Video Marketing: 3 Reasons To Make Product Videos if You Sell Stuff Online

"OMG! I know your voice from the videos. This is so cool."

This is what more than a client, by now, has told my wife.

Why?

Because she sells crochet and knitting yarns online and she promotes her products by making videos and by shooting how to tutorials.

She shoots the vids and I edit them, of course. :) Then she uploads the final edit onto her Facebook page and on her YouTube channel - she also embeds these onto her site on each product page.

Why you should do this too.

Well, let's start with the obvious:

1. It's the next best thing next to touching and seeing a product in in real life

A picture is worth a thousand words, right? What about a video where each second has 25 or 30 frames (that's 25 or 30 pictures if you you're not familiar with video terminology). I guess we're talking about 25,000 words per second. That's a lot of words.

But wait. It's not blabber. It's imagery that nurtures the senses, thus helping the viewer to make a better decision.

If you use a small compact camera that does auto-focus while recording you can get some pretty good videos. When you bring your product up close to the lens of the camera, the viewer can actually see the details and the texture of your product.

And what better way to sell a product if not demonstrate how it works. Video lets you do that even with no words.

So get into making product videos if you sell stuff online. It adds to the shopping experience of the customer and the perceived value of your brand will be higher.

All you need is a basic aluminum tripod and a point and shoot camera which has a built in microphone. In case you wanna go crazy recording separate sound - here's how to capture sound separately - and then synchronize it with the footage in post production. 

2. It creates a personal connection with your audience

Here's something that contradicts what I've just written above:

Some people will dislike you when you make videos. Hell, some may even hate you.

And that's a good thing. Why?

Before I tell you why, let me make a scientific point by quoting a study made by the psychologists behind the dating site OkCupid.

They discovered that within a group of female users which had the same rating of attractiveness (say an average of 3.5 out of 5) some got significantly more messages from male users than the others.

The reason?

Those girls had more polarity: a tattoo that was visible, a bold haircut, a funny face expression, piercings. Anything that was outside of usual made a big impact on those horny respectable and responsible male adults.

See what I've just done here? I've given you a chance to disagree with me by intentionally letting the word horny stand there (even though it's strike-through).

The more personality you add to your videos, the more of a polarizing effect you will get. Some will hate you and some will love you.

If you make plain videos the general perception of those videos will be... meh! You don't want that.

You want haters instead. Coz with haters lovers come too. And that's where the real personal connection is created.

Let me riff off on this subject a little more since we're both marketers here (I assume you sell stuff online too, but I can only guess - I'm not a psychic).

The legendary copywriter and marketer Frank Kern said something that suck with me: in the beginning of your career as a marketer and content creator, focus on offering 80% actionable value (tips, tutorials, hard core info) and 20% on style (personality, humor, charisma).

As your audience gets more used to you, gradually switch to 80% personality and 20% tutorial-like value.

Frank knows something about human nature: if you wanna deliver actionable information, you have to be an entertainer. Otherwise people won't listen. Again, we see this polarizing thing coming up.

3. You'll sell more stuff

The two points above corroborate and you'll simply sell more products. That and you'll also create a higher overall perception of your brand.

Not to mention that this a great way to differentiate yourself from your competition.

In a world where a lot of business owners are just focused on the product, you can easily stand out by adding oomph to your image as a brand. Video helps with that.

Conclusion

Grab yourself some basic video gear and software from Amazon or from any place online or offline:

• a tripod
• a point and shoot camera that shoots HD video
• a video editing program

The setup is fairly simple (see photo): a white carton allows your viewers to focus solely on the product - there are no distractions. Most cameras having the microphone on the top side, it naturally points to you when you set it up like this, capturing clear sound. The tripod is balanced on a heap of books.

Later, when you edit the footage, you just flip the image upside down. Check out the split screen tutorial for that and much more.

But it doesn't have to be you who's doing all this. Partner up with a whizz kid who knows this stuff already. That's when you can truly leverage your position as an entrepreneur.

Not to mention that with YouTube you get free video hosting while getting valuable exposure to search traffic as well. YouTube being the second largest search engine after Google. People actually search for products on YouTube. Video marketing is THE THING to do now.

If you wanna play around with this yourself though, then you're like me. :) Have a look at my tutorials and drop tweets or comments if you have questions. I'll reply.

Happy selling!

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