16 Essential Video Marketing Tips for Small Businesses in 2021
In 2021, video marketing is rapidly becoming the most popular form of content marketing, with most consumers preferring short-form video over any other content type. As video marketing content continues to rise in popularity , there are a few best practices and helpful hints your small business needs to know about. We’ve done the research, gathered the best tips and have broken it all down by platform to help your small business boost sales with video marketing content in 2021.
All Platforms
1. Keep your videos short – Not only is short-form video content much easier for brands to create, it’s also the type of content that customers love to consume! Did you know that people have an attention span that’s only 8-seconds long? Your audience is much more likely to watch an Instagram Reel than a full-length YouTube video.
2. Grab attention within the first 3 seconds – Speaking of short attention spans, it’s important for your marketing videos to capture your audiences’ attention within the first 3 seconds of the video to increase their interest and encourage higher engagement rates on your video content.
3. Use high contrast text – It’s a great tip to add text overlay to your videos, but if you are adding text on top of a video make sure it’s easy to read. A great way to do this is by adding text that’s all caps with colors that contrast well – like a dark font over a light background.
4. Keep word count low – While you are adding text overlay to your small businesses’ marketing videos, be sure to keep your messages short and sweet so that your customers can both watch the video and quickly scan any text as well.
5. Create story-sized videos – If you aren’t using Instagram Stories for your small business yet, you are definitely missing out! (Learn more about how to successfully use Instagram Stories to boost your small business here.) If you are creating marketing videos, be sure to also make videos in the correct size and formats to be successful on Stories. It’s easy to create properly sized Instagram Story videos with Boosted video templates – just be sure to select 9:16 when editing your videos:
6. Create custom Reels cover images – Want higher engagement on your Instagram Reel videos? Try creating a custom cover tile image for your Reels. This will make your Instagram Reel videos look more professional, fit your feed and capture your customers attention. Learn how to add a custom thumbnail image to an Instagram Reels video here.
7. Title your Reels – Another huge tip to encourage your customers to watch your Instagram Reels is to include a title. This could be a short description of the video content that appears only on the custom cover image, or you can keep the title at the top of the Reel for the first few seconds of the video:
8. Post videos to Facebook! This one might seem like an obvious tip, but with so many new short-form video options with newer platforms like Instagram and TikTok, small businesses sometimes forget about posting video content to Facebook. But Facebook can be a powerful search engine for your small businesses’ marketing videos – did you know videos posted to Facebook reached 8 billion views per day in 2015 alone?
9. Make it interesting without audio – Many people watch videos on their phone on silent, whether at home or in public, so you need to make sure your marketing videos are engaging and interesting with or without audio. An easy way to do this is by adding text overlay that can act as subtitles for the video content so your customers know all the info they need, even without the audio on. To add stunning text overlay, music and more, use the Boosted video-making app to create professional marketing videos in just a few minutes.
10. Upload native videos – A native video simply means video content that is uploaded directly to a platform. Native videos are extremely important and highly rewarded within Facebook’s algorithm compared to posts that share a link to a video posted elsewhere, such as YouTube.
11. Create detailed titles and descriptions – When uploading native videos to Facebook, don’t forget to take a few extra minutes to write a few detailed and descriptive words about your marketing video. Having a clear title and a short description about your video content will quickly let your customers know exactly what the video is about, looks more professional and can provide a small SEO boost.
12. Make it mobile friendly – It’s a great tip to make all of your marketing video content mobile friendly, but it’s especially important for LinkedIn. Any videos posted to LinkedIn should be close-up content so your customers can easily see your content from a small phone screen.
13. Cross-promote social media platforms – Not sure what type of video content to post onto LinkedIn? If you are already creating great video content on TikTok, repost those videos onto your LinkedIn! And the same goes for native videos you’ve posted to Facebook. The best way to receive as much exposure as possible for your brand’s video content is by cross-promoting it on your small businesses’ various social platforms.
TikTok
14. Make it 15 seconds – You can create TikTok videos that longer than 15 seconds, but humans have short attention spans and 15 seconds is the ideal length video for TikTok. Many of the trending music and sounds are also 15 seconds, so this will give you even more options as you create TikTok video content for your small business.
15. Try out trending original audio – If you’re using TikTok, you already know how important it is to use trending music! But did you know other user’s original audio is also a great option to include in your TikTok videos? There’s tons of great original audio for small business owners within #smallbusinesstiktok.
16. Use a combo of trending music & original audio – Last but not least is one of our favorite secrets for small business owners to increase their chances of landing their TikTok videos on the FYP. If you are creating a TikTok video where you are talking to your customers, you can and should still add trending music! Simply select the trending music to add to your video, turn up your own original audio and turn down the volume on the added music.
