Tell your Story with?Video!

It has amazed me for the past decade plus, when speaking with business leaders about growing their sales and we walk through the difference in production between their top 10% of salespeople and the bottom and the amount of money they spend on the bottom and trying to get them to replicate those at the top….which for all intent and purposes we know will never happen,  you can train a mouse all you want to become a lion or a tiger but it will still be a mouse.  On the other hand for a few dollars you can capture your top producers on video, you can even rehearse and plan and reproduce this productions and fine tune them to the point of perfection and have you lowest producers share those messages with customers or for that matter show even more respect to your customers by not wasting their time with the poor producers at all an allow them to interact with your videos of your top producers,  let your most passionate and best story teller tell the story of your company, brand or product!MWS VIDEO

The growth of internet video has allowed businesses to tell their story to consumers in new ways and made video advertising far more accessible to small business. However, if business owners want their video ads for Facebook, YouTube or Vimeo to be effective, they need to be made correctly. Here are tips marketers can use when creating video content for marketing and advertising.

It has been said that a picture is worth 1,000 words, but how many words is a video worth? In theory a one-minute video is capable of producing 1.8 million words.

Video story telling is essential in today’s market and has been proven to help companies increase their profitability. According to ComScore, in the United States today, 89 million people are going to watch 1.2 billion online videos.

Here are some key things to take into account when creating a video to market your company:

Make the title count

You have only a matter of seconds to engage your audience members. Choose a title that is relevant to your content, will capture your viewers’ attention, and entice them to watch your video. A strong title allows you to more likely appear in a search when someone is looking for your product or service. A few things to keep in mind when selecting your title: What does your customer need? What do they want to learn? What will your video teach them?

Deliver exceptional content.

Take a moment to determine who your target audience is and how your product or service is going to help solve their problem(s). How is it going to be of value to them? How can you educate them? How are they going to benefit from the purchase after the transaction has taken place?

Position yourself as an expert. Testimonials are great for demonstrating customer satisfaction and the credibility of your company. In addition, “How-to” videos also work exceptionally well for offering value to your viewer and to showcase your understanding and skill, in positioning yourself as the expert. 

Tell a story.

When marketing to potential clients, teach them about your business by telling the story of your company. How did your company originate? What new developments has your company included in your products or services over time? What makes your company standout from all the rest? Give your viewers a peek inside your business and let them in on a few of its secrets like how you organize your business and what structure you use to get things done.

Answer questions.

No one knows your business better than you. I am sure that there is a sequence of frequently asked questions that members of your staff get asked on a daily basis. Use your marketing video to quickly address these questions and concerns, so that when your clients and prospects reach out to you, they are one step closer to making their purchasing decision.

Promote the launch.

There are endless possibilities to gain exposure to your video other than just hosting it on your website. Utilize all social media outlets to reach your target audience such as e-mail blasts, blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. These Web-based platforms make it easy to monitor and track the coverage and interaction of your video, as well as link viewers back to your website.

Embed. Everywhere.

Once you’ve produced the video, maximise value by making its presence felt. Use it on your site’s home page, inset it into blog posts, share it on social media, send it to industry peers – if the context is appropriate and the video can be embedded, do it. We know web users engage with video content more than written text, so don’t be afraid to get that video out there and give people what they want.

Optimise through metrics

Embedding your video here, there and everywhere is one thing, but the value of the exercise is lost if you’re not monitoring its performance. Check out where your video attracts the most clicks, how long your viewers are staying with you, and how often its converting clicks to sign-ups and sales. Once you have this intelligence you can optimise the content and distribution of future videos to yield maximum impact from your marketing strategy.

Give your YouTube channel some love

The home of your video content should naturally be your YouTube channel. Don’t have a YouTube channel? Then get cracking. Though just shoving all your videos into an account doesn’t cut it if you want your video marketing strategies to look coherent and professional.

Make use of YouTube’s profile features that help you divide your content into categories and promote some videos ahead of others. If you’re in the middle of a marketing campaign that is encapsulated by one flagship video, make sure this is the featured video at the top of your account’s home page. Ensure visitors to your channel can clearly identify your company’s message, easily navigating through the best of your video output.

Surround it with SEO-friendly text

When piecing together your video marketing strategy it’s easy to neglect the importance of old-fashioned text, but if you want your videos to be noticed the rules of SEO still remain. So make sure your video hosting pages are littered with key words, tags and all the other things your target audience may be Googling.

Taking that extra bit of time on analytics tools like Google Trends to find out the most popular search terms relevant to your product or service could make all the difference in making sure your videos are discovered.

Flaunt your product AND yourselves

If the product or service featured in your video can be demoed – do it! As internet entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk teaches us over and over.

Nail down your call to action

A great video is one thing, but grabbing your audience’s attention has been wasted if there isn’t a strong call to action that encourages viewers to actively engage.

The video should take the viewer to the destination of your choice, so make sure an incentive is there and any links are clear and appealing.

But above all, focus on quality!

All of the above becomes redundant if the content of your video marketing strategy looks rushed, cheap, or both

? Tailor Video Content for a Particular Audience

? Just like with all other forms of advertising, there is no magic bullet for video content that will get everyone to click. Furthermore, internet marketing allows for far more precise targeting than what was available for traditional TV video ads. This means marketers can focus their content more without the risk of losing the more general audience. People don’t just watch every video that shows up on their screen. They are much more likely to pay attention if the content is relevant to their interests. Marketers should consider making slightly different versions of their video content for different demographics and use these tailored videos in target ads and promoted content. For example, a software retailer should make different videos for consumers with different levels of technical skills. One video could focus on how easy-to-use the software is, while another could focus on the highly technical issues that only pros would care about. Tailoring video content greatly increases the likelihood it will have the desired effect on the audience.

? Use Strong Opening with First Few Seconds

? The internet is a speedy place and video content has to work fast to get the attention of consumers. Whether it’s a video ad on the sidebar of a website, a promoted video on Facebook, or the lead in video on YouTube, marketers have less than five seconds to get the attention of the viewer. This puts videos with slow starts at a huge disadvantage. Unlike TV ads, where it’s possible to build mystery for half of the ad before getting to the point, such an ad on the internet will get scrolled past or skipped before the ad has a chance to hook the viewer. It’s important to make the point clear very quickly.

? Consider Screen Size When Creating

? There are a lot of ways for people to access video content online, and size matters greatly when it comes to the viewability of content. Just as you can’t do a Where’s Waldo on a postage stamp, certain videos won’t work as well when viewed on mobile screens. For example, a video that is dark with heavy shadowing will be harder to view on a smaller screen. Similarly, having fine print on a video ad for regular sized screens make sense, but the text will just be a blurry line of letters on a mobile device. Since smartphone owners (which makes up about 90% of the U.S. adult population)

? Use a Strong Opening Image

? Similar to the advice of getting to the point with the first few seconds, the static image that is shown before the video content should also be very appealing. For some ad networks, users have to click the video to start the playthrough and a strong opening image is like a call to action.

? Create Videos that are Appealing With or Without Sound

? This is a piece of advice that started with Facebook but should be applied to all video ads. Videos on Facebook start to autoplay with the sound off, so the visuals have to be strong enough to get the viewer to click the video for the audio. YouTube does something similar with its homepage banner ad, but the cost of that particular ad space makes it less of a concern for most business owners. Still, even when ads play with audio before the main content, many viewers will mute the ad until their content comes on. Using a video that’s visually appealing when the sound is off will make it possible to grab attention when people are trying to ignore the audio. Similarly, using visuals to reinforce the audio makes the ad more effective when viewed properly.

Surprisingly most video posters don’t bother to take the time to review the very simple guidelines provided by both YouTube and Vimeo to maximize their videos, for those of you who have not done so the links are here:

vidyard

https://vimeo.com

YouTube

about/YouTube

YouTube Creators

And today there are multiple outstanding companies to help you with your videos including; https://www.vidyard.com  BrightCove, SpotXchange, Viddler, VzaarHubSpot, SharePoint, OnBase,

vidyard/competitors/alternatives

If your team is not familiar with all of the tutorials on Linkedin, Facebook, Google, Youtube you may want to look for a new team! :)

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