Why can’t small businesses do short video marketing well?

This article shares the author's experience in helping SMEs with short video marketing over the years, points out the common misunderstandings that SMEs often encounter in short video marketing, and gives targeted suggestions. It is recommended for SME managers and related personnel to read.

In the past few years, I have helped many small businesses and self-employed individuals with short video marketing, and have seen many successful or failed cases. Some of my experiences may be helpful to you, so let’s talk about them briefly today.

Let's talk about small businesses and self-employed individuals separately, because medium and large enterprises are often not short of money and have a variety of marketing methods. In the foreseeable future, there will be fewer and fewer opportunities for big business. How can small businesses and self-employed individuals market themselves? I can't think of a better way than content cost-effectiveness.

The simplest principle of doing business is to go where there are many people. Nearly 800 million people use Douyin every day, not to mention platforms such as Video Account and Xiaohongshu. Your company is still writing public accounts, I am afraid it loves words too much. In 2023, if companies in the toC business are still hesitant about whether to make short videos, the only explanation is that there is no survival pressure.

However, many companies have tried short video content marketing, but the results are not ideal. I have observed several reasons for this, so please be careful to avoid pitfalls.

The most common misunderstanding is that people only need to shoot their own products and services in short videos, without the awareness of building real-life IP and personal brands. The biggest advantage of short videos and live broadcasts is not only that the consumption threshold is low, but also that real people can appear on camera. Compared with products and services, people can leave a deeper impression on others. Because people are always unique and concrete, they are also the easiest to attract the attention of others. Trust is built on specific people, paving the way for further consumption.

Some bosses are aware of the importance of real people appearing on camera, but they may feel that they are not good-looking enough, their voices are not pleasant, or their expressions are not attractive, so they let their employees or third-party teams appear on camera, which means they fall into the second pit.

Your own company has someone else's face that users remember. Once the employee leaves or the third-party team is replaced, the IP will be gone.

Therefore, short videos for enterprises are not only the work of the top leaders, but also require the top leaders to appear in person. What I hate to hear the most is that the boss says that he is too shy to appear on camera. What kind of business is he doing if he is so fragile inside?

Finally, the boss sat in front of the camera and saw that the iPhone was too low-end. He bought a SLR, a tripod, and a radio equipment, and then a reflector, a fill light, and a MAC Pro for post-production.

After all the operations, I recorded two videos and nothing else happened. It was as if I had bought a gym membership and all the equipment, but only took a shower.

In fact, the most important thing for content creation is "quantity" rather than "quality". More important than equipment is the sense of camera and the improvisation that comes out of your mouth, which requires sufficient time and frequency to train. Just like running, just put on some sneakers and start running.

So the boss worked very hard, posting three short videos every day, even on weekends and holidays. Three months later, he saw that his fans were only in the double digits, half of whom were his own employees. He collapsed and felt that fairy tales were all lies.

There are two possibilities here. Assuming the quality of the content you are producing is good, then just keep doing it, regardless of the number of followers.

Enterprises have their own core businesses. They make short videos to acquire potential customers, not to increase followers. You don’t accept advertisements, so why do you look at the number of followers? Create content based on business. Content is a means, not an end. If there is traffic and customer inquiries, it is enough to direct them to the private domain.

There is another greater possibility, which is that the content quality is indeed not good enough.

The most common phenomenon is placing too much emphasis on personal expression, lacking altruism awareness, and using the self-centered mindset of posting on WeChat Moments to create marketing content.

If you run a business, it means you are an insider in your industry. You need to pass on relevant knowledge of the industry and provide value to benefit the audience, so as to build their goodwill and trust in you and have a chance to buy your products and services. You can't just think about making a sale.

Secondly, the content lacks interest, the expression is not popular enough, and it is too awkward and boring, resulting in poor indicators such as the completion rate. Naturally, the platform will not give you more recommended traffic.

Many people don't understand what content platforms want. If you need traffic, you can either exchange it with good content or spend money to buy it. It's best to have both. What is good content? Interesting and useful.

What is even more taboo is that there is no technical team to study platform rules, competing products, content, operations, and delivery, and there is no sales team to take over form conversions.

The boss is responsible for business delivery and enterprise management, so he has no energy to study content gameplay. Content-related work should be done by a dedicated person, preferably someone within the company. He needs to keep learning and improving, understand both the business and the platform, and guide the boss to continuously optimize the content.

Even if the boss is able to independently undertake content planning and output in the initial stage, after a certain stage, a dedicated person is still needed to be responsible for content work, especially after short videos become bigger, they may move to live streaming.

At this point, "content partners" will become a standard feature of enterprises in the future. If new media content creators really can't roll, they can find and join the right business team to create content around the business.

The last possible mistake is to continue using the same set of content on various platforms after achieving certain results. This may not have mattered in previous years, but this year the rules and gameplay of major content platforms have become different.

For example, Douyin is a combination of general entertainment and search, and Xiaohongshu is a bit like the video version of Zhihu, with many customers for precise search. Therefore, these two platforms need to study the dual rules of recommendation + SEO. Video accounts must cooperate with Moments to promote sales conversion of private domain traffic, and the focus of content should not be on traffic generation but transaction orientation.

In this case, we need to operate precisely and make targeted optimizations based on the characteristics of different platforms. In the next few years, small businesses and self-employed individuals may face great pressure to survive, but we also have the advantages of low cost and flexibility. If we use short videos to leverage our business, we will have the opportunity to make a small profit. Large platforms have already taken care of the infrastructure, just like water, electricity, and gas. People doing business must embrace change and use these conditions faster and better than their peers.

Author: Judge

Source: WeChat public account "Panguan Lao Lingsi (ID: panguansyas)"