Company Upgrade: 5 Reasons Video Marketing Is At Your Fingertips With A Smartphone

Douglas Lee Miller is a senior marketing strategist for WSOL. In this position, Miller advises clients in the effective creation and deployment of content marketing strategies, also known as inbound marketing. He also helps clients integrate those efforts into larger digital marketing strategies and their paid, earned, owned mix. As a business, WSOL "builds responsive websites, intranets and mobile/web applications for a diverse base of clients, including universities, hospitals, manufacturers, medium and small sized organizations." The company also assists clients in using those digital properties to drive business and build community.

Miller has been working in marketing and digital media for many years, both as an independent consultant and as a part of in-house teams in the higher education industry. He teaches as an adjunct instructor and advises students of all ages in the use of many digital tools for communication and storytelling, both of which have revealed their value in sales and marketing in the age of information overload.

Miller shares five ways in which your small business and smart phone can work together to create video sales.

 
Community building

Your business is part of a local community. Every video you make in and for that community lifts it up. When you demonstrate on video that you are an active part of that local community, potential customers will already have a greater affinity for your brand based on your participation in and celebration of your local communities. These can be videos of participation in local festivals and events, most local communities have calendars full of these, or videos celebrating local faces.

 
Solving customer problems

Your communities are looking for solutions to problems. YouTube is known as the world's second largest search engine. If your content is focused on adding value to your communities of current and potential customers by helping them solve their unique problems, make sure you put those solutions in places your customers are searching for solutions by tagging your videos accordingly.

 
Revealing your humanity

It's hard for any of your content to compete for attention against big brands and media giants like Netflix and HBO, but you have one distinct advantage: Those organizations are large and often impersonal. You have an opportunity to take advantage of your size and be more relatable than a larger organization could ever be. Take the time to create custom thank you videos to your clients with your smartphone selfie-style! Much more likely to be viewed than a thank you card or plain text email and with the call to action, these custom thank you videos can make a huge difference.

 
Demonstrating your product or service

Don't just talk about your product or service, demonstrate it in action. Take a video of your customers using your product or service while they are talking about how they feel using it. Not only will you learn more about your product or service, your potential customers will too, and perhaps even move off the fence about becoming a new customer.

 
Showing you what works

Did a person watching your video decide it was too long and bail? Did they come back to your website? Did they finish watching that video and decide to buy? Now more than ever, there are tools that are easily available to even the smallest of businesses to see your customers' interactions with your videos. As an entrepreneur or small business owner, you are in the position to take advantage of these emerging tools in ways larger business are often too timid or caught up in approval chains and red tape to attempt. As long as you use the tools available to attach that content to your customers' journey from awareness to consideration to decision to repeat business, your efforts with your smartphone in creating videos will be a valuable investment of your time.

This article was written by Michelle Guilbeau  of Examiner.com for CBS Small Business Pulse.