Running a small business these days is kind of like online dating:

The competition is fierce and you rely on standing out and building relationships to get you to the next step.

And if you’re a business owner, chances are you feel that competition growing. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of businesses with 500 or fewer employees (including solopreneurs) rose from 27.9 million in 2011 to 30.2 million in 2015. And if you’re part of a nonprofit, you know that every dollar you can capture is critical to your mission and that your competition is strong, too, especially around giving season. That’s why it’s more important than ever that, whether your organization is a small business or nonprofit, you get creative in thinking of ways to stand out above the crowd in the New Year. Just like couples who’ve used videos to connect on dating sites, videos that humanize your organization are a great way of standing out and making connections, too.

Build Relationships and Trust With Video

Do you know how your potential customers or donors decide who to support? If you’re a small business owner, you have likely found that you grab customers and clients by forming relationships. You network to share info about your business or your happy clients refer their contacts to you. And if you’re a nonprofit, you probably have development team members who get out in the community to build relationships while other donors lend their support because they are or know someone who’s benefited from what you do.

Video allows you to multiply the benefits of relationship building because you can extend your reach. You and your team can only be out in the community so much. But you can supplement those efforts with one or multiple videos that show the human side to your organization.

Take this video example for Andersen Law PC. Owner Beth Andersen prides herself on the fact that she is extremely accessible to current and even potential clients. She is always available to answer questions and lets them decide how they work with her firm rather than having strict rules about it. She could simply state these things on her website, but in addition to that, she had Denver Film and Digitalshoot a series of videos that actually show her offering beneficial advice to viewers as she walks them through how to handle various issues like estate planning and filing for divorce in Colorado.

Over the course of these six, brief videos, viewers get a sense of Beth’s calm, confident and friendly demeanor, while they also benefit from her expertise before they ever meet her. People who want to learn about these legal issues can find her videos on her website within blog posts as well as her YouTube channel, and Facebook and LinkedIn pages.

In a highly competitive industry like family law, Beth has stayed ahead of most in her field by leveraging videos to let people understand that she is trustworthy and to feel like they are working with her before they even call.

How One-Camera Testimonials Humanize Your Organization

We can develop a video that humanizes a company or nonprofit in a variety of ways. While Beth displayed her expertise herself, nonprofits often opt to have clients who have benefitted from their services give on-camera testimonials of the organization. A combination of testimonials with maybe information from employees or executives can help tell the organization’s story in a way that compels viewers to action.

In general, testimonials provide powerful social proof — the fact that others influence our decisions. In fact, 2017 stats showthat 85 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation from a friend. Reviews and testimonials are powerful. And here’s why video is especially key: Viewers can see and hearthe genuinely happy customer or client. The skeptical part of their brain can be satisfied in seeing a real person show what they sense to be real emotion rather than wonder if someone provided a review under less than ethical means. They see that a real person took time out of their day to come speak on camera in support of what your organization does because they feel that strongly about it.

If you are ready to see how you can use video to humanize your organization and show others what you’re all about to stand out from the competition, contact Denver Film and Digital today at ssealy@denverfilmdigital.comor 303-274-9319.