Aligning your Video Strategy to the Buyer Journey

Travelling as much as I do for work can be tough on my family. They usually don’t take too much interest in my trips.

But last month, as I was packing to leave for San Francisco they asked what the trip was about. I told them I was speaking at an event called Space Camp. My wife stopped and said, “what?” My daughter said “Cool! But Daddy, you are not an astronaut, you just sit at your desk all day.”.

I said to her, “I know Sweety, but when you think about it – astronauts and marketers have a lot in common.”. She was pretty excited and cried out “really, like what?!”. “Well, when we were young we both dreamed of going to outer space. They just stayed in school a lot longer.” So then I turned it into a lesson on the importance of school. Thanks Vidyard.

But really, there are similarities. Both marketers and astronauts are testers, explorers, and data scientists. We are both hoping for a response. For B2B marketers, especially, we’re both on a long complex journey, but we are not afraid to take bold steps.

Video is a perfect medium throughout a long, complex buying process

We know that today’s buyer journey is long, complex and involves a lot of consumption of marketing-created content through digital channels. Which makes video the perfect medium for engaging buyers. Why?

• We’ve been conditioned for visual communication ever since, well, Neil Armstrong landed on the moon
• Technology now enables strategic and inexpensive video projects
• Video allows us to connect with buyers on a rational and an emotional level
• Marketers have become better at tuning it to every buyer stage

It’s this last point that I focused most of my presentation on.

Which video for which stage?

While video shouldn’t be the only content type you create to engage buyers, the flexibility of the medium enables you to meet the different objectives and evaluation requirements of prospects as they progress through the buyer journey.

Above the Funnel

“Culture content” videos that are engaging and often humorous are a great way to engage prospects and create awareness of your brand. These should be short 1 to 1.5 minute videos and are often live action. A great example is Schneider-Electric’s video “Llama Superstar”:

Top of the Funnel

“Explainer videos” are a perfect way to reflect the business pains of your target audience, showing them that you have a keen understanding of their industry or role. Animated videos, whiteboard videos, and live action are typical formats. A good example is the video, Pressure, which Demand Spring created for Qlik.

Integrating viewership data captured in Vidyard into your lead scoring and lead nurturing programs in Marketing Automation will help you prioritize and progress your hot leads faster.

Middle of the Funnel 

Detailed product videos, like those created by Cisco, are great ways to showcase functionality in the evaluation stages of the buyer journey.

About Us videos are great for introducing your company to the extended buying team.

Also consider sales enablement videos in this stage – like Cisco’s fantastic video-based internal enablement program.

Bottom of the Funnel

Video is for closers. Vidyard’s own testimonial videos are great tools to drive credibility and late stage conversion.

After the Funnel

Don’t stop at the point of sale. Customer on-boarding videos and training videos ensure customer success, loyalty, and retention.

A new way to think about your video strategy

Many organizations are now investing in buyer journey analysis and are starting to align their messaging and broader marketing execution tactics to the buyer journey. Despite this new approach, even organizations that are using video in the most progressive and pervasive manner are new to considering their video marketing strategy in the context of the buyer journey. We think there is a tremendous opportunity for video marketing strategists to make phenomenal gains in turning viewers into leads with this approach. One small step for video marketers, one giant leap for revenue marketing.

The post Aligning your Video Strategy to the Buyer Journey appeared first on Vidyard.

from Vidyard » The Video Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/1HDy7qS via music production
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1lVzPtv

7 Things B2B Marketers Can Learn from Black Friday [SlideShare]

Black Friday. Two words you probably don’t want to hear again. With all the hype, deals, discounts, waiting in lines, coupons, flyers, waiting in lines, emails, social ads, waiting in lines again, and the hard push you received in those lines … you’ve seen it all. And Black Friday’s just beginning.

As B2B marketers, we often tend to just steer clear of this B2C-centric holiday. I mean, understandably so: B2C companies have got that covered! Instead, you might make a warm pot of soup, wrap yourself in a fuzzy blanket, and settle in for a long winter’s nap, waiting for it to all blow over.

But hold up a sec, you full, sleepy marketer. There are a lot of things B2B marketers can learn from this crazy time of year. So give this SlideShare a peek before you doze off.

The post 7 Things B2B Marketers Can Learn from Black Friday [SlideShare] appeared first on Vidyard.

from Vidyard » The Video Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/1XwebYr via video services
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1Rb05Mm

No Rest for Marketers, Even on Turkey Day…or, Umm, Thanksgiving

Mmm, it’s that tastiest time of year for those who call the United States home. It’s not just about turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie, but moreso about giving thanks for what you have, cherishing family (even your stupid sibling who always shows up late and kicks you under the table), appreciating all the big and small blessings in your life, and trying to sneak a bit of turkey under the table for the dog.

Are you even listening anymore? Or are visions of candied yams dancing in your head? Okay, I’ll just get right to the point. The holidays, as any wise marketer knows, are perfect opportunities to, well, do some awesome marketing. And when you’re trying to tell a story, share a message, and connect with your audience like they’re family, what works better than video? Nothing, of course!

If you’re looking for some interesting, fun, or touching videos to put you in the Thanksgiving mood, or to inspire your own Thanksgiving strategy for this year or next year, here are a few videos worth viewing.

Mmm, turkey…

Why not just start off with the big bird right from the get-go. The New York Times actively produces amazing content on a variety of topics, even including cooking. For Thanksgiving, they didn’t waste an opportunity to make a well-done how-to video, that’s easy to follow even for the most novice of bird-cooking novices (even I could do this…I think!).

While the New York Times does include recipes in their social media shares, it’s probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the New York Times. But that’s okay; the holidays is a perfect time of year to share some top-of-funnel brand awareness content that doesn’t have to specifically have a hard line back to your product line. It’s okay to have some fun, and share some relevant-to-the-holidays and fun content!

One of the greatest things about this video? It includes demand and lead generation links at the end, driving viewers to subscribe, or check out related content. I tip my pilgrim hat to you, New York Times!

(Oh and by the way, if your brand is maybe a little bit quirkier, or you already have some fun video personalities you want to include in your Thanksgiving video, check out this one. It’s worth a watch!)

Don’t want to do another factual how-to?

Try a silly (or emotional) story. Captain Morgan goes with this approach. While the company is a B2C brand, B2B marketers can take this approach as well. All you need is a little creativity! Feeling a little dry in that area? Maybe a sip of the ol’ Captain first will help…

Can your product relate to the experience of the holidays?

Travel happens every day of the year, but the busiest times of year are, of course, the holidays. And when you think of busy travel times, you think of pain points. That’s where Travelocity made a big splash for last year’s Thanksgiving/holiday season – when pain points are mentioned, and then the solution is handed to viewers in an entertaining why, how can they argue?

Is your product or service not only useful at the holidays, but even more valuable?

While this video is a couple years old, I thought it was worth sharing. British Airways showed everyone how their service is ultra-valuable at this time of year, because they fly to more places. This isn’t just a regular video on a loop with standard copy, either. The information shown on the billboard changes for each plane that flies by!

While the video is more meta than a traditional storyboarded video, it still works – as we know, video is the best thing next to being there in person, so you feel like you’re experiencing the awesomeness of this billboard as though you were standing in front of it yourself. (And, if you have a video marketing platform with built-in analytics, you can see how your campaign performed using insights that you may not be able to get from a billboard!)

Try running a contest

Holiday campaigns are perfect for running contests (especially American Thanksgiving, which is precluded by Black Friday!) Contest campaigns are fun, top-of-funnel, and great for brand awareness. While Old Navy is a retailer, any marketer could think up their own contest. And if that isn’t reason enough to check out this video for inspiration, here’s the only inspiration you need: Julia Louis-Dreyfus.  

And now for the feel-good stories

Your product or service not really relevant to the holidays? Try digging a little deeper, or look for that angle that can help you tell a feel-good story. Humour is fun, of course, but heart-warming emotions are what Thanksgiving is made for!

At first glance, Shaw Communications may not have much to do with Thanksgiving. But they took the approach of bringing people together, and wow, I just couldn’t stop smiling at this one!

Similarly, the Real Canadian Superstore told a Thanksgiving story from the perspective of their employees. This is a perfect angle for any company; we’re all human with wishes, thinks we’re thankful for, and people we want to reunite with for the holidays. Even if you don’t sell food, this video may provide you with some great inspiration.  

You know what else is related to the holidays? Tradition.

Whether you want a serious story or a fun one, starting a Thanksgiving tradition is a perfect way to relate to your audience and help them embrace you during this holiday and, even better, during every year’s holiday. Of course, your story probably won’t have the nationally unifying power of the NFL, but we can dream!

Do you have any Thanksgiving marketing tips, stories, or traditions that you’d like to share? Well…share them! Add your holiday insights to the comments below.

And of course, to all our American friends (or anyone else) celebrating Thanksgiving…have a safe and happy Thanksgiving! Here’s hoping it’s not as traumatizing as this:

…And if you’re looking for seconds, just refresh the page.

The post No Rest for Marketers, Even on Turkey Day…or, Umm, Thanksgiving appeared first on Vidyard.

from Vidyard » The Video Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/1POdbQt via video services
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1XeWh1D

10 Video Production Mistakes You Don’t Know You’re Making (And How to Fix Them)

As video marketers, we’re expected to output flawless videos that incite emotion or action in the viewer. Throughout the production process, however, mistakes can be made due to tight deadlines or stakeholder demands. From the many videos I’ve seen, I’ve noticed a trend in that the same mistakes are made over and over again that compromise the integrity of the video. Some mistakes are small, but others can have a larger negative impact on the overall video quality and viewer perception.

Here are the 10 most common video production mistakes and how to fix them.

1. Your Script is too Technical

Producing a video starts with producing a phenomenal script. For videos that explain a technical product or procedure, this scripting process can be difficult. The trick is finding the balance of words; you don’t want to confuse the viewer, but you don’t want to be condescending towards them either. A lot of times I see scripting that dives too deep. The viewer can become overwhelmed by your video, which leads them to click away from it.

How to Fix This:

Simplicity is key. You want to make sure that anyone who reads your script understands the concepts and tone and no one feels talked down to at any time.

2. You Have Too Many Topics in One Video

Many times, video producers want to stuff everything into one video. Not only does this confuse and overwhelm the audience, but it also ruins the overall flow. Though your product has three functionalities, that doesn’t mean you have time to explain them all in one video.

How to Fix This:

Sometimes it’s better to create a series of digestible videos rather than one big video that tries to encompass all concepts. Each subject matter can be tailored for a particular audience, which will help with the overall marketing strategy.

3. Your Audio is Low Quality

Combining music and audio is where many mistakes happen. Your music sets the emotion or mood of your video and the voice explains the content. Each has a role to play in the video, so you don’t want the music to overpower the audio or vice versa.

How to Fix This:

Keep your music levels lower than you think they should be and increase volume during gaps in the voiceover.

4. Your Audio is Out-of-Sync

Even a few seconds of out-of-sync audio is enough to get viewers annoyed with your video. If your voiceover is 2 seconds behind the graphics, it makes for a sloppy video.

How to Fix This:

Depending on the error and length, you’ll probably need to bump the frames to get the audio back in sync with graphics.

5. Your Graphics are Too Snazzy and Flashy

Having a CGI/Avatar style video may look cool, but it typically doesn’t tell the story in an effective way. Sometimes producers can be talked into adding in some flashy graphics, but this can overwhelm and even put off the viewer.

How to Fix This:

Simple design and animation gets the job done. Keep it entertaining and use graphics to help explain your message.

6. Your Cuts or Transitions are Poorly Executed

This is something that irks viewers and producers alike. An example of this is when one scene ends abruptly and the next scene pops out at the viewer. It can look as if the video has skipped or had a glitch.

How to Fix This:

Fixing this can mean extending the outbound clip and/or shortening the transition, depending on what type of transition you have in place.

7. Your Video Subject is Complicated

Most likely you’ll have the design team create a talking head, which can be a person, animal, or their own creation. What you don’t want to get approved is a very complicated or strange looking talking head that is off putting to viewers. You want them to relate to this person or shape, not click away from it.

How to Fix This:

Always think of your target market and put yourself in their shoes. What will they respond to? What will incite them to act? That is the talking head you want in the video.

8. Your Video is Poorly Paced

If there is a long, slow shot in the video, then the music should slow down to reflect this. If there are quick, snappy transitions, then you want the pace to quicken in the video, speeding the music up slowly. When this is mismatched, it’s a production nightmare, and it can compromise the integrity of the overall video.

How to Fix This:

You want to figure out the pace of the video and select the appropriate music that matches this before production is too far underway.

9. Your Video is Dragging

Most clients have a lot to say and want a lot included in their video, which means your 60-90 second video can change into a 4 minute video. Most videographers agree that your audience will not watch that long of a video, but it’s easy to let the video length get too long.

How to Fix This:

This can be fixed by breaking up the videos into a 2-3 part series or by cutting the fluffy parts that are sharing the core and root of your message.

10. Your Editing Seems Rushed

Tight timelines can cause video producers to rush the editing process, but a rushed process shows in the final product. When a video is edited quickly, mistakes happen and small issues get forgotten. Editing is a huge part of videography and must be done right.

How to Fix This:

Before production it’s important that all stakeholders understand what happens during the editing process and why editing needs a major amount of project time. Ensure that everyone understands before you start your project that it’s more important to have the video done right.

Now you can see how common some of these mistakes are. But with these simple tips you should be able to avoid them moving forward and get closer that flawless video we’re all seeking!

The post 10 Video Production Mistakes You Don’t Know You’re Making (And How to Fix Them) appeared first on Vidyard.

from Vidyard » The Video Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/1lFbZlQ via video services
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1LvZlKz

Benchmarks for Video Marketing worth Celebrating

When your sister learned how to tie her shoe before you, you didn’t skulk away, you looked over her shoulder and learned from her. When your goldfish learned how to do backflips in the water you watched him for hours and hours and then tried it for yourself in the backyard pool. And when your friend learned how to land a date you took note … notes, even.

Why?

Because you know that the best way to achieve success yourself is to learn from those already having success, themselves.

And that, victory-hungry marketers, is exactly why we surveyed hundreds of marketers leading the industry in video marketing: to learn what obstacles they’ve overcome, what types of videos they get the best results from, how their budgets are changing, and more deep, dark secrets of the well-accomplished.

So what are you waiting for? Your invitation to video marketing victory awaits!

Grab your Invite While It’s Hot

Spread the News

Share some of the key findings from the report with these simple click-to-tweets!

• 44% of successful video marketers agree that the lack of a strong video strategy is the biggest obstacle to success (Click to tweet!)
• 46% of accomplished video marketers are using video to inflate customer education (Click to tweet!)
• More than half of successful marketers believe that customer testimonials are the most effective type of videos (Click to tweet!)
• Over 55% of winning video marketers are dialling into marketing tech for video reporting and analytics (Click to tweet!)

Join the Celebration

Dive deeper into the research from top video marketers and learn what celebratory video marketing takes. Get the Video Marketing Strategy: Benchmarks for Success by Ascend 2 and Vidyard!

The post Benchmarks for Video Marketing worth Celebrating appeared first on Vidyard.

from Vidyard » The Video Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/1NdyF8W via video company
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1YiasQz

Live Streaming: How to Extend the Moment Beyond Now

There’s a saying that goes, “You have be be believed to be heard”. And when it comes to being believed, experts agree that three factors have the biggest emotional impact on how your audience feels about you. Physiology. Tonality. Verbiage.

If you had to guess, which one of these three things would you guess has the biggest impact? Physiology refers to your physical presence, eye contact or facial expressions. Verbiage is what you say, the actual words you use. Tonality is how you say it: your intonation, inflection, timbre.

It’s been shown that physiology represents just over half of the impression you make with your audience while tonality and verbiage trail well behind at 28% and 7% respectively.  

What this demonstrates is the importance of face-to-face communication in business. Without it, you’re missing over half your potential to cast an impression on your audience.

But as business becomes more global and travel costs continue to rise, it becomes challenging to put boots on the ground at every trade show, bring employees together for in-person training and conduct in-person company wide town hall meetings.

Introducing Vidyard Live

In speaking with a number of B2B marketing, sales and communications professionals we’ve found that live streaming has become a popular solution for sharing experiences with audiences like customers and employees, live as they happen.

Live streaming for business makes sense as consumer adoption of live streaming has seen unprecedented growth with new technologies like Periscope and Meerkat. In just 4 months, Periscope added 10 million new accounts. If you add up the total time people spend watching live content on iOS and Android through Periscope, 40 years of video is being consumed each and every day! But consumer live streaming solutions just aren’t suited to B2B businesses.

Businesses are embracing live streaming to engage with audiences when they can’t be there in person, but until now there hasn’t been a way to know who viewed a stream or for how long. With Vidyard Live, organizations can now see down to the individual viewer who watched, when they watched, and for how long. With this information, organizations can use live streaming as an integral part of their demand generation and internal communications initiatives.

Measure Engagement

Curious to understand which content during the live stream best engaged viewers?  Vidyard Live tracks viewership second by second, showing attendance over the course of the event. By looking at when viewers joined and left it’s possible to understand which content resonated better. In the live stream visualized below, the period between 6 and 12 minutes saw the most users join, with a large portion of the audience staying engaged right until the very end.

Track Viewers

Built on top of the Vidyard analytics platform, Vidyard Live tracks viewers down to the individual level. This means that it’s possible to track the viewing history of each viewer that participated in the live stream.

Vidyard Live also adds a viewer’s live stream engagement to their complete viewing history so an organization can see what other video content that individual has consumed.

These two things combined make for a powerful combination when thinking about live streaming as a tool for demand generation and internal communications programs.

By pushing this digital body language to a MAP or CRM, it becomes possible to target campaigns and nurture campaigns to audiences that consumed a specific amount of the live stream.

And for internal communications teams, they can now see which employees not only attended an internal training session or town hall but also which ones remained engaged right until the end (those tuning out early, beware!).

Converting Viewers

Vidyard Live can be used together with other features like pre- and post-video events including calls-to-action and forms. By including a form prior to the broadcast, or once it concludes, a live stream can be used to generate new leads (with all the video viewing engagement goodness attached). Lots of flexibility exists in developing these forms, too. Drop in a form from Marketo, Eloqua or your favourite marketing automation platform, or create one with Vidyard’s event builder.

Built for modern B2B marketing, sales and internal communications

Beyond the tools for tracking, converting and measuring live stream viewers, Vidyard Live has been built for modern B2B marketing, sales and communications teams. In doing so we have solved a number of the challenges customers have with existing live streaming products.

In building Vidyard Live, we aimed to make it easy to set up and host live streams in just a few steps – without a cumbersome check-list of technical steps requiring a lot of IT’s time. Vidyard Live streams can also be started without any advance scheduling. No need to book your live stream weeks in advance with your live streaming provider.

Another challenge we heard from customers was the complexity of turning a live stream recording into an on-demand asset that could live online. Solutions that relied on someone encoding and posting this video to the web leave audiences who missed the live stream waiting hours or maybe days before being able to view. Vidyard Live solves this problem too. Live broadcasts are automatically saved as on-demand videos that are immediately re-watchable as soon as the live stream ends.

This is all in addition to the detailed analytics on who watched the live stream and how long each watch.

We’re thrilled to extend the potential of live streaming beyond traditional one-way broadcasting to allow deeper engagement with customers, prospects and employees.

Learn more about Vidyard Live at http://ift.tt/20WQPja and tell us how you would use live streaming below.

The post Live Streaming: How to Extend the Moment Beyond Now appeared first on Vidyard.

from Vidyard » The Video Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/1j7DGSv via video company
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1Quvz0E

Video Marketing Success Starts with Distribution, says Forrester

Many marketers are underestimating the importance of distribution and treating it as an afterthought, according to a recent Forrester report.

As Samantha Merlivat, Forrester Researcher and author of Branded Video Marketing Success Starts with Customer-Centric Distribution explains, “Producing content before having a clear distribution strategy makes campaign distribution highly inefficient.” If you wouldn’t plan a content piece like an ebook or powerpoint deck without thinking of where it’s going to live and how you’ll promote it, than why would you do so with a video? Video isn’t actually a one-size-fits-all medium even though we so often treat it that way. Different people are on different platforms for different reasons and Forrester argues that your content must align with this.

What’s more, relying on organic traffic just doesn’t cut it any more. Posting a video on YouTube (even if it’s a pretty freakin’ awesome video) is unlikely to generate you millions of views or qualified leads. In fact, for distribution outside of your firm’s owned mediums, Merlivat says that relying on organic traffic is not a smart strategy. Most marketers will need to pay to get preliminary traffic. But that preliminary traffic will spark more organic engagement and growth, in turn so it’s not like you have to pay for 100% of your video exposure.

James Buchanan, Strategy Director at Razorfish, the agency working on some of Unilever’s YouTube campaigns says that their traffic is split 50/50 between organic and paid. But it’s important to note that the threshold for results with paid campaigns has increased in recent years as more an more marketers are utilizing this tactic. “It now costs me 10 times what it cost me four years ago to achieve the same kind of organic lift,” emphasizes Billie Goldman, Director of Partner Marketing at Intel. In the report, Merlivat offers some really unique options for targeting your video campaign that will help you reach your target audience through paid promotion and therefore make the most efficient use of your budget.

In addition, Merlivat provides a framework for what questions you should be answering surrounding distribution for every phase of the video process in this report including planning, production, promotion, and measurement and optimization. She also includes some phenomenal real-world examples of brands who distributing the right way.

Whether you’re a B2B or B2C marketer, you’ll definitely benefit from some (or all!) of these extremely tactical takeaways. Check out the report here!

The post Video Marketing Success Starts with Distribution, says Forrester appeared first on Vidyard.

from Vidyard » The Video Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/1j3gc0E via video company
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1MhwTjs