The Role of Video in SMEs

In may of this year, 2012, small business trends reported that more and more small businesses are, as the put it, ‘jumping on the video bandwagon’. This new trend of video marketing got me wandering about the opportunities that it may present for The Finn View B&B. Video can offer small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) an inexpensive marketing method and with PromotionWorld reporting that technologies for video production, video email and video streaming that allow businesses to add videos to their marketing mix are also maturing, and the US Financial Chronical predicting that online traffic will quadruple by 2015 in part because of the explosion of video content and a market for that content on the Web, it seems even more important that we consider video marketing regardless on the size of our businesses.

Would The Finn View B&B benefit from a video marketing campaign?

We like to think that we are quite advanced when it comes to online marketing in general however the use of video is not something that has been contemplated before. However, having read the available information and statistics it appears that we may be missing out on a great oppurtunity. With this in mind the role of video was investigated and discussed with the following outcomes being reached;

Despite the evidence suggesting that any business can benefit from the use of video, I am unsure as to what role video could play in The Finn View B&B. Having weighed up the different options available, it has been concluded that the use of original video created by the company would not really work for the organisation. For instance, video could be used to give potential customers a virtual tour of the guesthouse on our website however, as a relatively small establishment, still images throughout the page can be just as effective.

With that being said video can still benefit the company through the use of other people’s recordings. As a sporting themed venue we could benefit greatly from videos created by others, although not strictly as a marketing tool. By sharing short sporting moments, such as Donegal lifting the Sam Maguire Cup or Finn Harps scoring a last minute winning goal, on our social media sites we can communicate with our followers and remind them where we are and what we do. While this may not lead to immeadiate sales keeping the guesthouse fresh in people’s minds may result in them thinking of us first in the future.