5 Easy Videos Every Small Business Can Make ASAP (With Awesome Examples)

Is your business currently producing video content to inform and engage your prospective clients?

Do you have a YouTube channel that you’re consistently uploading new videos to?

Do you have videos embedded, or linked to, in your blog posts, website pages, landing pages, thank you pages, and emails?

If you answered, “no” to any of these questions, then you might just be missing out on raking in tons of money for your business.

Here’s just a few statistics from Hyperfine Media that should encourage you to start shooting videos for your sales and marketing efforts ASAP:

• After watching a video, 64% of users are more likely to buy a product.
• Using a video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80%.
• Using videos in emails leads to 200-300% increase in click-through rates.
• 90% of users say that product videos are helpful in the decision process.
• 75% of executives watch work-related videos on business websites at least once a week.
• The average user is exposed to roughly 32.3 videos each month.
• YouTube reports mobile video consumption rises 100% every year.

Here at IMPACT, we talk with companies about creating videos for their website nearly every day. And many of these companies are willing to embrace the tremendous impact that video can have on their bottom line.

Even still, these companies often have a few reservations that keep them from jumping in front of a camera and hitting record for their first pieces of video content.

Some are concerned about the cost of equipment and production.

Some don’t feel entirely comfortable being on film.

And others aren’t sure how to best edit and upload new videos.

But easily the most voiced concerns these folks have is simply: Where do I start? What kinds of videos are the easiest to produce?

In this article, we’re going to discuss 5 easy types of videos that any business can start creating today without having to invest a small fortune.

Monologue Explainer Videos

If you’re a salesman, you probably feel most comfortable talking about your company’s products and services when you’re face-to-face with a client. It’s a more personal setting and therefore easier to build a great rapport.

Having someone’s undivided attention is a powerful way to educate them, build trust with them, and earn their business.

If there’s a topic you love to riff on, you can easily immortalize it and use it as a potent sales tool by speaking to a camera in nearly the same manner as you would to a customer in person.

That’s really all a monologue explainer video is: you talking to the camera as if it was a living, breathing client. Which is almost exactly what it is except with two major differences:

1. The living, breathing person is watching at home or from their phone.
2. You’re not just talking to one person.

Rather than having thousands of one-on-one conversations each year, you can record a single video that gets viewed thousands of times by as many people.

And you don’t have to give some over the top, dramatic performance either. You’re not Hamlet delivering one of his soliloquies here. Just be honest, straight forward, and as casual as you would be in person.

Doing these videos can be as easy as turning on your computer’s onboard camera and going on a quick and informative riff like our friends at ABTU did below:

Or, you can hand the camera off to a friend (or place it on a tripod) and have them film you describing one of your products like Yale Appliance did here:

And of course, once you’ve got a few of these explainer videos under your belt, you’ll be able to rip through an off-the-cuff rant with no problem.

Once you see the value your simple explainer videos can bring, you might want to invest in some decent lighting and audio equipment.

In post production, you can add an intro, some titles, and a little ambient music to make your monologue explainer videos look pro status.

Off Camera Interview

Some people feel awkward speaking directly to the camera. And it’s understandable, it’s a pretty weird feeling to have a conversation with an inanimate object rather than a real person.

For these folks, we can still put them in front of the camera solo, but instead of having them talk directly to the camera, we have them talk with a person just off to the side of the camera.

For the viewer, it’s a little less personal than the monologue explainer video, and it’s more like they’re witnessing one side of a conversation between two other people.

This technique is most recognizable in reality TV shows and documentaries. The person on the screen is explaining a topic to an interviewer sitting just to the side of the camera.

And while it’s indeed an interview, the answers are framed in a way that seems more like a monologue.

Rather than the expert answering the questions like in a normal conversation, they're instructed to repeat part of the question back along with their answer.

So instead of hearing the interviewer say something like, “Is product X safe for children and animals?” And the expert respond, “Yes it is. Because…”, you have them incorporate the question into their answer with something like, “Product X is perfectly safe for children and animals because…”

In the video below, our friends from Segue Technologies have one of their experts describe how the iPhone 5's larger screen would impact mobile app developers.

To help further clarify the topics their expert is discussing, they added titles to the video containing the questions to the answers he's giving.

In the next video, we have what appears to be a monologue explainer video, but done by having the subject looking just off camera. 

The way the expert is explaining the topic in this video, it appears as if he's reading a script off of a teleprompter just off screen. 

If you feel you need a teleprompter or cue cards to help you remember the direction of your topic, it's better to look off screen the entire time rather than ping pong back and forth between looking into the camera and at the script just off camera.

Once again, a little b-roll, titles, and background music can elevate your videos to the next level and help you tell your brand's story.

On Camera Interview

Not everybody is born with the gift of gab. A number of people just don’t feel comfortable in front of a camera by themselves.

And that’s fine.

If they’re not going to be great at explaining their information directly to the camera, and they need an accomplice to help them, why not put both the interviewer and the expert on film together?

Having two people on camera can take a little more setting up. You have to decide how you want them to share the screen. Ensure audio is equal for both. And arrange the lighting so they're both evenly lit.

One important thing to note in an interview style video is that it's the interviewer's job to make sure the interviewee is the star of the video.

They're there to keep the expert on topic, make sure they clarify any industry jargon for the layman, and to ask relevant follow-up questions.

What can you do if your industry expert lives halfway across the country from you?

You can  spend a fortune on airfare and lodging to have them come to you.

Or, you can simply fire up Skype or another video chat platform and conduct the interview online just like our very own George B. Thomas does for his new video podcast series, One Last Tool.

Once you have a few interviews tucked away, you'll get more comfortable helping make the interviewee shine while getting them to answer the tougher questions.

Whiteboard Explainer Videos

Do you have a topic that is a little more visual in nature but just don't have the know-how, time, or resources to allocate to expensive graphics?

Do you normally explain your topics to your team or customers using a whiteboard?

Or maybe you just want to enrich your explanations with an easy visual to accompany the information.

In any case, whiteboard explainer videos take things back to a classroom setting and help you teach your audience in a simple, yet helpful manner.

In the video below, a whiteboard helps explain a hard to see process (because most basement are underground).

Rather than spend money on expensive digital exploded diagram videos, the folks at US Waterproofing turned to the affordable whiteboard and dry erase marker.

This one is a little bit of a hybrid between a monologue and a whiteboard explainer video.

With this video, I was planning on using a whiteboard to explain my topic but ran into one major problem:

My handwriting is worse than your primary care physician's written prescription. It's that bad.

So instead of using the whiteboard in the video, we created an easy digital whiteboard to highlight the topic.

Now, if you want to see the whiteboard explainer videos perfected, you won't want to miss Moz's Rand Fishkin's Whiteboard Friday videos.

Screencast Explainer

If your products or services all exist in the digital realm, how can you best show your audience how various aspects of your platform work?

Answer: with screencast explainer videos.

Using an affordable screen capture platform like Camtasia allows you to record with both your onboard camera as well as what's currently on your computer's screen.

Not to mention, many of these screen capture platforms come with easy to use video editing software.

With screencast videos, you can deliver quick and easy demonstrations of your software to interested prospects and current users who may need a little extra guidance.

Check out the video below from Ahrefs as they explain how you can use their tool to learn how to steal traffic from your business's competitors.

The best way to create these videos isn't always to take somebody through the entire tool in one video.

Instead, you can make dozens (or hundreds like our own George Thomas has done with his HubSpot tutorials) of short videos showing off all of the nooks and crannies of your tool.

Many searchers will have very specific questions, and creating videos that address those precision inquiries saves them from sifting through long videos as they search for short answers.

Take a tool like Adobe Photoshop. With something so incredibly in-depth with multiple ways of performing similar tasks, it would take the typical end user a very long time to learn all aspects of the tool.

And as I mentioned before, but can't stress enough, many of your software's users will never hit pro level, but will still want to have pro level results.

And as such, they'll often turn to YouTube to search for quick and easy answers.

If you're willing to hone in on these targeted questions, you'll delight new and veteran users alike.

How To/ Demonstration Videos

According to Google, "How To" related searches are increasing by 70% year over year.

And of these searches, the top three industries getting the most searches are in the home improvement, beauty, and cooking industries.

If you're in these spaces and not creating "how to" videos, you could be missing out in a major way.

I know what you're probably thinking, "If I show them how to do a service that I perform myself, they won't want to hire me to do it for them."

And sure, some DIY types might watch your videos and go on to do themselves, but the vast majority of people won't.

Many just want to see what the process entails.

Some might have plans to give it a shot but after watching a video realize they don't have all the proper tools, materials, and resources at their disposal to do a respectable job.

Let's take something that sounds fairly easy: building a dog house. Sounds easy enough, right? After all, it's just a dog house.

Aside from this video having creative editing timed perfectly to the music, it would quickly discourage all but the most tenacious DIY'er from taking a swing at it.

And you may have noticed that it didn't even include detailed descriptions (materials and tools needed, lengths of cuts, etc), it simply demonstrated the amount of work this guy puts into his custom dog houses.

But what can you do if you feel like you have a superior product to your competitors, but those competitors are all household names?

It could be pretty tough to carve yourself a piece of the market pie.

Sometimes all you need is a camera and a creative way of demonstrating your product like the folks at Blendtec had.

Throughout this article you may have noticed that I've shared a few of Marcus Sheridan's videos.

He is my boss after all. And the fact that he's a world-class speaker doesn't hurt.

But if you're ever wondering if you could ever reach the level he's currently at, just know that he started off in the same position you might be in right now.

He was a small business owner trying to communicate with his audience in the ways they wanted to communicate. And a lot of that was through "how to" videos like the one below:

You see, nobody starts off at the high level. It's not something inherent in most people. Even the guys that seem to effortlessly crush it on video had to start somewhere.

As you can probably guess, here at IMPACT we love creating videos and talking about videos, but more than anything, we love teaching businesses how to be great with videos.

If you feel like you're ready to jump over the fence into the land of video content, but are afraid you won't stick the landing, we'd love to help you out.