How to Sell Your Video Business to Savvy Consumers in the Modern Era

At this point, it should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody that video marketing remains one of the best opportunities that brands have to meaningfully connect with their target audiences. This is true regardless of what your products or services happen to be, or even the industry that you're operating in.

According to one recent study, a staggering 85% of all Internet users in the United States say that they actively watch online video content on at least one of their devices on a monthly basis. Not only that, but a significant number of people say that they actually want to see more video content from the brands and businesses they support.

But at the same time, video businesses in particular have something of a unique challenge on their hands when it comes to convincing their customers that their service is one worth investing in. It's a challenge born out of the breakneck pace at which technology has continued to advance over the last decade and once you understand the issue at hand, you'll be able to put yourself in the best possible position to avoid it altogether.

The Trouble With the "Do It Yourself" Mentality

Essentially, the major issue that a lot of video for business providers are running into comes by way of an assumption people have that video marketing is something they can "easily do themselves."

On the one hand, this position is understandable - at the very least, it makes a certain degree of sense. Consider the fact that there are millions of people in the US alone who walk around with iPhones in their pockets all day long. The latest version of the iPhone - the iPhone 11 - has between two and three camera lenses installed at the time of purchase, all of which are capable of shooting 4K high-resolution video. Many even have sophisticated features like image stabilization and "night mode" that preserves the integrity of the finished product at all times.

It's easier than ever for consumers to shoot great-looking content for their friends and family members on social media. From that point of view, it's not too hard to make the leap and assume that the same level of success will translate into the world of business, too.

But as a video for business services provider, you know well that the chasm between a great-looking consumer video and a professionally designed, thoughtfully constructed video for a company is a deep one, indeed. You could take even the most sophisticated, pro-grade camera and put it in the hands of an amateur and that equipment will only be able to help so much.

In other words, businesses of all types still need a company like yours to succeed in the modern era.

Now, all you have to do is gear your own efforts towards convincing them of that fact.

Selling Your Services: Breaking Things Down

By far, the most important thing you can do when selling your video business to your prospects involves educating them about why they're so important in the first place.

Resist the urge to craft your website exclusively around your technical capabilities. Again - Apple's iPhone alone actually sports a pretty impressive camera and if your website is filled with little more than technical specifications, people's eyes will quickly begin to glaze over. They'll still be thinking to themselves "well sure that sounds fancy and all, but why do I need this person? I'm already 90% of the way there with a device I already own." At that point, you'll be right back where you started.

Instead, create a landing page sales funnel that focuses on education first and foremost. Go into detail about why video marketing is such an essential part of a company's modern-day outreach efforts. Start with this common ground - get them to buy into an idea that, in truth, they probably already believe in, at least subconsciously. Once you've established something that you can both agree on, you can then focus on convincing them that this is not something they want to do alone.

This is something that you can definitely do in a wide range of other ways, too. Use a presentation maker like Visme (which I founded) to create collateral to outline the differences between a professionally shot video for a business and something that was put together on-the-fly by a consumer. Talk about the dangers of getting it wrong in this context - how you can only make one first impression and nothing puts off customers faster than a bad-looking video with an awful sound.

Go into detail about how all marketing collateral - including videos - is often supposed to be the best possible representation of what a brand stands for. When someone gets to the end of that video, they shouldn't just know what a business offers in terms of products and services. They should know what that business stands for. They should get a better idea of what it's like to be in a relationship with that brand.

Likewise, those videos need to be targeted very precisely towards the company's ideal consumers - this, too, will be difficult (if not impossible) for most businesses to handle on their own. Not only does it demand a tremendous amount of research, but it also takes someone who knows full well how to leverage the visual language of cinema to someone else's advantage. That's not something that you're born with - that's something you have to learn through experience.

Outreach is really important

You should also be using a service like Respona to do as much research into the types of businesses that you're targeting as possible. In terms of their marketing efforts, what are these people concerned with? What problems are they running into time and again? What questions do they have that you can provide the answers to? These are all of the factors that you should be crafting your own content around moving forward.

Yes, it's absolutely true that the actual image quality of consumer-grade equipment is better than ever. But as the owner and operator of a professional video business, you're fully aware that you do so much more than that. An awful-looking, amateurish video in 4K resolution will still be an awful-looking, amateurish video - albeit a clear one that is optimized for consumption on a mobile phone.

There's an old rule of thumb in marketing that tells us that above all else, we should focus on conveying not just what we do in a technical sense, but what type of value we're able to provide to our customers. Therefore, you need to take the same approach - put the focus not on your technical capabilities but on what you can do for someone that they can't do on their own.

This is how you properly sell your video for business services in the modern era and once you've been able to convince a prospect of that fact, they've essentially already bought into the fact that you can do the same thing for their own customers, too. Regardless of how quickly technology continues to advance and what the camera in the next iPhone ends up looking like, that is a very exciting position for someone like you to be in, no question about it.

About the Author

Payman Taei is the founder of Visme, an easy-to-use online tool to create engaging presentations, infographics, and other forms of visual content. He is also the founder of HindSite Interactive, an award-winning Maryland digital agency specializing in website design, user experience and web app development.