of the processes and people, so you can use it to edit out any mistakes!
The above is an example of a vlog style video we created where we had the President of the company walked around simply speaking to the camera, as if they were a customer touring their facility. This was all shot in under an hour, with no lights, just a camera and a microphone.
Prosper-Tech customers have been raving about the video, because they're able to get an inside look before visiting in-person. This vlog style shop tour is one of their best performing videos, averaging 88% watch completion.
Starting Your Business Vlog
Even before you read this, you likely knew how powerful vlogging could be for your business. The only challenge is starting. What we can say is, don’t worry too much about the quality at first. Just get started, it will improve in time. If you focus on providing value for your audience, they will follow. Once you start seeing the results you’ll be eager to create even more for your business.
We’ve seen it work for our clients with great success, and know that any business can benefit from it. If you have any questions about vlogging for your business or need help creating a vlog, please reach out to us! Call us at 616-930-2222 or send us an email at info@capturevm.com.
Need some more inspiration? Here are some examples of some great business vlogs.
- Nick Bare Vlog - Fitness / Supplement Brand
- SpaceX (via Everyday Astronaut) - Starbase Tour with Elon Musk
- Gary V - Daily Vlog
