Video is the default advice at the moment, which is a reason to be careful rather than a reason to do it.
It is genuinely the strongest format for a specific set of jobs and an expensive way to do things other formats do better. The question is which one you are actually trying to do.
What does video do that nothing else does?
Three things, and they are worth real money when they apply.
It shows a process. Anything where the doing is the persuasive part. A technique, a transformation, how something is installed, what happens in a treatment. Photographs show before and after. Video shows why it works, and that is what makes someone trust the person doing it.
It carries a person. Tone, warmth, whether somebody seems competent and honest. For any service where the buyer is really choosing a person, thirty seconds of you talking does more than a page of text about your values.
It demonstrates scale or condition. Property, venues, vehicles, workshops. Anything where photographs can be arranged to mislead and a continuous shot cannot.
If your business has one of these, video is not optional, it is the most efficient thing you can make.
When is it a waste of money?
When it is doing a job text does better.
Prices, specifications, comparisons, anything a buyer needs to check twice. Nobody wants to scrub a video to find a number. Putting information in video that belongs on a page makes it harder to use and impossible to search.
Also when it exists because everyone else has video. A polished brand film with a drone shot and instrumental music is the most commonly commissioned and least commonly effective video a small business makes. It is watched once, by the client, and produces nothing.
What kind of video should a small business actually make?
Short, frequent and unpolished, rather than one expensive piece.
The instinct is to save up for a proper production. In practice one good video is seen by a few hundred people once, while twelve rough ones over a year get seen repeatedly and teach the audience what you do.
The rough ones also perform better on the platforms where video lives. Audiences have become very good at recognising an advertisement in the first second, and a polished corporate film announces itself immediately.
A phone, decent light and something worth showing is enough. What matters is whether the first three seconds give somebody a reason to keep watching.
How long should it be?
As long as it holds attention and no longer, which is shorter than you think.
For social, most of the value is in the first few seconds and completion falls away steeply after about thirty. For a video on your own website, where somebody has chosen to watch, two minutes is fine and five is usually padding.
The real test is whether you could remove the first ten seconds. Almost every business video begins with a logo, a title, a slow establishing shot, or someone introducing themselves. All four are removable, and removing them measurably improves how many people see the rest.
Do I need to be on camera?
It helps, and there are workable alternatives if you genuinely cannot.
Hands doing the work, shot from above, with your voice over the top. This is extremely effective for trades and crafts and requires nobody to perform.
Screen recordings for anything digital. A customer’s problem being solved in front of them.
What does not work is stock footage. It is instantly recognisable and it signals that there was nothing real to show.
What about subtitles?
Not optional. Assume the sound is off.
A large majority of social video is watched muted, and a video that makes no sense without audio is a video most people scroll past. Burnt in captions, not platform generated ones, because the automatic versions are frequently wrong in ways that read as careless.
This is also the cheapest improvement available. Captions on an existing video cost almost nothing and usually do more than reshooting it.
How do I know if it is working?
Watch retention rather than views.
Views tell you how good the first frame was. Retention tells you whether the video was worth making, and it shows you exactly where people left, which is usually a specific moment you can fix in the next one.
If most people leave in the first three seconds, the problem is the opening, not the content. That is the most common finding and the easiest to act on.
What would I do first?
Film one thing you do every day, on a phone, with no plan beyond showing it clearly.
Watch it back. If it is genuinely interesting to someone outside your trade, and it usually is, you have your answer and you have already started.
We edit for where the video will actually be watched, which changes the edit more than most people expect. Tell us what you are working on.
