Monday 30 March 2015

Why do some Business Videos just not cut the mustard?

Why do some business videos just not cut the mustard? 



Online video is a hugely powerful marketing tool and works at its best when used to its full potential  as a story telling medium. Long, short, extravagant or as simple as some animated graphics it offers anyone in business the perfect opportunity to “show and tell” who they are and what they do.

Video production is however a labour intensive business that arguably requires visually skilled and creative people to deliver something worth watching. 

It is therefore relatively expensive to produce compared to other forms of marketing collateral and, in any cost driven market, the price will always be a key aspect of the decision making process as to what or how much one does with the medium.

In my view there are three key aspects to using video as a marketing communications tool.

 The Hook. -




The end result may be considerably more subtle in its approach than the term suggests but the purpose of any “Hook” is to catch the unknown visitor passing through your site or social media feed, en route elsewhere and entice them into engaging with you. 

Humour has proven to be your best bet here as evidenced by the success of the likes of Dollar Shave Club - Christmas 2014 - Poo Pourri Video or Dumb Ways to Die.  

Each is a piece of pure entertainment with a purpose, and a clear message, told as a short story.

The Dwell. -  



This can be anything you like so long as it is likely to resonate and engage your visitor / target customer. 

The sole objective being to encourage them to stay on your website. Entices them into taking the time to engage with you and what you have to offer. 

It’s always a good idea not to over sell. So telling stories at this level should be more to do with educating your visitor in an entertaining manner than trying to get them to buy something from you. 

Giving the viewer something that has some value for them will always be gratefully received. 

Even if this, where appropriate, is just a piece of pure entertainment.

The Convert. - 



As the name suggests, I categorise this level of content as anything and everything that supports your offer in sufficient detail to reduce or eliminate any perception of risk on the part of the prospect. 

These should be videos which help convert the curious visitor into a future customer. 

Detailed product descriptions, customer testimonials, case studies, reviews and how-to s are all possibilities. 

They are an investment in a resource that can be built over time and which should have value to your business for many years to come. We have videos still being viewed by new potential customers every day that were produced for clients over 5 years ago and which are just as relevant today as when they were when first posted.

So why then do some business videos, in my view, not cut the mustard? 

When the production simply doesn’t give the viewer anything that rewards them for the time they have taken to watch it. 

It’s “lazy video” produced and sold on the grounds that it will provide the client with a benefit or an effect but which singularly fails to use the medium to its best effect. 

It is often content based on an old pre Penguin assumption, that anything that has a video file name attached to it is guaranteed to get you a ranking hike. This is no longer the case.

Hot video should be visually rich, entertaining, engaging, informative and ultimately be rewarding for the viewer who has invested their increasingly precious time in watching it.

I’ve also written a related blog on why most “Talking Head Videos” don’t work and why, in many instances, animation is a more cost effective way of meeting the above goals.

Blog at ….. http://biz-vidz.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/colouring-in-for-business-success.html




Tuesday 24 February 2015

Colouring in for Business Success. OR - How to make your video really count.


Colouring in for Business Success.

OR - How to make your video really count.

If you market a service in today’s content driven environment then video is something you should seriously consider.  It’s too good an opportunity to miss.  And yet there is a huge pitfall for the unwary.  If your only visual resources are your staff and your premises, then you are going to encounter some big challenges.  

You’re not Jeremy Paxman – but then who is?


This was the theme of a seminar I gave early last year to members of the Business Networking SW group in Bristol.  The point being that even the most knowledgeable and experienced people can come across as horribly wooden and boring on screen.  It’s not surprising really – few of us are natural Evan Davies or Robert Pestons (and even they needed a bit of practice).

Am I bovvered?



The problem is that we live in a fast paced business environment – only slick presenters, supported by rich content, delivered with speed, variety and dynamism, will successfully engage viewers whose attention spans seldom stretch beyond a few seconds. 

In my talk I suggested that talking heads, presenter or discursive based videos are just too ponderous and dull for today’s audience.  What’s more, they don’t use the medium to maximum effect.  

They are relatively easy and cheap to produce – but what’s the point if nobody watches them?!  Their only value is the mild SEO boost you’ll get from embedding video into your website.  

What worked back then may not work now


Having said that, they’re very popular with the ex-broadcast community for whom the style is not only tried and tested but comfortably familiar.  That explains why they are so often recommended as the default approach.  But the truth is it’s a dated one.

I’m not suggesting that one should never use people talking to camera when you produce videos for your website or your social media marketing. Far from it – satisfied customers delivering credible and natural testimonials are hugely powerful as pre-sale qualifiers for the risk averse or the nervous prospect. 

But PLEASE .....don’t use talking head videos as a core element within your content marketing strategy.  The only people who really watch them are those who already know the speaker.



Don’t watch my lips – there’s more exciting stuff for you to see


There is real value in what knowledgeable, experienced, people have to say about the work they do.  But the best way to leverage the full value from their words is to avoid sticking a camera on their face for minutes at a time.  A much more engaging approach is to fill the screen with dynamic visual content which reinforces the audio information being conveyed.

Think about it – how many TV commercials do you see with the client talking to camera for 30-60 seconds?  Not many!  How many do you see with lots of exciting and highly watchable visual activity and a voiceover running in the background?  Lots!  Why do big advertisers do this?  Because it works!

Video offers the power of pictures – use it!


If you fill the screen with visuals that grab and hold the attention you get twice the bang for your buck.
  
If the words and the visual are the same (ie you are just watching someone talking to camera) then half of the power of the medium is wasted – you might as well just have the sound alone!  

But if you have visuals that demonstrate the service in action, that help people visualize the features and benefits, that dramatise the value being delivered, then you double the effect (actually, it’s more than double, as the sum is greater than the parts and the way they combine can increase the power by a factor of three, four or five times).


Seeing is believing 

The use of video is more than just a marketing opportunity. It is the "must have" component in your content marketing tool box. Particularly for technically rich or complex information first consumed on a mobile device.



Here's a short summary of the seminar content.








Friday 30 January 2015

If Only I Could Draw ..! Here's How-To.



I'm a huge fan of helping people communicate effectively through video and gave a short, free, seminar to a small group of people in November of 2014, for which I produced a very simple animated video as a seminar tool based around Seam Humby, the host.
As someone who thinks in pictures, I can see that one of the major constraints for anyone wishing to add a bit of supporting illustrative content to a blog or public presentation is the ability to create some original visual interest or artwork.
There is a growing raft of animation tools now available online and all of which generally come with a library of "stock" images that are free to use with each of these apps. This may be a great way to help get you started but after a while you may begin to notice that your animation looks quite like a number of other animations and that any impact you might have hoped to gain as a result of your endeavors has been sadly diminished.
The answer of course would be to create your own artwork, in your own style which says more about you than any stock image or piece of clip art ever can but not everyone can draw.
Well, perhaps you don't have to and if you have a laptop, some thin paper and a couple of black felt tip pens, you might like to create your own artwork by simply tracing it. This method is by no means a perfect solution to your drawing limitations but it might help in the short term. 
The methods described are the same ones that were used to create the animation for the seminar and which I have also embedded underneath the How-To for your further edification.