Getting started with video marketing

You’ve considered all the benefits of adding video to your marketing campaigns (see Why you need to add video to your marketing plan). Now, it’s time to get started. In this video marketing blogpost, we’ll explain video marketing step by step to create your own video marketing campaign:

• Make a video inventory. First, track down all the video that your organization already has. This could include everything from top-quality corporate or product commercials to low-budget training videos. Check with your head office, and with regional branches. Make sure you dig deep – if there’s a potential gem out there, you don’t want to miss it. Once you’ve found everything that exists, make a detailed list, including the content and quality of all videos.

• List all your upcoming marketing campaigns. Next, compile a list of all of the marketing campaigns that you have scheduled for the next couple of years, along with the initiatives you have planned for each campaign, right down to the specific tactics (trade shows, ads in print or online, inbound/outbound marketing, email blasts, direct mail, etc.)

• Identify the opportunities for video. The next step is to identify the gaps in your marketing programs. Consider how video would fit into those gaps, and what kind of video would add value. And think about your video marketing objectives – perhaps there are specific goals you can achieve with video, that you haven’t been able to achieve with other techniques. 

• Talk to an expert. Then, take your list of marketing gaps, and your video inventory, to a marketing expert – someone who understands marketing strategy, and who is familiar with your market and offering. The best marketing partner will have extensive experience with video marketing opportunities and understand what makes a marketing video effective. They should also offer the expertise and services to handle all of the technical aspects, from translating any video you already have into a marketing video, to creating a brand-new video to fit what you need – a one-stop-shop to help you get started with video marketing.  

You might ask – if you’ve already got some video, and a strong marketing plan, why can’t you just create a video yourself to support your marketing goals? Well, implementing video marketing can be tricky, says Living Stone online expert Tom Buyens. ‘It’s a risky business – one bad video can ruin your brand,’ he says. ‘Before you dive in with video, it’s important to know why some videos succeed, and others fail. Or why you have mismatches, or goals that are not reached. There’s a lot more at stake than just making a video and putting it online.’

Tom cites some common missteps: ‘A video that doesn’t align with your branding. Or a video that’s not speaking to the right phase in your customer’s buying journey – for example telling a prospect in the awareness phase all about your product, before they even know you.’

Making sure that your videos align with your brand is especially important. With a company like Disney, for example, videos must be of the finest quality. Anything less would be ‘dishonest,’ says Tom. ‘The storytelling in a video must be authentic, and the production quality is part of that storytelling. Customers will know if your video is inauthentic, or dishonest, as it compares with your brand.’

There is a place for homestyle videos, but mostly for consumer electronics how-to’s, or posted by users on social media platforms. For B2B technology companies and for healthcare, though, high quality videos are an absolute must.

For a recent project with Cerus, Living Stone transformed scientific content from a seminar into a valuable video tool, which is now used widely by marketing and sales.  A biomedical products company focused on blood transfusion safety, Cerus holds an International Seminar on Blood Safety each year. To capture the content of the seminar, Living Stone videotaped the seminar sessions and organized interviews with subject experts, creating a series of top-quality videos that will continue to deliver on ROI for Cerus, long after the symposium is over.

To find out how Living Stone used video to help Cerus leverage seminar content and merge scientific expertise with its marketing objectives, download the e-book: ‘Generating leads with a high-impact scientific showcase.’