Small businesses are an important part of the global economy. Today’s small businesses are often where tomorrow’s success stories come from.
As important as small businesses are, it can be hard for them to adopt the cutting-edge tools that will help them thrive in the 21st century because they don’t have all the resources that larger organizations have.
Right now, digital mass-media marketing and seamless organized video conferencing are one of those areas of technology that smaller businesses have had great success picking upon. Tons of new companies get started and make their debut in the digital landscape of today’s world.
Here are 10 reasons why you should consider getting into the habit of using video conferencing if you or somebody you know runs a small business.
Literally, be in more than one place at one time
Small business owners have a lot on their plate. There are many moving parts of any business. Sales, operations, human resources, administrative tasks, taxes – as a small business owner, you typically have to wear a lot of hats.
If you’ve ever had to run a small business, you’ll notice that you quickly find it very irritating to have to repeat yourself, and you’ll find yourself doing that quite a lot to many different people.
Let’s assume you are into B2B and you want to let all of your customers know that you’re going to be launching a new product or service. With a video conference or a live stream – you can do that in real-time. To anyone who didn’t make it, they can get a video recording of your announcement afterward.
In the days of mobile devices, your customers won’t even have to download a mobile app to get your personal announcement. You can just forward it to your contacts list.
Launch products with webinars
Small businesses are known for being particularly and conspicuously innovative. We launch new ideas all the time here. But due to the limited resources that come with being small, you’re swamped when it comes to making sure that all your customers know about your new product.
Webinars are a conferencing tool that allows people to attend your live event and see your presentation of your new product. Unlimited people can participate and can ask you questions right from their mobile device.
Get feedback from your existing customers in real-time
Knowing what your customers think and want is the better part of doing all sales and marketing work – and it’s tough to tell without asking.
Luckily, if you have a video conferencing solution, you can ask any or all of your customers right away what they think of your new ideas. Their feedback can be polled and measured directly right there in the conference call.
You’ll have a lot of customers in one place at one time, so it’s as great an opportunity to ask those questions and get those answers as you can ever get.
Pitch ideas directly to your customers
The cool thing about video meetings and audio conferencing is that you can respond to your customers directly and immediately. It’s great for people who think well on their feet – because at that moment that you have their attention, you can quickly iterate through new ideas to find out what will indeed be successful without having to go through all the trial and error.
This is also really good for customer engagement and building a relationship with them. When they feel that they have a voice in how you serve them, they become more invested in you.
Solve customers’ problems remotely
Many professional video conferencing services enable all kinds of virtual tools, like screen sharing and even sometimes remote access. This makes it very easy for a customer to call you with a problem and show it to you through a video feed in a way that makes it easy for you to help them out.
This applies heavily to IT-oriented businesses, but it can also be for virtually anything. Remember how mechanics used to have to ask you what noises your car was making? Well, now, if they use audio conferencing, they can hear it themselves in high sound quality.
Get more customers from social media
Video conferencing software allows for video conferences to convert into video media very quickly. So say you have a really cool product demonstration that went well. You can soon put that up on social media where video posts excel. This can rope in more interest from potential customers to your small business.
This is particularly good for businesses that have an online sales component to their business. There are almost as many people finding products to buy from social media than the actual retail websites they’re supposed to go shopping!
Save time traveling
Consider all the people you have to talk to and how much time, gas money, and resources you spend just on travel to be able to talk to everyone you have to.
If your small business happens to cover a wide area as many do, it becomes almost impossible to stay organized just by relying on travel and face to face meetings to get things done.
You probably have moved to conference calls by now – and if you do that regularly, then audio conferencing with purpose-built software can potentially get you better rates, while significantly improving the conference quality that you rely on to keep all your critical people organized.
Train employees with a video you make yourself
Have you ever had to train an employee how to do their work? If you’ve ever had an employee, that answer is an obvious yes.
You’ve probably noticed that it’s hard to carve out the time to give new employees all the training and guidance that they want in order to be productive. If you have to show them anything, odds are you have to show them more than once.
Imagine if you could make one short video for each procedure you may have and easily share that with as many employees as you’ll need, and keep it for later use. Video conferencing solutions will do that for you quickly.
It’s easily affordable
One major hurdle that small business operators have before they try anything is cost.
There are free plans, and free versions of cutting edge video conferencing software available where you can try out the best software available that even universities and hospitals prefer to use.
It’s easy to get started now
If you’ve ever used Cisco Webex or a similar tool, then you know how easy it is to use these new software tools that are available for video conference calling. Many of them have mobile apps you can get from apple or the play store, but there are often download-free versions that allow users to jump straight in and seamlessly join a web meeting.
