Tag: video content marketing

The Ultimate TikTok Marketing Guide for 2020

If you’re reading this article, I can almost guarantee that you have at least one account on social media. That’s because, according to Statista, in 2019, there were nearly 3 billion social media users worldwide. 

That’s nearly half of the world’s population!

Between platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and TikTok, the truth is that most people actually have more than just a single account. 

So, as a business owner, it’s important to understand that each one of these social platforms presents its own unique method for communicating and engaging your target audience.

TikTok has recently made its way onto the list of the world’s most popular social media platforms, boasting roughly 800 million active monthly users. 

Continue reading our guide to understand everything you need to know about using the platform to effectively market your small or medium-sized business. 

What is TikTok?

TikTok is a social media network where users can create short clips to share with their friends, family members, and followers. 

Although TikTok is often erroneously referred to as a “lip-syncing” app, the fact is that users are able to upload virtually any type of viders that they want. And today, users are able to scroll through millions of different videos on the platform, which can be easily searched and categorized using the app’s user-friendly interface. 

Additionally, user videos can be tagged with hashtags, which allows for a quick and easy way to group and search for videos. We’ll be discussing hashtags in greater depth a bit later on in this guide.

Finally, TikTok users also have the ability to interact with other users’ content, which makes TikTok exactly like any other social media platform, with the main exception being that it’s primarily designed for sharing videos, and not images or text content. 

Be sure to check out our very own TikTok video maker, the perfect web and mobile app to help you create sleek TikTok videos in under 3 minutes!

Why Your Small Business Should Be on TikTok

Although TikTok is recommended for kids as young as 13 years of age, according to OmniCoreAgency, nearly 50% of TikTok users are under the age of 34, with 41% being between the ages of 16 and 24. 

If your brand is selling products or services that are targeted at these younger demographics, being present and active on TikTok is a must! 

Additionally, TikTok boasts around 800 million active monthly users, with roughly 26.5 million of those located in the United States. So if your business plans on selling either globally or to the U.S. market, using TikTok is a great way to easily get your brand name in front of millions of potential customers. 

7 TikTok Statistics for 2020

To help you give a better understanding of why you should to be using TikTok, check out these rather impressive statistics: 

  1. TikTok boasts roughly 800 million active users from around the world every month.
  2. TikTok is recognized as the 6th most popular social platform currently available. 
  3. By the end of the first financial quarter of 2020, the TikTok app had managed to accumulate a staggering 315 million downloads. That’s the best quarter recorded by any app, ever. 
  4. This consisted of 500 million downloads in India, 180 million in China, and about 130 in the United States.
  5. Estimated about roughly $78 billion back in 2018, TikTok was once known as the most valuable startup company in the world. 
  6. On average, most TikTok users open the app about 8 times per day. 
  7. Roughly 60% of TikTok are thought to be part of Generation Z. By 2021, there will be about 74 million Gen Zers in the United States alone, making Gen Z one of the largest generations ever. 

How to Get Started on TikTok

Although you’re free to use TikTok however you choose, there are primarily three different ways that brands today are marketing themselves on the platform.

First, most brands work towards creating their own TikTok channels, which allows them to upload relevant videos for their audience to view. 

Secondly, brands can choose to work with influencers, who are already popular on the platform. This tactic is often used to help get content in front of an even greater audience, potentially reaching millions, depending on the influencer’s popularity.

And lastly, brands have the option to create paid TikTok ads in order to promote themselves on the platform. 

To help you understand what you can actually start doing today, let’s get to some of the most important strategies for marketing your brand on TikTok. 

Popular TikTok Marketing Strategies (That Actually Work)

The fact is that all social media platforms are extremely competitive environments for small and medium-sized businesses. 

Not only will your brand be competing with other similarly sized businesses, but you’ll all be grouped together with the world’s largest companies that are actively using these platforms to market themselves. 

However, although the competition might be fierce, that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to make a name for yourself on newer platforms like TikTok. 

In fact, with a little bit of hard work, determination, and knowledge about your target audience, you can easily start getting your brand name in front of the right people. This brings us to our first strategy: learning about your audience. 

Analyzing Your Target Audience

By now you know that roughly 40% of TikTok users are between the ages of 16 and 24. 

But knowing this fact alone isn’t enough. If you want to be able to create good quality content that your audience will actually enjoy watching, and will want to share, you need to know as much about them as possible. By analyzing and really learning about your target audience, you’ll be able to get a better idea of the type of content they enjoy. 

For instance, let’s pretend that you’re a eco-friendly clothing brand, and that you find out a large percentage of your target audience are concerned about the use of harsh, chemical dyes in modern fashion. In this scenario, one effective way to use this knowledge, would be to create a series of TikTok videos that explain what makes your clothing brand eco-friendly. 

In the end, it’s really simple psychology: by knowing about your target audience’s problems and concerns, and then showing them your solution to these issues, they’re more likely to trust you and find value in watching your content. 

Once you’ve studied your target audience, it’s time to get in gear and start actively creating your own content. But first, it’s also a good idea to check on your competitors to help you get a better understanding of what actually works and what doesn’t on the platform. 

Analyzing Your Competition

As with any type of marketing, it’s important to take a look at the type of content your competitors are publishing. 

Of course, it’s vital that you do not copy exactly what they’re doing. By examining what other similar brands are doing on TikTok, you’ll be able to get a better idea of the type of videos you yourself can start creating. 

Doing a competitor analysis is the best way to find out how your brand can gain a competitive edge in your industry. 

For instance, instead of only looking to see what other brands are doing, you also want to look for gaps in their strategies – the things that they AREN’T doing – which, in turn, you can START doing. 

Actively Creating Content For Your Audience

As much as it may seem obvious, you’re going to need to be regularly active on the platform if you’re planning on being successful at TikTok marketing. 

In other words, simply having an account and filling out your profile isn’t going to cut it; you’re going to need to actively create and share high-quality content in order to to gain new followers and broaden your audience.

When using TikTok, you’ll only have a short, 15-second time limit on the videos you can record and publish. However, users can chain those 15-second clips together to make a longer story video, which can be as long as a minute. Alternatively, TikTok users can also choose to upload longer videos. They just can’t be recorded using the app itself. 

The point is that there are virtually no limits on the type of videos you can create for your brand. The key to creating popular TikTok videos, as with any other type of marketing, is to create content that will hook the interest and engage your viewers. 

Therefore, you need to ensure that your videos aren’t boring, and that your content actually speaks to your audience’s problems, concerns, wants, and desires. 

In the end, it’s important to get creative, tell your brand’s story and be real with your audience. As you continue to create content and remain active on the platform, you’ll see that your audience on TikTok will continually grow. 

Content Creation Tool

If you aren’t a video pro and don’t have one on your staff – have no fear. One of the appeals of TikTok is that users create organic video content that they generally edit themselves. It’s meant for users from all levels of video experience.

Check out our Tik Tok Video Length & Formatting Guide for full insights on how to use TikTok’s native video creator. You can also use an app like Boosted for more options for filters, text, and effects. You can create all different types of video (tips, tutorials etc.) for your small business to share on TikTok. Here are some examples:

User-Generated Content

One of the best organic strategies any brand can use on TikTok is to get the platform’s users to create and share content for them, which is referred to as user-generated content.

User-generated content is most often used for promoting social causes. However, the same strategy can be used by brands, allowing them to easily leverage TikTok’s native users into creating and sharing content for them. 

To help illustrate how user-generated content works, let’s pretend that you’re the owner of a restaurant and that you’ve recently added a do-it-yourself option to your menu, where diners are allowed to customize their meals exactly as per their own dietary preferences. 

In this case, a savvy TikTok marketer might create a campaign, encouraging anybody that chooses the do-it-yourself option to post a short video of their very custom meal, tagging your brand in the description, along with using one of your brand-specific hashtags.  

According to Vidooly, this is exactly what a Chinese restaurant chain called Haidilao did. 

As a result, the chain managed to entice roughly 15,000 visitors to film their experiences, which resulted in more than 50,000 views worth of free advertising for the brand.

To grow like this, you’ll need to make sure that your followers are tagging their videos with your brand-specific hashtags. With that being said, let’s take a deeper look at using hashtags effectively to promote your brand on TikTok.

TikTok Hashtag Strategies 

Like most other social platforms, TikTok allows its users to tag their content with hashtags. The practice of hashtagging is most commonly seen on platforms like Twitter and Instagram, however, hashtags can also be used on Facebook, LinkedIn, and, of course, TikTok. 

When a user tags one of their posts with a hashtag, it makes it possible for other users to see that post anytime they search for that hashtag. 

Therefore, by using popular hashtags, brands are easily able to generate large amounts of organic traffic to their videos, making it significantly easier to reach new potential customers. 

But how exactly should you use hashtags as part of your overall TikTok marketing strategy? 

Start Tagging!

Understand that using hashtags is somewhat of a fine art. Just because you add a hashtag to one of your videos, doesn’t mean that it will automatically be seen by hundreds of thousands of other users. 

In fact, unless you’re using relevant and popular hashtags, your content isn’t likely to be seen by very many users. 

On the other hand, when you tag your video content with hashtags that are not only relevant, but are also popularly used and/or searched for by other users, you’re almost guaranteed to get your videos seen by a larger audience.

In order to cultivate your brand’s hashtag strategy, it’s a good idea to include some brand-specific hashtags along with your videos. For example, if you own a restaurant called Herman’s Eatery, you would start tagging your video with something like #hermanseatery.

That way, as time goes by, and you continue tagging your content with this brand-specific hashtag, any time a TikTok user searches for your restaurant, they’ll be likely to see all of the content that you’ve uploaded and tagged, without actually having to visit your profile page. 

In order to get people searching for your brand and its brand-specific hashtags, you’re first going to need to generate some interest in your company. How?

Hashtag Challenges

One of the most effective hashtagging strategies on TikTok is to create a hashtag challenge for your followers. Essentially, these challenges are the way that brands are able to get their followers to create and share user-generated content for them. 

When executed effectively, hashtag challenges have the potential to generate a significant amount of free content for brands. 

The aforementioned example of the Chinese restaurant chain asking their patrons to share videos of their DIY meals is a prime example of a successful hashtag challenge. 

In the end, however, it’s important to realize that, while some hashtag challenges go viral, not all of them do. In fact, many brands need to work with influencers and other popular public figures in order to get their hashtag challenges to become popular. 

Let’s take a look at one popular hashtag challenge by a famous personality that went viral. 

Successful TikTok Hashtag Challenge: Jimmy Fallon’s #tumbleweedchallenge

When Jimmy Fallon, the world-famous comedian, actor, and television show host, first started using TikTok, he wasn’t shy about creating a big splash about it. 

In fact, thanks to his branded #tumbleweedchallenge, Fallon managed to rake in roughly 87,000 reactions, and more than 1100 comments within the challenge’s first six days. To date, the #tumbleweedchallenge is said to have generated more than 30 million views worldwide. 

And what exactly is the #tumbleweedchallenge?

The #tumbleweedchallenge is a social challenge, where TikTok users were encouraged to record themselves rolling around on the ground like a tumbleweed, while playing country western music in the background. 

Users were then asked to upload their videos, and tag them with #tumbleweedchallenge. Here’s the original challenge video:

@fallontonight

Jimmy takes the TumbleweedChallenge! Show us your best tumbleweed!

♬ #TumbleweedChallenge – FallonTonight

Here are some great user examples:

@heyjjwolf

JJ & Gigi doing the #tumbleweedchallenge for @fallontonight @tiktok

♬ #TumbleweedChallenge – The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon
@dominictoliver

Can y’all do this?😂 #tumbleweedchallenge

♬ #TumbleweedChallenge – FallonTonight

Of course, because Jimmy Fallon is a celebrity, his challenge took off like wildfire, and you shouldn’t expect to see the same type of results so quickly for your small business. 

It’s important to take away the fact that Fallon’s challenge engaged his audience in a fun, interactive way, which resulted in millions of views. 

Paid Advertisement on TikTok

In today’s extremely competitive digital landscape, most successful companies on social media rely, at least partially, on paid advertisements to expand their reach and continuously grow their brands.

TikTok, like most other social media platforms, also offers this type of paid advertising. 

However, because the platform is still relatively new, TikTok advertising hasn’t quite taken off in the same way as Facebook or Instagram advertising has. But that’s not to say that running paid ads on TikTok isn’t a strategy worth looking into. 

In fact, the platform has already rolled out a few different forms of advertising, which some brands are already using to achieve massive marketing success

The Best TikTok Marketing Strategy for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

The most successful TikTok marketing strategies are going to involve a healthy balance of everything mentioned in this guide.  

If you want to use TikTok to effectively market your brand, you need to make sure that to consider all the different ways the platform can be used for your benefit, which includes creating your own content, encouraging user-generated content, using hashtags, and running paid ads. 

TikTok Marketing In 2020

Although TikTok is still a relatively new social media platform, there’s no doubting the fact that it’s already achieved massive success. In fact, with well over 800 millions active users worldwide, TikTok is thought to be the 6th largest social media platform. 

So, as a small business owner, especially if you’re selling products or services to younger adults or teenagers, it’s vital to think about signing up and using TikTok as one of your main marketing channels. 

And by following the tips and strategies that we’ve outlined in today’s guide, you’ll be well on your way to taking the world of TikTok by storm!

Additional TikTok Marketing Guides:

Boosted has been creating TikTok marketing guides for small business owners for quite some time: below is a compilation for your convenience.

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Video Marketing for Small & Local Businesses in 2020

Nobody doubts the amazing potential of small business video marketing, and how it can increase your customer base with an easy to implement small business video marketing plan:

Glossary (Click to scroll down):

  1. What Exactly is Video Marketing?
  2. 4 Benefits of Video Marketing for Small Local Businesses
  3. How Can I Improve My Small Business with Local Video Marketing?
  4. What is Small Business Video Content Marketing & Why Do I Need It?
  5. 4 Types of Video Marketing & Video Marketing Ideas for Small & Medium Sized Businesses
  6. How to Use Video to Benefit Your Small Business
  7. 3 Examples of Awesome Small Business Marketing Videos

After all, video drives a 157% increase in organic search engine results when embedded in your website, and 64% of consumers have said that video directly influenced their decision to purchase a product or service.

local small business video marketing tip

If you haven’t yet found yourself involved in the video content world and you’re a small business owner, now is the time. By 2021, video will represent 82% of internet traffic – which means that whoever doesn’t jump on board will be at a great disadvantage.

For those that haven’t yet delved into the world of video marketing, you may find yourself wondering – what exactly is video marketing? Do I need a video maker? And more importantly, how do I get started?

What Exactly is Small Businesses Video Marketing?

Video marketing is the buzzword that’s going around the business world like the whispered rumors in high school hallways.

But video marketing is much more than a buzzword. Today, it’s become the content strategy leader in the marketing world.

This is because video is versatile, relatable, and memorable – and is the best way to reach a varied audience with a short attention span (which is an increasing problem with younger generations).

There is no way around it – video is the content of the future. The earlier you get started on your video content strategy, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

So what exactly does video marketing mean? Video marketing is the use of video with a specific content strategy to help a small business get more customers, by having a specific goal in mind. Just as important as having corporate videos for marketing purposes, is the knowledge of what kind of content to create, in targeting local and sometimes national consumers, – and where to put this content.

You may find that the best video strategy for you involves an explainer video, which shows what your company does.

This great (and famous!) example by the Dollar Shave Club is a classic use of video marketing, to explain what the company is all about.

Notice the use of comic relief in a serious advertisement – don’t be afraid to make your audience laugh!

Alternatively, you may find that a tutorial video explaining how to use your product is your best use of video marketing.

Or, you may decide that your audience needs to better understand the industry you work in.

What’s most important to understand is that as a small business owner, there are countless benefits to video marketing, and you won’t know which types of videos best fit your business until you try.

And I’ll even let you in on a secret – there’s probably more than one!

small business owner video filming for marketing

4 Benefits of Video Marketing for Small Local Businesses

When you use video marketing for your small business, especially for small local businesses, you are doing yourself a huge favor – and the numbers prove it.

    1. When given a choice, over 72% of customers prefer to learn about a product or service by video instead of text. – In other words, out of all of the potential customers that your videos might reach, almost 3 out of 4 of them would already prefer to watch a short video about your brand, rather than having to read about it. 
    2. A viewer is 64% more likely to buy a product after watching a video. Because of the fact that most consumers already don’t mind watching a short video, showing them videos of your products or services in action is a great way to entice them to make a transaction with your company. 
    3. While only 20% of viewers will read the text on a page, 80% will watch a video. The truth is that today’s modern man is relatively lazy, especially when it comes to consuming information. So while reading a large wall of text will usually turn the average consumer away from learning more about a company’s products or services, showing them a short, punchy video about is almost guaranteed to grab their attention.
    4. The average person watches more than an hour and a half of video per day. In other words, for every single consumer that your brand comes into contact with on a daily basis, you have a huge opportunity to turn that interaction into a sale. That is, of course, only if you’re using video marketing as a tool to get your brand in front of the right people, at the right time. 
    5. Did you know, that aside from Google, YouTube is the second most popular website in the world?  This means that if your small business isn’t currently using YouTube as a marketing channel for your brand, you’re literally missing out on millions of opportunities, every single day, to interact with new, potential customers.
    6. According to Rialto Marketing, 81% of today’s modern businesses are using video marketing as part of their overall strategy. When more than three-quarts of all online businesses are using video, you can be guaranteed that it’s a strategy that works.

In the end, not only are videos more likely to capture your audience’s attention but as you can see in the statistics above, that audience is significantly more likely to buy products from you, if you provide them with videos about what you’re offering.  

How Can I Improve My Small Business with Local Video Marketing?

While video isn’t a miracle solution to all your business problems, video will absolutely allow you to empower and improve the position of your small business.

Video can be used for almost anything. Start by presenting yourself on your website – just the simple addition of an explainer video, telling the world about what you do can increase your chances of appearing on the first page of a search by over 50 times!

An explainer video (and really, any video content) is also a great opportunity to entertain.

Take for example this video by PadMapper. By taking the comic route,  they make sure the audience is captivated from beginning to end of the video:

Explainer videos, however, are just the beginning. There are dozens of uses of video to improve your small or local business, and this is where video content marketing comes in.

Thinking of a strategy, and knowing which types of content apply to your audience, is key to successfully using small business video marketing to your advantage.

What is Small Business Video Content Marketing & Why Do I Need It?

So what is video content marketing? Well, the answer to that question is that video marketing is what YOU make of it!

With the video marketing resources available today, there’s really no limit to what video marketing can be. You can create video ads for your product or services, you can introduce your company through video, and you can show the world testimonials of the loyal customer base that you already have.

You’ll find that easy tools are also within reach – and in the palm of your hand!

In recent years, video making has become more accessible even to the inexperienced, and can all be done on-the-go.

content video marketing film for small businesses

Gone are the days of relying on knowledge of complicated video editors – today in 2020, anyone can download a simple video maker app and get started with video content marketing on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok.

For those completely new to the video content world, there’s Boosted, which has a bunch of great video ad templates that are easy to use.

Using these tools, or a number of others (there are a lot of choices) you’ll be able to start off and develop your video content strategy. Also consider creating a vlog to bolster your video marketing efforts in 2020.

Read on to find out more about the types of videos you should be making, and how they’ll help you grow your small business!

8 Types of Video Marketing Ideas for Small & Medium Sized Businesses

The world of video marketing is endless – and there are many inexpensive ways to bolster your small business in 2020.

You can teach your audience about your product or service, you can teach them how to use your product, or how your service is necessary to them, you can use videos for testimonials to give your prospective customer a real-life perspective, and you can teach your audience all about you, and why your small, local business is important.

  1. Educational
    • Educational videos teach about something. Usually, when used in video marketing, these will either educate the audience about the company itself, or about something related to the company.
    • A good example is this video, about a day in the life of a Grainger employee. Under this category are explainer videos, along with other types of videos that aim to teach about something.
    • If you’re providing a unique product or service that is not well understood, an educational video is your first step to securing an audience and captivating potential customers.
  2. Product
    • Product videos highlight a product, often in creative ways. This allows viewers who have already seen something similar to still take interest – and will allow you to capture a spot in their mind.
    • Take this video in Blendtec’s Will it Blend? series, which instead of talking about yet another blender, occupies the mind of the audience with an eccentric idea – what non-traditional items can this super-strong blender blend?
    • Product videos, specifically those that are out-of-the-box, are a great way for small local businesses to differentiate themselves from the competition if they are providing a product or service that isn’t novel or unique. For example, a coffee shop with a great product video will have much better luck bringing in customers than its competitors (which it is sure to have).
  3. Testimonials
    • Testimonials are extremely important to any business – people are much more likely to trust a company if a peer, or someone having similar needs, recommends the business.
    • While written testimonials have been around for a while, video testimonials are the new trend. These more relatable stories that put a voice and face to the name, and create a story, have great convincing power.
    • For example, check out this video, Why I Love Working at Wayfair, which is a fantastic testimonial video for hiring.
  4. Instructional
    • Instructional videos will teach your audience how to use your product.
    • These are more relevant to products rather than services, but can be applied to the latter as well (for example, a video on how to book an appointment!).
  5. Team Bios
    • For effective SMB local marketing, it’s all about putting a face to a name. Bio videos show your audience that your company is staffed by real people who care about your brand and customers.
    • Bio videos are a mix of professional, displaying your team’s titles and expertise; and personal, highlighting their fun, quirky characteristics to demonstrate your human side.
    • You can also use videos to introduce your sales team or account managers, making it easier for them to build relationships with prospective customers.
  6. Tips and Tricks
    • These types of video are an excellent way to subtly establish your expertise in your field and show customers why they can trust your word.
    • For local business video marketing, this also makes you a trusted face, potentially helping increase your foot traffic from prospective customers who are simply looking for someone who can assist.
    • You can use these videos to complement existing blog posts to make them more engaging.
  7. Announcements
    • Announcement videos can help create anticipation and generate buzz around a new product you’re launching to encourage an audience beforehand.
    • You can create several of these as small, quick teasers to build hype and keep your brand relevant even during long quiet periods between product launches.
    • These videos can also help you demonstrate how a new product will improve upon previous versions or make your customers’ lives better.
    • They’re also excellent videos to include in your social media to acquire more followers and post viewers.
  8. FAQs
    • Regardless of your industry, customers will always encounter questions, and FAQ videos are a great strategy for creating an interactive experience and engaging with customers directly.
    • These videos can be short (even as short as 60 seconds) and help fill up your posting calendar during slower periods.
    • They also highlight how you’re willing to support customers, even if they haven’t bought anything from you.

Often, business owners assume their product is straightforward, or that the written instructions are enough.

filming video for small business video marketing

Take a minute to think back – when is the last time you sat down and read a user manual? Now think about how much more likely you’d be to sit down and watch a short video to learn about your new purchase, instead of trying to figure it out on your own.

How to Use Video to Market Your Small Business

  • Video allows you to approach a story from all angles, and will give you a variety of ways to tell different parts of your story.
  • Once you’ve made your goals clear in the customer’s mind, you’ll be well on your way to improving the position of your small business.
  • Using the different types of videos above which are relevant to your business, you’ll be able to more clearly communicate with your potential clients, and you’ll be able to tell them a clear story – which will then be easy to pass on to their friends, and allow you to grow your customer base!

Here are 4 ways to use video marketing to help boost your small or medium sized business:

  1. Integrate a Video on Your Landing Page
    • The great thing about video is that it gives you a flexible tool to spruce up any part of your broader marketing strategy.
    • Including a video in your landing page, for instance, helps keep visitors engaged for longer and can also lead to higher conversion rates.
    • In fact, having a video on your landing page can increase conversions by up to 80%, so make sure to create videos that can work across any of your online pages.
  2. Show Consumers How Your Product Works
    • Demo videos are one of the more popular forms of small business video marketing because they highlight how your product works instead of describing its functionality via text.
    • An Animoto study found that nearly 75% of consumers are more likely to buy a product if they’ve seen a video explaining it before making a purchase.
    • Take the time to craft a video that tells a story and shows how your product works in an engaging manner, and you’ll be rewarded with more views and better conversions.
  3. Post Videos on Social Media to Get More Views and Clicks
    • No matter what other channels you’re using, social media is still one of the most important.
    • When engaging in local video marketing, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram remain the first point of contact for consumers interacting with your business, and a cost-effective marketing outreach tool.
    • More importantly, adding video to your social media strategy pays off. 64% of consumers noted that Facebook has influenced a purchasing decision, and videos net you a higher engagement rate than most other types of content.
  4. Use Video to Generate Hype for Your Products
    • You’re not going to be putting out new products every day, and it can be tough to keep advertising the same items repeatedly. However, this doesn’t necessarily have to grind your marketing strategy to a halt.
    • You can use tools like Boosted to create short, engaging “hype” videos to generate buzz about upcoming events, product launches, or promotions to fill gaps in your marketing campaigns.
    • This keeps you at the front of peoples’ minds while helping your brand stay relevant.

3 Examples of Awesome Small Business Marketing Videos

If the examples above weren’t enough, check out some of these great video marketing campaigns that went viral, and how they helped various companies in different ways.

1. This funny Burger King commercial, that allowed users to interact and get a good laugh at the same time.

2. A Golden Grahams appeal to college students – a great demonstration of knowing your target audience.

3. This Australian Tourism campaign, which takes a clever and appealing idea to promote the tourism industry.

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6 Ways that Small Businesses Can Compete Successfully with Larger Businesses

We all know of the big names in our field – in tech, there’s Google, Facebook and Microsoft. In coffeeshops, there’s Starbucks. The fast-food world is dominated by McDonald’s, Burger King, and KFC. How did these businesses build such an empire? And how can a small business owner compete with these larger, established businesses, in the hopes to one day have the same success?

So, how can you compete with big companies?

Below, you’ll find the 6 key methods with which a smaller business can compete with larger competitors. With these key methods, you’ll find the means by which to insert yourself in the market, and earn a portion of the market share.

Methods to Compete with Larger Businesses:

Innovation

Behind any successful business is the idea at its foundation and the belief that this idea is worth pursuing. Breaking into the market requires innovation, and innovation doesn’t happen overnight. But it’s not enough to just be innovative, you also have to stand by your ideas. Positioning expert Al Ries suggests that faith in your ability to innovate is as important as the innovation itself – and one of the biggest companies in the world, McDonald’s, proves just that.

McDonald’s was a project started by two brothers – by replacing waiters with a self-service counter and pre-packing burgers that were kept warm under heating lamps, they were able to quickly and cheaply provide food to customers. The idea was genius, innovation at its best – no one at the time had seen anything like it. But the McDonald brothers weren’t getting too far with this idea, until Ray Kroc came along. Ray Kroc believed in this idea, and franchised it. And this is how McDonald’s went from small business to an empire, and how Ray Kroc became owner of the McDonald’s name.

Conquer and own your niche

When it comes to competing with bigger companies, it pays to know your niche first and foremost.

The saying about being a Jack of all trades, but a master of none is true – you can’t have it all in the business world, especially as a small business. Your job as a small business owner is to cater to the smaller niche groups that are largely ignored or left aside by big businesses. This is because a small group has very specific needs, and specific needs are much easier to meet than generalized ones that will cause you to spread yourself thin.

Once you meet the needs of a smaller group, you will have that group’s trust – and they will be the ones to help you spread your services to related groups. If you make sure that your initial niches are satisfied, and are receiving a unique service from you, their trust will follow. This circle of trust that slowly grows will eventually allow you to compete with the large business market, and will allow you to own the niches in which you’ve worked so hard to establish yourself.

If you need an example of why slow and steady conquering of niche groups is your best growth strategy, look no further than the story of Facebook. By starting as a Harvard-only social network, gaining trust and a loyal user-base, and then slowly expanding outwards – first to related niches (other universities and high schools), and then to the general public, Facebook was able to become the dominant force in the social media network world.

Customer service

Bigger businesses often miss the target when it comes to customer service and customer support. With the ability to automate customer service in the last 20 years, big business has lost the personal touch that so many people need and appreciate.

Human nature encourages personalized attention and connection – and good customer service incorporates exactly that. Where big businesses lose customers due to frustration with automation and inability to receive assistance, it is possible for small businesses to shine. Once you make a personalized connection, customers are encouraged to continue doing business with you – even if it costs them an extra dime.

Scrappy social media

Just because social media runs the world, doesn’t mean that you can set all other strategies aside. In fact, one of the advantages of social media is that it can work for you, instead of you doing the work – and this is what we mean by scrappy social media.

One of the most important things to keep in mind with social media for business is that a long-term plan is crucial. You can’t expect to get to all the important people immediately, and you need to keep those that you pick up along the way hooked, and great social media will work on all these fronts. When you have a long-term plan, you’ll be able to keep your audience constantly engaged with the content you’re making for them, and you’ll keep them wanting more. Once you have a plan in effect, you won’t have to invest as much – a steady content plan develops its own rhythm, and will allow you to free up time in your schedule to plan out larger, more sophisticated strategies to reach your target audience.

In developing a scrappy social media strategy, you’ll want to do a few things.

  • First, look around – your competitors are competitors for a reason, and they will often also be a huge source of inspiration.
  • Second, think of how to emotionally appeal to your audience. Scrappy social media means that you don’t necessarily have to have the fanciest looking pages – as long as you’ve got your audience’s emotional investment, even with something simple (think memes!), you’re doing it right.
  • Third, use video content to visually engage your audience. As you’ll see below, video marketing (including video marketing for small local businesses) is one of the strongest forms of marketing in today’s consumer market, and social media is where the majority of people consume video content. You’ll need a professional video maker, and some awesome video ad templates.
  • Lastly, as you grow your social following, connect with your audience. These are the people who will then be your best salespeople, and this is influencer marketing at its finest.

By following these bits of advice, you’ll have a social strategy in no time – and one that can easily compete with that of big businesses.

Plan scalability

As a small business owner, you have to know both how to think small and how to think big. In order to establish yourself in your niche, you have to think small, about the details that will allow you to win over a very specific crowd. But a successful business model doesn’t end with satisfying one need of one niche.

Knowing your niche well will allow you to also think big – think about what other niches you can conquer, and where the future is taking you. You have to know not only how to grow, but into what other areas you’ll want to expand.

The other important aspect of planning scalability to keep in mind is that if you don’t believe in yourself, no one will. And believing in yourself means investing in yourself. Yes, frugality is also essential when you’re starting out small, but make sure to think ahead! Investing in high-quality equipment, for example, is essential. These will be long lasting, and instead of wasting your time and money on tools that repeatedly need to be replaced. Plan for growth, and set your sights on the future.

Sleek video marketing

Vision is the sense we rely on most – it’s no wonder that the majority of content that we consume is visual. With the amount of time people spend on social media only going up, and with attention spans becoming shorter and shorter, any business will really have to put forth the work to catch an audience’s attention. This is even more true for a small business, which may have limited reach.

Studies show that video is the most consumed type of content on social media – this is the type of content that will help you gain the most attention. As a small business owner with limited investing power, you need to keep in mind that each view counts. Because of this, your videos need to be sleek, well-designed, and powerful.

As a small business owner, you’ll find a lot of tools out there to help you with video content creation. You may have to invest some time to figure out which of these tools works best for you, but once you find one, it’ll be quick, trusty, and easy-to-use – and most importantly, will save you the time and the headache of dealing with the production of content creation.

Remember, video is the future of communication – now is the time to invest!

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