What benefits does video offer?
20 years ago in order to market your company with video advertising you had to go to one of the big 5 media companies, spend thousands of dollars, and hope that you got a good ROI. Those days are long gone, you can get a video posted to your website for as little as $300 depending on the videographer.
It used to be that you could market effectively with just text ads, however that is no longer the case. In an era where visitors will leave your site if it doesn't load in under 3 seconds, video is more crucial than ever. When a visitor visits your website, they are looking for 2 things.
The customer wants the information as quickly as possible with as little effort as possible, so a website video is extremely important for those impatient clients.
Customers are looking for a company they can form a relationship with. Your video starts that relationship with the client before they even walk through the door.
These two main factors, regardless of how you spin them, will determine the overall success of your website after your website has been properly optimized. As a business, there's only so many people searching for you leading to so many people landing on your page. What would your business look like if you increase your conversion rate by 80% by using a video production company to post a video to your website?
How to verify yourself
As a small business, I kept up on marketing stats. In any given month my GMB profile would generate about 4,000 views a month leading to about 400 website visitors. I have noticed that about 10% of your GMB profile views will convert into website traffic. A common misconception is that your client will call you from your GMB profile, however that's not true. I have found that before people call you to set up an appointment, they want to look around on your website before they call.
I think that in order to understand how important video is for your company and website, you must look at the path to conversion for your client. As stated above, my clients searched for me on google, once they found me, then they verified the quality of my work. Those clients that were on the fence before they clicked on my website were able to make a decision based upon GMB reviews. Prior to adding video to my website I would get 25 calls a month meaning a 6.25% conversion rate, once I added video I started getting 48 calls a month meaning a 12% conversion rate.