Trust is at the core of all aspects of business, but it becomes particularly vital when those business elements involve an online component. After all, when lacking in-person interactions with a product, service or brand representative, all that most people have to inform their decision-making stems from whatever content and online track record they’ve managed to build over time.
This is precisely why high-quality marketing videos have become a staple for strategies meant to nurture customer confidence and brand reputation online. While videos are a flexible and attention-grabbing medium that can get your core message across effectively, not all videos are created equal. There are several design and production cues you’ll want to follow when your goal is to produce a marketing piece that bolsters your brand’s reputation.
How Can Video Content Create Consumer Trust?
High-quality videos can establish your brand as authentic and relatable, demonstrate your brand’s expertise in its field, help you connect with your consumers on a personal level and solidify ongoing customer relationships.
How High Quality Videos Nurture Trust
Out of the different types of media you can easily access online, video stands out for its ability to capture people’s attention and make a lasting impression on them. When experienced professionals produce a marketing video meant to inspire confidence, they focus their content around four core areas that have proven to be effective time and again.
1. Authenticity
Videos that clearly communicate a company’s values, vision, mission and goals in an authentic and relatable way can be game changers when it comes to earning trust from your audience. By making content that humanizes your brand and approaches viewers in a way they can easily relate to, you are going the extra mile to engage people as people and not just potential customers.
2. Expertise
People trust other people when they consider them capable and talented, and the same goes for companies. Developing videos that deliver valuable and accurate information to viewers can help you establish your brand as a thought leader in its industry, making it likely customers will return to do business with you later on.
3. Pathos
Video as a medium gives you a lot of avenues to tap into human emotions, foster empathy and establish a genuine connection with viewers. Appealing to people’s emotions makes them more receptive to and invested in what you have to say. It takes little to make a video that delivers data efficiently — but make one that does so while also engaging the viewer on an emotional level, and you have a piece they won’t soon forget.
4. Relationships
While you’ll rarely alter the contents of a video once you finish it, you should always keep in mind that videos are meant to initiate or further a relationship with the viewer. That relationship can take many forms; you might want to provide helpful information, convince them to take action or maybe just ensure they’ll think of your brand when the time comes. Regardless, a video looking to further customer confidence must proactively establish these relationships and give viewers a reason to engage with your brand long after they are done watching.
Nurture Customer Confidence in Your Brand
Now that we’ve covered the broad strokes required to make a video that establishes trust in your brand, let’s to move on to the nitty-gritty details of producing them. Nowadays, you have plenty of types of marketing videos to choose from, so the specific production needs of each project will vary widely. There are three core principles, however, you’ll want to apply to your video content when your primary goal is to gain consumer trust.
1. Use Storytelling to Its Full Potential
Stories hold great value in our culture, and we’re naturally more open to understanding and agreeing with a message when it’s paired with a good tale. Craft a compelling narrative that weaves into your video’s core message, ensure the narrative reflects the perspectives and needs of your audience — and you have a video that elevates how people see and interact with your brand. Great types of videos to incorporate storytelling into are video explainers, culture videos and company story videos.
2. Showcase Real Customers and Their Experiences
People trust people. How much you can use that fact to your advantage largely depends on the type of video you want to create, as some types of videos are more compatible than others with featuring live-action segments of real customers speaking.
But if it works with your video and you can find current customers willing to talk about the positive impact your company or product had in their lives, your video will go a long way to help you build social proof. Types of videos ideal to showcase customers include testimonial videos, reviews and case studies.
3. Keep it Simple
Coming across as unnecessarily complicated or unclear is a sure way to make people second-guess what you have to say. Regardless of the type of video and style you’re going for, ensuring that you convey your ideas simply and articulately will do wonders for nurturing customer trust.
And while there’s a case to be made for using technical jargon when covering complex topics — especially in B2B scenarios — you’ll want to condense your message to its most straightforward version. Some types of videos that greatly benefit from being kept simple include product videos, educational videos and expert interviews.
Videos Boost Your Marketing Efforts
With all the misinformation online, earning your consumers’ trust and confidence is more important than ever before. High-quality video content can help establish your company as reliable, and now you have a clear picture of how to build out your video marketing strategy. Time to get those cameras rolling!
