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According to a video marketing specialist, one of the ways business owners can make their services more appealing is to communicate one obvious feature they share with would-be clients – that they are human.
In Chris Schwager’s view, most business owners know that marketing is an essential part of establishing a business presence, but their focus is distracted by a range of competing fears.
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Savvy companies, however, understand that the secret to connecting with audiences is relatability. Mostly, Chris says, people just want to connect with people.
“Everybody is looking for ways to differentiate and attract clients and they have to know what their options are. Relationship-building and the idea of ‘people buy from people’ is to a certain degree where video marketing fits into the mix, because video is humanising and good at making connections,” he says.
Chris is the director and owner of Ridge Films, which is in the business of ‘inbound video marketing’, where multimedia is used to generate organic engagement with a brand, for the past 15 years.
For those who are not completely deterred from taking their business messaging to video, it rarely plays into a wider marketing strategy and often risks being reduced to a few slapdash phone videos, he says.
“Some businesses just think that they will produce an explainer video because that’s what the competitors are doing. It is common for [them] to all be looking at what the others are doing and thinking that ‘If we can just do it a bit better than them, that’ll be good enough’,” says Chris.
Chris uses the example of small law firms as one example of industry that could embrace video marketing.
“Because lawyers are conservative, they are looking to peers that may be judging them on their businesses and not necessarily focused on target market and not necessarily focused on attracting the next client,” he says.
However, Mr Schwager adds that online platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube have moved more firms to respond to market expectations, and communicate in ways that make them more accessible to potential clients.
He suggested that the legal services industry and grassroots businesses in suburban areas, in particular, could benefit from unshackling themselves from the fear and trying something new.
“Lawyers want to be perceived as relatable and I think they really fear being perceived as cold or calculating. From our point of view as video marketers, we use video to shift that value and that understanding,” Chris says.
“Of course, video marketing is but one of many avenues to improve the quality of business and I think it is good practice for any business to ask what those opportunities are.”
