Guide to Video Marketing for SaaS Businesses

Introduction

Many marketers would say that video marketing is the way of the future. Still, with over 85% of internet users in the United States watching video content weekly, it’s safe to say the future is now.

So, what exactly makes video marketing so effective, and how can you benefit from its implementation? Read on for a complete guide to video marketing for SaaS businesses.

You can use video marketing to attract customers, convert them into buyers, and retain existing customers by keeping them entertained and informed. Engaging with your present and potential customers through video marketing is often more effective than textual or image-based marketing.

Why Does Your SaaS Business Need Video Marketing?

Background

Video marketing works incredibly well for SaaS and software businesses. Why? Because your customers are already on the internet and making use of digital platforms.

Over the last few years, this medium popularity has grown exponentially, with video moving from a mere marketing tactic to an entire business strategy utilized by some of the most successful SaaS companies.

Keep in mind that video-sharing company YouTube is the second largest search engine globally – and with good reason. Right now, people are looking to videos for information on every aspect of their lives.

Create engaging videos, and you could reach new customers or reengage previous clients. Video can also be highly effective for converting B2B prospects for SaaS and software businesses. You can create videos in various styles targeted to your audience segment and purpose and be designed for your different marketing funnel stages.

SaaS video marketing can drive traffic to your website, create greater customer engagement, increase your marketing return on investment (ROI), accelerate sales, and improve customer loyalty. But more about this later.

10 Video Marketing Statistics

Video is an incredibly effective marketing tool, with some pretty staggering statistics:

• One-third of time online is spent watching videos.
• People watch an average of 16 hours of video online per week.
• Viewers remember 95% of the information when they watch it online compared to just 10% when reading it as text.
• Social video generates 1200% more shares than text and image combined.
• 96% of people have watched a video to learn more about a product or service.
• 68% of consumers prefer video to articles and infographics for learning about new products and services.
• 64% of consumers make a purchase after watching branded social content.
• 86% of people would like brands to produce more video content.
• Adding a video to a landing page can increase conversion by 80%.
• The average user spends 88% more time on a website with video.

These are just a few of the standout statistics, but from these numbers, it’s clear that SaaS businesses cannot afford to ignore this powerful marketing medium.

7 Key Benefits of Video Marketing for SaaS and Software Businesses

1. Drive Traffic and Boost Your SEO Ranking

Video platforms like YouTube boost SEO rankings for individual videos and the pages that host them. Viewers will stay on your site longer if they’re watching a video, which increases the session duration on your website. And if people are staying longer on your site, that’ll open help to boost your SEO ranking.

People are also more likely to visit your website after watching one of your videos on another social media channel. In this way, more videos equal more traffic – and more traffic equals a greater SEO ranking.

2. Increase Your Conversions

People want quick answers to their questions, and they want to get those answers in an engaging way. With life getting busier and attention spans decreasing, videos that are short and engaging tend to perform better when it comes to conversions. It’s also easy to track these conversions with analytics tools.

3. Save Time, Money, and Resources

Videos can save on hours of customer support. For example, a well-produced product demo video helps save time, money, and resources on call-center costs to help customers determine how a product or service works. A video, which showcases a product or service in a simple, easy way could also replace a brochure or a text-based website page.

Videos can replace multiple advertising and social media campaigns, getting consumers to learn more, do more, and engage more with far less time and effort on your part.

Lastly, videos are easier to digest and remember than long reams of text, which translates to being better at generating leads.

Tip: Research shows that users are more likely to respond to a call-to-action contained inside a video.

4. Build Your Community and Appeal to Audiences

Videos make it easier for SaaS businesses to reach their audiences in a way that promotes engagement. Customer testimonial videos, for example, can be presented in such a way that they build trust for a business or product. Customers who see real people’s experiences with your product are more likely to purchase it.

A new trend for SaaS businesses is to create company culture videos. These give viewers behind-the-scenes insight into what it’s like inside your business. Use it to convey a sense of transparency, and promote your business’s personality to leave a lasting impression on your audience.

5. Increase Engagement

As videos are often hosted or posted on social media platforms, they’re excellent tools for increasing engagement on your channels. People will share videos they find interesting or entertaining and are more likely to respond to them if they find them useful.

Tip: Aim to stimulate positive discussion with the videos you create and share. Try to provide real value, inspire your audience, or entertain your fans and followers.

6. Increase Brand Awareness

Most businesses are looking to increase brand awareness, especially if they haven’t been around for too long. Do you want more people to know about your brand and do business with you? Then create videos that will interest and resonate with your target audience.

Competition is rife, so your videos need to stand out. They must be original, memorable, shareable, and creative. If they are, users will remember your brand and recommend it to others.

Tip: Set aside some ad budget to promote your videos to the right target audience.

7. Opportunities for Creativity

One of the most significant benefits of video marketing is that it allows greater creativity than many other mediums. Videos can include custom graphics, animations, live-action, or augmented reality. They can bring humor or personality to your brand, tell your company’s fascinating story, or showcase satisfied customers. The options for innovation are endless.

Tip: Be as creative and original as possible, as this will set your business apart from other brands.

How To Get Started With SaaS Video Marketing

1. Determine Your Audience

Start by first asking a few critical questions. Who is it that you’re trying to reach? Where are they within your marketing funnel, why will video affect them, and what are their pain points?

These are the initial questions to discuss with your marketing team. Create buyer personas for your potential audience if you haven’t done so yet, and then target your videos at those specific categories of people.

2. Choose Your Platform(s)

You might start by publishing videos on your website and sharing them through your newsletter. Still, there are many other platforms to consider, and it’s essential to choose your platform based on where your audience tends to find their video content.

Do your research and determine which social media platforms are most likely to work for you. For example, is your audience on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook? Do they spend a lot of time on YouTube, Vimeo, or TikTok? These are just some of the platforms to consider.

The great thing about video content is that you can post it across many platforms, so you don’t need to put all of your eggs into one basket.

Tip: Remember to use video formats that are supported by the platforms you choose.

3. Create a Clear Video Marketing Strategy

It’s vital to be explicit about your video marketing strategy. For this, you’ll have to work closely with your sales and marketing departments. Produce a strategy that gives a clear direction to your video content.

Consider the following:

• What is the goal of the video marketing strategy?
• Are you aiming to increase brand awareness, sell more subscriptions, or build your database?
• What kinds of videos will help you to achieve these goals?
• What is the budget?
• Who handles the various stages of content production and dissemination?
• What will constitute success for your video marketing efforts, and how will this be measured?

4. Showcase Your Product

Any videos you create will need to show off your product or service. Decide what information you want to give your potential customers and think about the impression you’d like to make. Consider doing a demo video or shooting a customer testimonial. How do you make your product look and sound the most appealing to your customers?

What Makes a Good Marketing Video?

1. Educating Your Viewers

Many people are visual learners. Videos created for marketing purposes work well if they’re educational in some way. Consider teaching your viewers how to use your product or service. You can even create a series of video tutorials to showcase your industry knowledge and add value to your viewers’ lives.

2. Storytelling

Most of us respond well to stories. If you can, try to include a strong, emotive narrative in your videos. Decisions to purchase a product often happen subconsciously, through people’s feelings. Tell real stories to draw your customers in.

3. Precise Targeting

Get to know your audience and create video content specifically for them. Creating buyer personas is a critical step in this process.

4. Consistency

Your videos need to be consistent in terms of branding, as part of what you’re doing is building brand awareness. It’s also a good idea to maintain consistency around how often you post.

5. Optimization

Make sure your videos are optimized for maximum performance.

This can be done by paying attention to the following:

• Use keywords.
• Add descriptions.
• Create transcripts.
• Do multi-platform promotions.
• Create tags and hashtags.
• Use engagement signals.
• Employ audience-retention strategies.

Tick all these boxes, and you’ll create a video that’s optimized to reach the audience you’re after.

6. Simplicity

Watch time plays a significant role in how likely viewers are to finish a video. Keeping your video short and simple will make it more effective. The message must also be simple and easy to understand. Over-complicate things, and your viewers are likely to drop off long before the end of the video.

7. Strong Calls-to-Action

All good marketing videos contain a clear call-to-action at the end of the video. These can be an encouragement to buy a product or service, or they could be a call to share or comment on the video.

Which Types of Videos Work Best for SaaS Marketing?

Company Videos

Company videos can bring a human touch to your SaaS business. This type of video could include your company’s reason for being, along with your vision, mission, roots, and goals. This type of video will allow your viewers to get to know you better and can also feature in the “About Us” section on your website.

Educational Videos

Educational videos offer the viewer information that’s useful and interesting to them. If your brand can make learning fun, people are more likely to engage with and share your videos. Make sure the information you impart is linked to your SaaS product or service.

Video Infographics

An infographic is a visual representation of data and information. Infographic videos can convey information clearly and quickly as they condense complicated information into easy-to-understand content. These are great to use for educational purposes.

FAQ-Type Videos

FAQ-type videos can deal with the most common questions your customer support and sales teams field. Create complete answers to users’ most common questions in a video and post the video to your website and social media platforms.

Customer Case Studies and Testimonials

Case study videos are quick interviews with customers who are satisfied with your product or service. They’re handy in that they provide social proof of your product or service’s success. Try to incorporate a before and after element, and make these videos short and focused. They should resonate with the specific pain points of your viewers..

Product Demos

Product demos or product explainer videos showcase your product or service and how to use it. People often like to see products in action before they buy them, and these videos include simple explanations of key features of the product or service.

Make sure your videos address the audience’s challenges and how your product or service can benefit them. Keep them short and sweet.

Social and Storytelling Videos

Social videos are used to spark conversations on social media, which increases engagement and reach. They can be similar to educational or testimonial videos but should be specifically optimized for social media.

A nice idea is to humanize your company by showing the people who are part of your team.

Expert Interviews and Trending News

People like videos that help them advance in their careers and do their jobs better. Consider using experts to share educational content and relevant knowledge, which can help build credibility and trust with customers.

Webinars and live streams are great starting points. These can then be recorded and used over and over again. If you include a call-to-action, these videos can also drive sales.

Landing Page Videos

Videos on landing pages increase the length of time people stay on your website, which is good for SEO. Placed strategically, these videos can also help to drive customers further down the sales funnel.

Customer Support Videos

Customer support is vital to customer retention. With customer support videos, you can help customers find a solution to any problems they might encounter while using your service or product. You can also share these videos with users as concerns or questions pop up, making your support team’s job easier.

Final Thoughts on Video Marketing for SaaS Businesses

Video really is a vital element in today’s marketing mix, and the demand for video continues to rise. Using video marketing for SaaS should help take your business to the next level.