For all of the power that digital marketing has brought to businesses, two sales methods remain the most effective: videos that let leads sit, watch, and feel the product; and contact with a real salesperson who can answer questions, respond to objections, and build enough trust to persuade people to buy.
Fortunately, there’s one technique that manages to combine both of them.
Live video provides the comfort and ease of video ads and the personal touch of a sales agent. And it’s easy to do.
While there are now plenty of platforms that allow video marketing, you can stick to Facebook. It’s where your customers already congregate. It’s a platform you’re accustomed to using. And it’s a place your leads expect to interact with you.
Facebook Live lets you talk directly with your audience—and it allows them to interact with you. As you’re talking, they’ll be able to add comments and send you questions, turning a presentation into a two-way conversation.
You can broadcast any content in a Facebook Live video but marketers tend to stick to two forms:
Product Demos
Product demos are the simplest and the most familiar form of live video marketing. If it works on the Shopping Channel, you can be confident that it can work for you in front of an audience that’s already shown an interest in your product. Wilton Cake Decorating, for example, sells cake-making accessories and uses live video to show customers how to use their products to make beautiful cakes.
If you can make the demo interesting and entertaining, people will watch it and buy.
Live AMAs
Just as much fun is a kind of AMA session. This method is especially effective for personal coaches and other people selling services. You can take a seat, point a camera at yourself, and invite leads to shoot their questions to you. It’s a great way to understand the issues that concern your leads, and to beat down any objections in public. It can also make for great publicity. Tom Holland did a live AMA on Facebook Live to promote Spiderman Homecoming.
Boost Your Video with Belive.tv
Facebook Live gives you plenty of tools that will make creating those videos very easy. But you can go even further. Belive.tv adds features to Facebook Live. You can bring up comments on your screen in a neat bubble so that viewers know which question you’re answering. You can split the screen to broadcast interviews with other experts or with audience members. And you can match the screen to your brand’s appearance, making it easy for viewers to association the great content with the product.
Tell your leads when the broadcast is taking place so that they’re ready and waiting for you before the session begins. Remind them in the days before the broadcast what’s going to happen to build interest. Welcome viewers as you see them joining the audience. And ask your own questions to encourage interaction.
Facebook Live is more than video advertising. It’s video advertising with a live audience. That’s powerful and it’s something that every small business should be doing.
