Video marketing is a powerful and persuasive marketing technique that should be used throughout your client’s journey to purchasing residential and/or commercial security. If you have not adopted online video marketing yet, it is definitely time to get busy adding videos to your marketing arsenal.
The bottom line is the majority of your potential customers peruse images and videos when searching the internet. It is more engaging and rewarding than having to read a lot of text and riffling through annoying ads to get to the information they want. Want proof? Youtube.com, the giant video sharing website, is the second-largest search engine in the world next to Google. Google was smart enough to see where the market was heading and bought YouTube in 2006 for a meager 1.65 billion.
YouTube’s video content can be streamed over the internet and watched on any platform. It has more than a billion users per month, with a staggering 6 billion hours of video watched each month — that’s almost one hour for every person on earth!
According to consumer research company Nielsen, YouTube reaches more U.S. adults ages 18-34 than ANY cable network; thus, using Youtube will potentially give you more reach and viewing than any TV commercial — and its much cheaper. YouTube is also very easy to use. All you need to do to get started is create a Google account (if you don’t have one already), sign into YouTube with it, and then create a channel for your business so you can upload your videos.
There are more than a million advertisers on YouTube — most of which are small businesses using video marketing to sell their products and services.
Why Are Videos So Powerful And Persuasive?
There is a science behind why people migrate toward videos and tend to prefer videos and images over plain text. The human voice (and music) conveys emotion; the brain is hard-wired to trust the human face; and movement captures and keeps people’s attention.
Hence the reason online videos get a lot of positive attention and have improved engagement time and conversion rates for many businesses that have taken advantage of video marketing.
How Video Can Enhance Your Marketing
There are three ways that video enhances your marketing efforts:
- It educates — any time you provide educational material, you are positioning yourself as a security expert.
- It promotes — you want to create a buzz when advertising your security products and services, but not be too promotional.
- It entertains — connect with your audience by conveying your personality and help them capture the context of your message.
As a security dealer or integrator, you are a service-oriented business with security products must be properly positioned. Therefore, you need to create well-crafted and entertaining videos that showcase your wares. People want to see your products and services in action, and they can get lots of information about your offerings from a video that static pictures won’t usually deliver.
The bonus of doing video marketing is that you can get your videos ranked highly on the No. 1 (Google) and No. 2 (YouTube) search engines simultaneously. By properly creating, positioning and optimizing your video, if someone in your local market Googles your keywords, then your video and its message will pop up higher on search results for both Google and Youtube.
Must-Have Features for Online Marketing Videos
When creating videos, focus on the following four must-have features:
1. How the Service Works: Present the mechanics of how you provide the service in a “what to expect” sort of way. Walk people through the service you provide, how they can schedule the service, what they can expect when you show up at their door, etc.
For example, if you offer a free home security evaluation that can pinpoint all the homeowner’s security weak spots and safety vulnerabilities — a comprehensive audit like no other on the market — then show video of you or your security experts (i.e. technicians) conducting the home security evaluation; the difference between your comprehensive audit and the competitions; and how they can schedule the evaluation.
2. Emotional Benefit from the Service: Few service providers create videos that do a great job capturing the benefits of their products; thus, be sure to highlight the end-user benefits achieved by using your security systems and to capture real emotion on film. For example, show how your custom-designed home security system goes above and beyond to protect the homeowners from unscrupulous criminals. Show how thrilled your clients are with their new security system and how safe and secure they now feel in their home.
3. Points of Difference and Quality Cues: If you use a higher grade of materials in your security systems, or you work hard to achieve a specific effect or end-result, make sure this is highlighted in the video. Don’t just highlight the end-benefit or glamorous stuff — include the effort behind the benefit too. For example, if your home security evaluation and custom-designed security systems require a lot of evaluation work and scenario planning, make sure you show in the video all the work you do to achieve superior results.
4. Virtue and the Human Element: People don’t buy services from companies, they buy them from other people — usually from those they like and trust. Being in the security industry, you should know that the trust part is a big part of a consumer’s buying decision. Nobody wants to buy a security system from someone they don’t trust, so it is important that your videos showcase both the owner of the business and the people who will be providing the service — communicating their passion for their craft in a warm, friendly and trusting manner.
A natural way to emphasize this is to film your security experts explaining areas in which the company voluntarily chooses to make the job a bit more challenging or difficult or less lucrative to provide the homeowner with a better security system. This could be anything from performing your free home security evaluation, to not locking people into monitoring contracts, to taking the extra time to add the right finishing touches and a super clean up after the installation. If your security business is being virtuous in these areas, make sure you showcase it.
Bob Maunsell is the President of SecurityMarketingGuru.com. Over the past eight years, he has helped security dealers attract and retain clients that pay, stay and refer through his innovative Robotic Security Selling Systems™. If you are interested in learning more about online video marketing discussed in this article, please email [email protected] or call 508-835-1123 and request a free video marketing consultation.
