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Video is like a Chameleon, Adapting to it’s environment
Video has many ways to be used and leveraged. It?s a medium that allows for creativity, can be utilized in several manners and lets you showcase your company in a variety of styles.
Some might go as far and call it the best medium in terms of ROI, something we?ve seen time and time again with our clients. With stats like this, and the fact that video is becoming more and more popular among consumers, it?s intriguing ?why more companies aren?t taking advantage of video.
Perhaps it?s because many don?t know where to start, or what kinds of video to create. Let?s look a some smart ways to use video for your business.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”stretch_row_content” parallax=”” parallax_image=””][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1431985341840{margin-bottom: -100px !important;}”]
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Targeted Testimonials
Instead of creating one testimonial video featuring several customers, create several videos with just one customer. Use this shorter, more specific video for a targeted audience or customer base. This can be organized by product, service, geographic location, age or more.
Connecting to your customer on a more personal level will do much more than trying to connect with everyone all at once. Being specific will yield more than being broad in the long run.
Landing pages are a great place for specific, targeted testimonial videos. After taking your customers through the funnel, you can impress them with your foresight into their world. Take this opportunity to make a deep connection and impress your customer. Specific testimonials will have a direct impact on your sales and click through rates.
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Show Your Personality
Video lets you speak to your customer base directly. Words and images can be interpreted in a number of different ways, but video is the most direct medium available, outside of face to face communication. When sending a message to your customers, you can get very specific and granular about the message?s tone, look, feel and mood with video.
Alternatively, you can use it to be funny or show a cultural side of your company. Remember the Dollar Shave Club video? Tons of personality, spoken directly from the CEO. If you were to read the script as an advertisement, it wouldn?t have been half as effective, as everyone would have interpreted it differently. Coming from the CEO and seeing the setting that it took place in, you quickly realize that while he?s sending an important message – and it is an advertisement – it?s done in a light-hearted manner resulting in a natural connection.
What is your brand?s personality? What connections have you made with your customers that have been the most successful?
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Tell Your Story, from your Customer?s Point of View
Crowd sourcing material has never been more popular, and your customers have never had so many resources available to record and share their stories using your products. Your customers are recording their lives, and you should be researching how they?re using your products or how your products are shaping their lifestyle.
Consider reaching out to these customers and offering them free product in exchange for using their photos and/or video as a part of your campaign. Most customers would love this opportunity and share it with their networks – forming the basis for a video that goes viral.
This can dramatically reduce the cost involved in creating original media. That said, you?ll need to support it in other waysr. Marketing and bringing someone in who can see the big picture will be valuable, and if this person is in-house, it should be a no brainer.
If you go this route, be prepared the handle the large amounts of data you?ll be receiving, from an infrastructure standpoint, as well as organizational-wide.
Doritos takes this a step further by having their fans create original media, with other fans voting on the ones they like best. The winner is aired during the Superbowl – not bad for zero production costs.
Create #hashtags for your customers to use, as this will allow all your fans to see how customers are interacting with your product and also help you to organize all the great media into one place. If you build it, they will come – ?the saying goes.
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Tell Your Story
With so many outlets available today, you can tell your brand?s story in myriad ways, from :06 second Vines to several minute short films.
Branded entertainment is about creating interesting media that connects with your customers, intriguing them to watch for the same reasons they buy your product. That connection takes time and effort, but can pay off in a big way and can yield powerful ROI on campaigns.
When done properly, your brand?s fans will do a lot of the marketing work for you. They will retweet, Like or repost media you create, sharing it with their networks of like-minded potential customers.
Take advantage of your fans? personal networks. Create media that your fans want to watch, instead of interrupting them with ads. Go deep into a story that your customer can relate to and you?ll soon start to see the ?value and benefits of branded entertainment (more to come on this important topic soon).
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Teach
Show your customers – future and past – how to use your product, or give them new ways to use your product. Do you sell aluminum water bottles? Besides carrying water, can it also act as a thermos, keeping all liquids warm and cold? Make a quick video explaining this to your customers and they might just love you forever.
Use video to show that you?re an authority on a subject. A weekly series shows your customers that you always have new ideas to showcase. Consistency demonstrates that you care, and when you show your customers that you think they?re important, they?ll quickly realize.
This goes beyond simply showing them additional uses for your products, but the opportunity to connect with them on a more regular basis. Furthermore, you?re proving them with material to share with their networks and increasing the potential for additional sales.
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Product Demos
Seeing is believing. Instead of showing a picture of a blouse on a model, use video or motion .gifs to show her walking in the blouse, helping your customers visualize how it shapes to her body and moves as she does. Not only will they get a better idea of how the product will fit on them, you?ll reduce your return rates for products that don?t fit as expected. We?ve all been there and it?s never fun to be anticipating an outfit for a few days only to find it doesn?t fit you like it fit the model.
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Introduce Yourself
Use video to introduce yourself. Are you trustworthy? Who is building this product? If you think your customers might be asking themselves these questions, a video can quickly erase any misconceptions and offer relief. Your customers might be just like you, and when they realize this, you could lock them in as a customer for life. Video can create trust much faster than photos, and to a much greater extent.
Bonus: Behind the Scenes
Take your customers inside your operation. Show them what it?s like to work at your brand and show them all the exciting things like how your products are made, the attention and effort that goes into building them, and the R&D pushing product testing to the limit. Knowing this, your customers are much more likely to trust your quality, while at the same time, you?ll be giving them information to share with their friends and networks.
How have you used video in the past? Do you have plans to expand video marketing in your company? Let me know about your plans by leaving a comment below: [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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