Raising brand awareness is the biggest challenge startups face. Getting your name out there and into the world is the first step in building your reputation. The more familiar consumers are with a brand, the more trustworthy it becomes.

No matter how good your products or services are, the reality is that you’re a brand new name and consumers are less likely to part with their cash unless they feel a company is trustworthy and reputable. Your startup marketing strategy no doubt already covers SEO, social media and perhaps even advertising, since these are the pillars of digital marketing success and vital for raising your brand awareness online. But is video also a part of your marketing mix when it comes to building awareness of your brand?

Online video accounts for over 80% of all consumer internet traffic. With so many eyes turned to video, startups simply have to use video to ensure their brand gets a look in. Here are four key reasons why every startup should have a video marketing strategy.

1. Video lets you explain your business with ease

One of the trickiest aspects of building a new business is communicating what your brand is all about. If you have a new, unique product or service, such as software or an app, explaining its benefits quickly and succinctly is vital if you’re to attract new customers. Even if the service or products you’re offering are tried and tested, such as a new clothing line, you need consumers to know why you’re different and why they should spend their cash with you over your established competitors.  

Video is a fantastic way to do this. Four times as many people prefer watching video than reading text when learning about a product. Plus, 90% of people are influenced by video when deciding to purchase.

A creative video can sum up your brand to a potential customer within just a couple of clicks and a minute or two of viewing. Essentially, you should strive to create a simple yet engaging video which offers a basic overview of your startup and compels viewers to want to learn more about your brand. Just be sure to include a call to action so that viewers know how to learn more about you or your products once you’ve caught their attention.

2. Video helps you to grow your social media following

Social media plays a huge role in startup marketing, and video is vital for social media success. 82% of Twitter users watch video content on Twitter, and over on Facebook, video achieves 135% more organic reach than photos. If you want to grab your demographic’s attention on social platforms, you need to do it with video.

Be sure to familiarise yourself with some basic video best practices. Many people watch video without sound on social media, so be sure to include captions or onscreen text so that your message is heard. You should also know that square video outperforms landscape video across all social platforms. Finally, be sure to consider different best practices for different social media platforms to ensure your videos perform at their very best.

3. Video has SEO benefits

White hat SEO takes time, and for startups it’s a complex, lengthy process to reach the top positions in the search results and get the organic exposure they need to raise brand awareness. Every little helps when it comes to boosting SEO, and video marketing goes a long way in helping the SEO process.

Firstly, Google loves to see websites using a mix of media – text, image and video – because it offers extra value to their users. Provided that you’re using the appropriate meta data to tell the search bots when video appears on your site, you’re sure to get an SEO boost.

Secondly, video can help you to drive traffic to your site, and the more traffic you get, the more Google will deem your site a valuable resource. If you’re hosting video on YouTube, Vimeo or other third party platforms, you can simply embed your video on your own website to benefit from faster loading times, then include backlinks to your site from your YouTube or Vimeo channels. You could also encourage other sites to embed your video on their own site, provided that they credit you with a link to your website. It’s a fantastic way to build high-quality backlinks which will help your SEO efforts.

4. Video can increase conversions

Businesses that use video marketing see 34% higher web conversion rates than those who don’t. Brand awareness is important for startups, but if your video marketing plan can also boost sales, the investment in video is all the more worthwhile. Furthermore, if you have a sound startup marketing plan in place which rewards customer reviews and referrals, every sale you achieve will contribute to further raising your brand awareness.

The videos which tend to help influence conversions are those which offer greater detail about a product or service. You could create how-to videos to show viewers how to use your product in the best way, or offer product demonstration videos to give more insight into the appearance and features of a product than text and image alone ever could. These don’t have to be simple talk-to-camera videos either, unless that’s a style that works for your brand. You could use animation and voiceover, for example, to create eye-catching and unique videos that not only influence conversions but are also highly shareable to further boost your online brand awareness.