Gone are the days when a well designed logo, printed on a business card, letterhead…then featured in a glossy brochure were sufficient to launch and sustain a company.
You’ll naturally ask “why” and the reply to that question will end up being a very good business plan in a way.
Many small business owners know that:
- how they look,
- who they are
- what they sell,
- and where they are will matter.
Those fundamental business basics are the same; what’s changed is the:
- how
- when
- where &
- why they are applied.
Those of us who’ve survived bringing our businesses into the digital age are still punch drunk! We understand that in order to conduct a successful business we need to apply the fundamental good business practices that we’ve had in place and to which we owe our success. The most recent addition required to successfully transition and ‘rank’ any business in the forefront of the digital age is video production.
It is more than a necessary ingredient, it is basic to how you publish your brand. Currently some very sloppy video productions are thrown together and published onto the many video production portals, Youtube, of course, being chief among them.
This blog is going to be focused on how you apply your established branding towards video production and have that video mirror the best that you are.
There are some major mistakes that are more frequently made than most business owners want to realise. Those of us who view videos, and who among us does not?! can quickly sort the good video productions from the bad video productions.
So,…let’s begin there – what exactly is a good video? Here’s a short list:
- the video shows what the subject is about by using pictures – it is visually driven. More of the ‘show’ than the ‘tell’. Video does the heavy lifting as it’s termed in traditional advertising and marketing.
- good video production generates an emotion
- it is typically briefer rather than longer
- it’s pleasing to watch, colour, movement,
- the sounds, music, or voice, that’s used combines well with the visual subject
- after watching it, you know more than you did before you viewed it
- an excellent video production is one you want to share (this is not as common)
Now here’s a few issues that generally make for ‘bad’ video production;
- you view it then wonder why you did
- it gives nothing to you, no humour, no sadness, no urge to do anything!
- it’s too fast or too slow
- it’s purposeless & confusing
- it simply does not give you what you had hoped it would.
- generally speaking you feel that someone wasted your time!
As a video producer and scriptwriter, I am delighted to see video move into a central arena and that’s not just because I have my living carved out of the video production industry..it’s because now with many more people involved in making their own videos, it’s become a lot more exciting!
i am not the snob that feels that the technical side of video productions was very important anyway. Yes, I’ll admit as probably you will, that is the images on the screen are pleasant and the music too, and you can actually see a reason for the video, even if it’s just to have a good laugh, well, wonderful! But someone who picks up their smart phone or their smart tablet, even if it’s not an iphone and ipad ( sorry… LOL ) and spontaneously captures an emotional moment that has you sending the video to everyone including your grandmother and the pastor, well, bravo or brava!
Add to that the heightened imagination of those who now think with video…they can summon some of the most interesting videos with no lights, sound, script or actors. I’m loving this! Even many of the top multi national companies have full time staff whose job it is to troll the internet, particularly the video portfolios on YouTube to seek out interesting video production that could be used to market their own products. Many of these very clever TV & Cinema commercials you’ve seen began by hiring talent located online.
So that’s all to the world of entertainment…. now, how do you get that fun into your video that is supposed to draw new clients to you as well as maintain the flock of customers you hope to retain? HOW !?
This is very easy in one way and horrifically difficult in another. Our conversation here is strictly to do with Branding Video Production. What does one of those do?…simple:
It makes people want to come and buy what you are selling and it makes the customers you have proud to be doing business with you.
I’m not leaving aside ‘nuts n’ bolts’ , by this I mean exactly what I’ve said: nuts and bolts that you may go to the hardware store to buy because you are building or repairing something.
No matter what you are selling, if you tell a story that portrays that product or service, it will sell it better than if you just tell something about the item you’re selling.
Stories sell just like facts tell. How do you entertain while you inform? We’ll discuss this later… let’s first revisit the many reasons why video is now crucial to your business success. Remember we were saying that the fundamental basics of business have not changed, but the placement of those fundamentals has.
The number of people who go to a website and first look for video, look for it before they finish reading the opening paragraph on your home page! That is usually your place to park your ‘mission statement’ …think of it! They look to see if there is a video that will tell them all they need to know, without having to read about it.
For those of you that doubt this well researched fact, I invite you to do a bit of research and do it with in the unbiased companies who constantly collect and collate such statistics.
The facts are staggering. Why are most internet users preferring to view videos rather than read text? Here are a few of the reasons that are listed in some of the major research polls:
- video is preferred because so much information can be condensed into them;
- convenience is a big factor; they choose the time & place to view video
- moving image, combined with sound, graphics, etc. condense and combine all the senses – information is more easily memorized and recalled;
- viewing videos in order to learn is less stressful than reading text;
- in some incidences, videos provide actual evidence of what the company is ‘selling’, they sometimes also serve as a ‘meet & greet’- it is the business card of our time;
If video is the preferred as the tool that ‘most internet users’ seek out to learn about a company and is the main ‘evidence’ the shopper uses to purchase a product or service, then it’s probably something you need to consider adding to your marketing and advertising efforts.
Now having video production puts you behind the eight ball and here’s why:
Google, along with the other major search engines such as Chrome, Bing, Yahoo, etc. have their preferences set to follow the people! That means they follow video. If your site has video posted on it, it’s first to be visited by the google bots, further to this, there are some correct ways to post video to your site so that it will be found.
The more about that you know, the easier it is to get your site found and read. These tools such as encoding the video into html5 is only the beginning! We are so far beyond the days of website development when it was simple code and then tags and text it’s not even funny.
We are now into the realm of the expert; the webmaster’s specialize, some in search engine optimization, some in search engine marketing, some in building the actual website. And believe me, there are many reasons why each of these areas need a specialist.
It’s kind of like the once common ‘country doctor’, he or she knew something about everything and could diagnose their patients. After all, they typically knew them and treated them for most of their lives. Now we have an expert for everything and that same development is exactly what’s happened in the world of both the computer and the entire internet.
If you are wanting to promote your business online in today’s economic climate you really need to hire some expertise. Like I said in the beginning of this blog, not so very long ago, you could have a logo, a business card, letterhead and brochure and be fully fitted to promote your business.
If you could afford to advertise at all, you’d buy space in the local press, get yourself into the annual yellow pages, and if you were really rolling in the dough, you’d get a TV and Radio ad going!
That entire shebang is now online, everywhere, all the time, day and night! What a market place! And, like it or not, video is king of content. If you don’t have one, you really need to have a good reason why.
If you are considering the option to add video to your sales efforts, make the first one a ‘Branding Video’. That video, when well crafted, will take the very essence of who you are, what you do and sell then distill it into approx. 60 seconds of video. It should entertain while it informs the viewer, they should feel ‘moved’ to buy your brand if they are at all in the market for your service or product.