5 Ways to Grow Your Business With Video

A successful business is a growing business.

These days there seem to be a million growth hacks out there that promise to double your sales in 6 months.

But at the end of the day business growth boils down to getting the fundamentals right, and successfully applying them to the ins-and-outs of your own company.

To drive effective and scalable growth, a business needs 5 key things:

• A memorable brand
• Repeatable sales
• Customer retention
• Ace employees
• A sense of community

I'm going to show you how video, thanks to its flexibility and broad appeal, can help you achieve all of them with standout pieces of valuable content that continue to perform over time.

5 Strategies to Drive Business Growth With Video

1. Create a Memorable Brand

To grow your business, you need a brand that stands you apart from the competition. You need offer something unique, memorable and remarkable, something worth talking about.

Promotional videos can help you boost brand awareness and gain broad engagement through content that aims to be interesting & enjoyable without going for a hard sell. This way you can get your brand (and even your USP) out there to a large audience without needing to drive leads any further down the marketing funnel yet.

Here's how Zendesk did it:

Do it yourself: The best way to use this kind of highly branded video content? Spread it across your social networks. Pay for initial views on the right channels to kindle further organic growth. Encourage word of mouth, shares and discussion.

2. Generate Repeatable Sales

No business can grow without an effective and efficient sales process. From first touch to closed sale, you need a solid system to nurture and convert your leads. And video can play an important role in that.

To encourage sales there's nothing better than a testimonial, case study or success story video. This kind of content is ideal for the late stages of buyer awareness, when your potential customers want to know more about the specifics benefits of using your product or service and have their final concerns put to rest. 

Check out this great example from Evernote:

Do it yourself: Case study videos should be used on targeted landing pages or in sales calls and meetings. An effective and well-placed video case study can continue to convert leads time and time again.

3. Delight & Retain Your Customers

So you've got some customers. Great. But until you can make those customers so happy that they keep coming back, you don't have a stable base from which to continue growing your business.

That's why customer onboarding videos can be so critical. They're especially important for SaaS companies that offer complicated software to users all over the world, but all businesses should consider how they can make it easier for customers to start using their product or service.

Here's a wonderful video Wistia shows customers when they first sign up:

Do it yourself: Great customer service is an essential element of business growth. Simple video guides on your site, or how-to videos emailed to clients, can show that you haven't forgotten about them after sale. Plus it'll improve uptake and retention of your offering.

4. Hire the Right Employees

All great businesses are built on great employees. And video content can help you attract and keep the right talent to maintain your company growth, both now and in the future.

Video is a unique medium that allows you to get across the passion of your team in ways that would be difficult through other channels. Communicate your long-term goals and where you're heading as a business. Show, rather than tell, the benefits of working with you. Make people excited by the prospect.

Take a look at this adorable recruitment video from Dropbox:

Do it yourself: To draw your ideal employees in, you should use this kind of video content in job postings and at job fairs. Make it easily discoverable on your website so that interested applicants feel even more eager to join you on your business journey.

5. Support a Community

Finally, businesses succeed when they make everyone they influence, leads, customers, employees, feel part of a connected community. By supporting something bigger than themselves, businesses can grow into a indispensable part of society.

More emotional and giving video content positions you as a group of people working towards a shared goal for the good of the community, rather than a faceless corporate entity. So don't be afraid to be personable and real. Put a face to your brand. Form a true connection to your audience.

This is how Constant Contact does it, with a simple thank you video as an example:

Do it yourself: More community-minded video content won't generally work to drive leads towards sale. It's best used in specific campaigns spread through email or social to encourage your audience to think more positively about you as a business.

Round-up: Grow Your Business With Video

Business growth is developed on a solid foundation of sales, marketing, recruitment, customer service and community. Video can help to build and reinforce that foundation. And as valuable pieces of reusable content, they can continue to drive business growth for years to come.

Just remember that successfully investing in video means having a plan for specifically how and where that content will be be used to support wider business activity.

For help with that, download our simple Video Objectives Template to start thinking about how video can grow your business today.