Posted by Catie Foertsch on Thu, Jul 01, 2010 @ 10:59 AM
If you're thinking about using video to market your business, good for you. Video's interactivity and rich content are very effective for engaging, communicating and connecting. But before you invest time or money (or both), it makes sense to be sure you aren't just making video for the sake of having video on your site. You want your video assets to work hard for you and justify your investment, don't you?
Here are the top four questions to ask before you begin shooting. Consider them thoughtfully, and you'll have the answer to the really big question: what kind of video should you make?
1. What do you want your video (or videos) to do for you? This forces you to get beyond the very general "We just want to have video on our site" and define your goals. Be as specific as possible. Here are a few examples:
- streamline our customer service process
- introduce our key people
- inject humor into the early stages of our sales process
- move people through our sales funnel
- demonstrate how our product works
- provide different ways for visitors to understand who we are and what we do
- provide in-depth learning experiences
2. Who are your audiences and how do they learn? Who will watch the videos you'll make? This question will help you define what style of video to make. If you're connecting with 19-year-old males, you'll make a different kind of video than you would for new mothers or retired golfers.
3. What is the message you want to deliver to your audience(s)? If you make them correctly, videos are like arrows. They deliver a specific message to a particular target. Figure out what message you need to send. If you have more than one audience, don't use the same video for all of them. Instead, create different versions of your message so that each group sees and hears exactly what they care about.
4. How will you measure success? It's not a good idea to invest in assets and then leave them alone because you trust (or hope) that they're doing what you want them to do. Better to know how you define success so you can determine if they're working. If they are, great. You've figured out what works, and you can continue to create video assets that do the job. If you find that they aren't doing what you want them to do - understand why not, and then try something different. The goal is to create assets that achieve your goals and contribute to your success. You won't know if that's happening unless you measure and analyze.
Take the time to answer these four questions before you begin production, and you'll have the information you need to make video assets that are powerful and effective communication tools. They'll work hard for you, and they'll do the job you made them to do.
Posted by Catie Foertsch on Fri, Apr 30, 2010 @ 01:00 PM
Earlier this week I attended a fascinating panel discussion - "Combining SEO and Video to Drive Awareness and Lead Generation Online" - featuring some heavy hitters in the world of online marketing. A large part of the discussion centered on best practices for using video in lead generation and conversion, and how to measure success. A comment by Judy Gern, Director of Conversion Marketing for Constant Contact, captured the reason businesses need to use video in their lead gen programs:
"People who consume video tend to become customers at a much higher rate."
Goodbye to Viral Video
Joe Chernov, Global Director of Communications & Social Media for Eloqua, noted that there is less emphasis on ‘viral' videos than a few years ago. Gimmicky ideas like young men jumping into jeans, LED lights on sheep, mattress dominoes, etc., have given way to a new understanding of video as a practical, economical communications tool. Now companies are using video for sales, support, PR - all effective applications for video. "We're seeing a smarter, more sensible use of video," said Chernov.
He noted in particular that video works especially well in press releases - those that include an embedded video receive 500% more views. Because of that remarkable effect, "we try to embed video in every press release," Chernov said.
What Works in Lead Gen
Constant Contact uses video as "an appetizer" for lead generation programs because of its ability to capture people's interest and draw them into the funnel. The company conducts in-depth studies on performance of various video and key word combinations, and has found that videos with "do it yourself," "instructional," and "how-to" tend to perform the best.
Constant Contact has also found that video works best when it's given freely, before information is asked for, as opposed to holding out the promise of the video to get people to provide their information. "We give value when we ask for information, not after we get information," said Gern.
David Meerman Scott's Sales Funnel
Marketing superstar David Meerman Scott discussed the role of video in his sales funnel. At the top are short viral videos and excerpts from the informational interviews he conducts with his Flip camera - shorter videos that are casually made. Further down the funnel, where people are clearly interested in hiring him and are deciding whether to proceed, he uses video of a keynote speech he delivered previously. The production values are spectacular, he said, and rather than post short clips from the speech, he's posted the whole speech. He's found that at that point in his funnel - "right there when people are deciding to hire me or not" - people are really engaged and tend to watch the whole video.
Short, funny videos and short excerpts of interviews he's shot with his Flip camera work higher up in the funnel, he said, but near the bottom of the funnel the quality of his keynote video is important. "It really makes the difference," he said. "That video has helped me close $250,000 in speaking engagements in one year."
Measuring ROI
In lead gen programs, the number of email addresses gathered is usually the metric against which success is measured. But Meerman Scott disagreed with limiting ROI metrics to the traditional "collecting email addresses or business cards." He suggested that more meaningful metrics include view counts, and knowing through measurement what people do after they view the video.
Another metric for him is simply asking people when they hire him to speak how they made their decision. Often, he said, they tell him they watched his keynote video.
Tim Bradbury, president of New Media at American City Business Journals, suggested that instead of looking to ROI standard metrics, companies start with their expectations and then develop their own metrics to define success. It may be, he said, that the view counts and comments captured by YouTube are enough.
Bottom Line
It can be easy to think about all the different reasons why video is a communication strategy your company is not quite ready to commit to - change is difficult, how do you figure out how to use video, what you're doing now is working well enough, etc. But if you're standing on the edge of the pool, hesitating to take the plunge into a video commitment, remember why Constant Contact uses video:
People who consume video tend to become customers at a much higher rate.
Posted by Catie Foertsch on Fri, Apr 16, 2010 @ 10:00 AM
My husband is a glider pilot with the Greater Boston Soaring Club, and so I am in the loop on some really cool videos about gliders and soaring. This video is one of the most breathtaking I've seen - hang onto something, watch it, and then we'll talk about what a bunch of crazy/brilliant Austrian glider pilots and stuntmen have to do with your business:
While you completely get that this is an awesome video - and you may even share it with friends via email or on Facebook or Twitter - what does it have to do with your business?
Business is about relationships
Cool videos are like little gifts you give your current customers - and those who may be your future customers. Videos that are not overt commercials, but instead have a more peripheral connection to your product/service, are interesting and worthy of conversation. They provide current/potential customers with a good reason to engage with you and to talk about you, and to share your video, which will introduce your company to more people.
The peripheral product connection for this video is to Red Bull, the energy drink. It's hosted on the Red Bull website, along with lots of other remarkable videos about sports and athletes and music and dance. It's a great place to go and get your daily Wow. (And, of course, your daily reminder that Red Bull is a brand that is associated with really cool activities.)
What about budget?
But wait, you say - are you nuts? We don't have the budget for a multi-cam production, with helicopters, in the Alps!
No problem. The beauty of video is that no matter how small your video production budget, you can make video that's fun to watch, and fun to share. Maybe it's a karaoke music video starring your office staff. Maybe you're a car dealer and you bring in your new puppy and take him for a drive in one of your new cars. Or bring in your 92-year-old grandmother and take her for a drive. Or...
You get the picture. When it comes to making videos that are outside the usual serious and all-business stuff, the possibilities are endless - all you have to do is stop thinking about video as a medium that's only appropriate for communicating seriously about your products and services. Instead, remember that people want to have fun. A fun video that's peripherally related to your product can have a place too. It can be cool in a way your strict product videos can't, and it has a far greater chance of being shared, and talked about. But you have to be willing to step outside that comfortable space where your video production budget is always spent on serious, product/centered videos.
The possibilities are endliess - so step outside your comfort zone, start thinking creatively, have some fun, and share your fun.
(...and if you're interested, take a look at some of the videos made by members of the Greater Boston Soaring Club about their adventures in the sky. They'll give you goose bumps!)
Posted by Catie Foertsch on Wed, Nov 18, 2009 @ 08:14 AM
Company X makes complicated and expensive software. Company X is having a tough time communicating what their product does because it's so very complicated. So they decided they'd make a three-minute video - to explain exactly what Software X does, and to talk about its benefits. They plan to use this video on their website home page, at trade shows, in presentations to end users, and in presentations to upper management.
What's wrong with this picture?
Simple - one video is not what Company X needs. If they go ahead with their plan, that one video will be packed with many different messages for all its different audiences. And none of those audiences will be able to absorb their message, because the background noise - everybody else's message - will be too distracting. Making that one video will be a complete waste of Company X's money and time.
What's the lesson for your company?
If you sell a complex product or service, and you want to use video to explain its benefits, think about who you're trying to connect with.
- Is it upper management? They'll need a clear statement of the problem you solve from their perspective and in language they understand. This usually means information on how your product will save them money. Add animated charts and graphs - because this is the language they speak. And don't show product details, because they don't care about details, and they really don't care about the product. What they care about is how much money your product can save them.
- The end users, on the other hand, don't care about ROI. They want to know how the software makes their jobs easier. And they'd also like to see cool features they'll have fun using. Skip the analysis, skip the charts and graphs. Show the product in action, and focus on aspects that will get them excited.
- For a trade show, where audio is a bad idea, you'll need to produce a looping dvd with visuals only. The primary audience at your trade show will tell you what to emphasize - ROI, features and benefits, or a combination of both.
- Plant managers? Engineers? The accounting department? The nurses? They all need a different message, delivered in a different way.
Whatever you do, don't start with how to jam as many messages as possible into one single video. That's a recipe for creating junk. Instead, use your video assets like arrows - aim one video at one single target. This way you'll hit your targets, because you'll be telling each one of your audiences the exact story they need to hear about your product - so they can understand what it will do for them and how it will help them.
Posted by Catie Foertsch on Fri, Oct 30, 2009 @ 10:27 AM
There are two ways to look at the video assets you create for your business. The first way: they are static, passive things that sit on your website until somebody happens to find them. The second way: you paid good money for them and you're going to flog those videos until they do as much work as possible.
While it seems obvious that the second approach makes more sense, you'd be amazed by how many businesses treat their videos like passive little lumps. They make them, place them, and forget them. This can happen when the decision to create videos isn't a strategic decision, but a spur-of-the-moment, our-competitor-has-videos-so-we-better-get-some-too impulse. Then someone in marketing is tasked with getting a couple of videos made. He or she gets three quotes, goes with the lowest, the videos are made and placed, and that's it.
Are there goals for those videos? Is something being measured? Are they being sent out onto the web beyond the website? Are there plans for re-purposing them?
Nope, nope, nope and nope.
A far better approach is to look at video strategically, to decide what you want your video assets to do for you, and to understand how you'll know if they're performing. Then, start by making videos that can achieve the goals you set for them, instead of making videos that are the cheapest to make. Create a distribution plan for sending your video assets out onto the web, like little ambassadors for your business. Use Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and YouTube and email marketing.
And then, when you've really, really flogged them, step back and see if you can re-edit them into other videos that you use for new applications - like connecting with different sets of potential customers.
How much work your video assets do for you - how effective they are at spreading your story and getting people excited about what you do - depends entirely on you and the choices you make. So choose to start with a plan, make your video assets and then get out your bullwhip and start flogging them. And don't stop until you've used them in every single way you can imagine.
Your business will thank you.
Posted by Catie Foertsch on Wed, Oct 21, 2009 @ 10:19 AM
(This is a true story. Names and other details have been changed, but the story is real.)
Company A is an office supply company. One day, Company A's owner - let's call him Bob - had a great idea. "We'll make a video to promote the company," Bob said. "And we'll make it a funny video! We'll put it on a dvd, we'll make a bunch of copies, and we'll hand them out to potential customers. People will love it! We'll put it on YouTube and it'll go viral!"
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So Bob found a video producer named Tony. Bob had a general idea of what he wanted, and he and Tony wrote a script. The video would be a funny little play about a business that buys all their supplies at the local office supply store, only they always get inferior products. The shredder dumps paper all over a worker's desk. The ink doesn't work in the printers. The furniture is too hard to put together, or else it breaks. |
The punch line is that if that company had bought its office supplies at Company A, none of that bad stuff would have happened. And Bob, because he's the owner, gets to be the one who says the punch line at the end of the video. He knows how to give just the right sympathetic smile to make the point.
It's a complex play, so Bob rents a vacant set of offices for a week, for the shoot. As actors they use Bob's people, so his company stops doing business for the week of the shoot. They need many, many takes to make sure they get the right shot. And there are technical challenges - how do you have a chair break when someone sits on it? How do you rig a pen so it spills ink all over someone's hands? It takes time, but they work these challenges out.
They shoot the video, it takes three months to edit, and it looks great. Bob is thrilled. He orders 500 dvds. He pays a design firm to make a beautiful dvd label and insert. The project is costing a boatload of money, but Bob isn't worried - he just knows that three or four or five times the money he spends will come back to him in profit on increased sales.
The dvds are made, and Bob gives them to his three salespeople. "Hand them out to everyone," he says. So the sales people do. Bob posts the video on YouTube. And then... nothing happens. Bob waits, and waits, but the phone doesn't ring. People don't call to tell Bob how great his video is. Sales don't go up. There are only 27 views on YouTube, and that number doesn't budge. But that's OK - obviously the word hasn't gotten out yet. Bob tells his salespeople to hand out more dvds. Bob instructs his salespeople to tell prospects to go to YouTube and watch the video. Again, Bob waits. Again, nothing happens.
Two years later, Bob is still talking about what a great video he made. How much fun the process was, how ingenious he and Tony were to figure out how to get that chair to break when Sue sat on it. How the design firm nailed the dvd insert. How the whole experience really helped him understand video production.
What Bob doesn't talk about, or let himself think about, is the video's complete lack of impact. Except, of course, for the impact to his bottom line, which was a doozy.
There are many things you can learn from Bob's adventure, but I'm going to mention just one: if you have an idea for a video and you're in love with it, if you're dreaming about how it's going to go viral and your sales are going to shoot through the roof, then you should ask someone to dump a bucket of cold water on your head. Because you don't understand how to use video to market your business and you're about to make a very big and very expensive mistake.
Posted by Catie Foertsch on Tue, Sep 22, 2009 @ 08:00 AM
Here's a video that presents an in-depth analysis of a tennis game. While you may not be enough of a tennis fan to watch it or care about it, you can absorb the larger message: a great use for video on your website is analysis. Specifically, people who are interested in what you do or what you sell will appreciate your professional analysis of a product, service or situation. Why? Because as an expert, you can help them understand and learn.
Here are some examples that will get you thinking about how you can use analysis videos on your website:
- You're a CPA. Wow, do you have a lot of material!! There are so many things you can present and analyze: new and existing IRS regulations, good and bad practices, etc. What questions do your clients ask you? Many are probably great starting points for an analysis video.
- If you're a marketing firm, you're positioned to help businesses understand how to better market their products and services. One way to do this is to use work you've done for some of your clients as an example, and explain why and how the solution you've provided is a great fit for hte client's needs. (Just make sure that when you're using your own work as an example, you don't give in to the temptation to be overtly self-promotional. That would sound like a commercial, and nobody likes commercials.)
- You run a shop that polishes expensive substrates for the electronics industry. Analyze different substrates and show good, bad and mediocre polishing, and explain the difference. Or, analyze different polishing processes.
Analysis videos should include the finer points of whatever it is that you're analyzing, because you're speaking not to a general audience but to people who are specifically interested in the details of your industry or product. So don't hold back - drill down and explore the nuances.
One other lesson you can learn from this tennis video - use visual aids. Whether it's a mock-up of a tennis court with a moveable blob that stands for a tennis player, or a close-up shot of a grinding machine, people love to see visual aids when they're watching someone present an analysis because visual aids help them understand the points you're making.
So go on - get geeky! Give in to the desire to delve into details and let your inner analyst loose. You'll establish your company as a go-to resource, and that's all good.
Posted by Catie Foertsch on Thu, Jul 23, 2009 @ 08:30 AM
I attended the monthly NPVA (National Professional Videographer's Association) meeting on Monday night and was priveleged to hear Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR present a compelling overview of video marketing on YouTube. Greg's new book is called "YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day" and it's coming out in August.
Greg's message:
- 152 million Americans watched 16.8 billion online videos in April 2009.
- If you're not using video to market your business, you're missing the boat.
YouTube is now the second-largest search engine in the world. The higher your videos rank, the greater the chance they'll be watched by lots of people. Greg talked about YouTube's algorithm for ranking videos - the known factors are: title, tags, description, number of views and ratings. Some simple things you can do to optimize your video:
- Optimize the title.
- Put lots of words in the description, as you can include up to 1,000. (Yes, that's right: one thousand!) The more words you include, the higher your chances of being found.
- Tags - obviously, put keywords in as tags. One way to get effective tags is to copy tags from successful videos.
Greg also talked about casting a skeptical eye on the number of views. While your ego feels great when you get lots of views, if the wrong eyes are watching your videos then what's the point? Far better than measuring the number of views is tracking the spread of your story. YouTube makes sharing easy, so spread your story through Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other sites. And do some digging so you can measure if and how others are spreading it too.
During the Q&A after Greg's presentation, Michael Kolowich of DigiNovations talked about his experience with corporations that hire a production company to create video. Unfortunately, said Michael, the responsibility for overseeing video production tends to get delegated to Marketing's low man on the totem pole. Unfortunate because video production isn't integrated into strategy, but is procured as an afterthought. The lesson is that video has such great potential for marketing your business that it's a mistake to make video because the whim strikes, rather than creating a strategic video-based media plan as an integral part of your marketing strategy.
Greg's book won't be out until August, but in the meantime you can download two chapters for free. They are well worth reading.
Posted by Catie Foertsch on Thu, Jul 16, 2009 @ 07:33 AM
Three points about Microsoft's new marketing video. First, the company has finally found a way to whip the stuffing out of Apple's video marketing. Remember the Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld, really painful-to-watch commercials that featured MS trying to be cool in an Apple-like way? And then, the We Are the World-style series that was nice to watch, but... so what? Now - Microsoft has finally decided that it doesn't have to play in Apple's sandbox, where it will always lose. That it can build its own sandbox. Check it out:
The interesting thing is that Microsoft ever decided to imitatie Apple. Every company needs a serious competitor - without one, there's a lack of focus and silly decisions, like Microsoft trying to make Apple-style videos. There's an aimlessness, because you're the biggest kid on the block and everybody knows it, and where do you go from there? Lucky for Microsoft, it now has to defend a core product - Office - against Google Apps. There's a very real chance Google will eat Microsoft's lunch, and this is very good for Microsoft. The company has discovered a wonderful sense of focus, and is finally figuring out how to market Office effectively. Watching this video, I'm thinking Wow! Who knew Word was this cool? Take that, Google Apps!!
Second point: watch the video again, this time in full-screen mode (click the little icon in the lower right, just below the 'u' in YouTube). It looks great small, but it's a much better experience viewed full-screen. YouTube started by playing grainy, yucky-looking videos, but it's become a platform for great-looking, expensive HD videos as well. So make sure you're shooting your web videos in HD, and allow your viewers the option of a full screen experience.
Third point - the more you watch this video the better it gets. Watch it again - what's making you laugh out loud?