If you work in marketing, you most likely know that video marketing is huge right now. It’s bringing in the most engagement and sales to every company that uses video in their marketing strategies.
There are many reasons for this. It’s easy to share, it’s easy to engage with, it’s just easy for the consumer. Video content is more popular than ever, with your customers in mind in particular. They’re used to video in their daily lives and they want to engage with it when they’re shopping for products online, too. It might not be the easiest for you to create the video content, but it’s completely worth it since it’s what your customers want to engage with the most.
The point is, if you’re not making use of this trend, your business is going to fall behind. And quickly.
You might already be creating video content and finding it successful among your local customer base. But local customers aren’t always enough to really make your company as successful as it truly could be.
But what about international customers? You have the potential to reach millions, even billions of potential customers with the power of video marketing.
There are lots of ways that video marketing can help you increase international sales. Here’s how.
Make Your Product Look Great
Your competitors already have videos, so you need to keep up. Show off the benefits of your products and make them look great with high-quality video. If you have the budget for this, consider hiring a video production company to film at your business.
If you’re on a tighter budget, don’t worry. YouTube videos are free and you can use screen capture software or a webcam to create compelling how-to videos. You can even show what your product looks like in use over time by doing timelapse videos of its creation.
You can even try different settings to show how versatile your product is. You want to reach customers who live in rural, suburban, and urban settings, so show your products in those types of places! Show off different people using it, wearing it, loving it.
Make your video and products look as professional and polished as possible while also making sure that you’re filming it in a way that your customers will see themselves owning it, using it, and raving about it once they have it in their hands.
Help People Learn More About Your Business
You can use videos to tell people about your company’s story or to show the personality of your business. You want potential customers to really connect with your business, to form an emotional attachment where they’ll want to support your company and keep coming back.
Of course, your video needs to be professional and polished to make a lasting impression. You should start out with an introduction that explains who you are and what you stand for. Use this time to show off the personality of your company and how it’s different from others in its industry.
Customers want to know about your company culture because they want to know who they’ll be working with if they do business with you. This is also a great video opportunity to share your heart, your passion for what you do, and the goals you have in mind for the future of your company.
Create a video tour that shows off different parts of your company. You’ll be telling the current story of your company this way. For example, if you have an office, show off where everyone works and talk about what they do every day. If you’re a creative business, show behind-the-scenes of how you work and create ideas with your team.
Customers love being able to see behind-the-scenes and get to know your company inside and out.
Communicate Effectively
To really break into the international market, you want to make sure you can communicate with your customers no matter where they’re based. Video is the best way to do this.
This means adding subtitles and translated video descriptions along with your original language content. It also means writing different video titles and descriptions for every location you want to target so that they will show up in local search results. Video can be a great asset for international marketing strategy, but it’s never going to show up in Google search results unless you take the steps to do it right.
However, don’t worry about making every video available in every language right away so that everyone can access it. You can set up translations for the most popular world languages to start. A lot of international customers will be bilingual, so you can still reach them. If your video is relevant to a specific culture or area, target the content only at them instead of trying to appeal to everyone. It’s more effective and makes less work for you.
Before You Export, Make Sure Your Video is Mobile Ready
Although a lot of videos are created on desktops and laptops, mobile devices have become the more popular avenue to view video. In fact, as of January 2019, YouTube reports that people watch an average of 60 percent on mobile devices. And this number continues to grow as the popularity of mobile phones increases.
But you can’t just upload your video to YouTube and expect it to be mobile-friendly. Make sure that the text is large enough, the resolution is high enough, and that any animations or graphics are optimized for mobile before uploading.
Other social media apps, like TikTok and Instagram, are more aimed at those who use mobile devices since they began as smartphone apps! Make sure your video is optimized for these platforms if you want to reach the growing mobile market.
Even though we’re talking specifically about videos, it’s important to know that you shouldn’t stop there when it comes to making your marketing content accessible on mobile devices. After optimizing your blog posts, website pages, social media posts, and videos for mobile devices, even more people will have access to them in their daily lives. As long as you’re creating quality content that’s relevant to your target audience, it doesn’t matter where they’re watching.
Make Your Videos Easy to Find in Search
Once your videos are ready, make sure they’re easy to find! To do this, focus on the most popular video hosting sites.
YouTube is the biggest platform for free video hosting, but it’s not the only one. Other popular options include Vimeo and Wistia. These are all great choices because they give you access to a built-in audience. But the most popular video hosting sites aren’t the only ones you need to be thinking about.
Even though Facebook is mainly a social media site, it’s also one of the best free video hosting options out there. It may not seem like it at first, but Facebook actually has more than 2 billion users — that’s almost half of the entire population of the planet!
Whether you choose to host your video on YouTube, Facebook, or another platform, make sure that you fill out all of the necessary information and tags. This will help people find your video when they search for it in their favorite search engine.
You can never be too thorough when it comes to adding information to your videos, no matter where they’ll be hosted. There are a lot of different video-hosting options out there, but make sure that your international audience can find your video before you upload it to a new site.
The key to international marketing strategy is by targeting a specific audience, which includes making your content accessible around the world. It’s not enough for your video to be hosted online — you have to make sure that anyone can watch it no matter where they are or what device they use.
Build Credibility With Video
How do customers know that you’re a reputable company? If they’re based in a different country than where your company is, it can be a little more difficult for them to trust your company’s credibility.
Video marketing can help you get around that. You can use video testimonials from international customers to get the credibility boost you need or even interviews with key employees who discuss the history of your company.
Use video marketing to build credibility. If you have an office, take time-lapse videos of the day in the life of your business or do recordings of staff meetings that can easily be translated or captioned. Let potential customers see that they can place their trust in you.
Get the Word Out With Video
Now that you know how to communicate with your potential customers, it’s time to get the word out about your business and products. You won’t sell anything internationally if you don’t actually share the information with potential customers!
Once you have your video marketing created, post links to it on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Videos do especially well to reach international markets on TikTok, too! Instagram used to be mostly for sharing photos, but they’re expanding the ability to share videos on their platform and cross-post, so don’t count them out!
You can also make an embed code that will let viewers use your video on their own blogs or websites too. Even e-mail! E-mails can be easily shared by a simple forward from the recipient to people they believe would enjoy or get vital information from the content within the e-mail. But, we’ll get more into that in a minute.
You really want to make sure that what you put out into the world will be shared. When people share your video with others, this increases your exposure and gets your business more customers. With each share, the potential for purchasing and more sharing is there. You want your videos to be something that others will share, even if they can’t afford your products or services at the moment.
Drive Traffic With Videos
Did you know that people can spend up to 80 percent more time on a website after they watch a video about it? That’s a big deal! If your goal is to increase international sales, drive traffic from YouTube videos by including your product in the video frame. Then use annotations to link to specific products on your eCommerce site.
Make sure you have an opt-in form for e-mail marketing and links to all of your social media outlets on your website so viewers can sign up to learn more about what you’re selling and get updates when there are video announcements about new products. This will help you retain traffic going to and from both your marketing efforts and your eCommerce store and, if it’s separate from your store, your website.
Promote With Video
If you don’t already use email marketing, start now with video! You can make actual videos (with annotations to let people sign up) or use video screen capture software like Camtasia to make simple tutorials.
Once you’ve created your videos, promote them with email campaigns and send links to social media sites. Then, track who views your video content and collect their contact information for future marketing efforts including paid advertisements.
You’re ready to boost your International Sales with Video Marketing
Remember that international customers are looking for products just like yours on the internet. Video marketing is a great way to attract people who speak their language and want what you have to offer. If you need help, video production companies can create compelling video content for your website at affordable rates.
If you’re in need of help to create amazing marketing videos that target international customers, C&I Studios knows exactly how to approach the job. As a professional video production company, we make it our business to know the latest and greatest trends not only locally but also internationally. We offer more than just video production services, too that can boost your reach and sales, so be sure to check them out!
Contact us to get started today!