Your prospects will do tons of research on your company, service, or product before they pick up the phone, fill out a form, or start a live chat through your website. Videos in every area of your digital presence can give them an immediate peek into your brand and offerings before they reach out for more information. And seriously, who doesn’t want a shorter sales cycle, increased ROI, or better talent?

Of course, figuring out what video content to create can be a full-time job, but it doesn’t have to be. When we pulled our video production team in-house we saw a great opportunity to step back and analyze the flagship videos we needed to feature across the website. We started with our product, identified the gaps we had in our digital content, and created videos to feature product capabilities. Then we applied this process to other areas of Brightcove and now we have videos for all aspects of the company, including marketing, sales, and of course recruiting videos. It wasn’t a one-and-done project. Every quarter, we review which gaps we have in our video content and make a plan to fill them the next quarter.

We’ve found that the key to success here is simply knowing that you don’t need to produce hundreds of videos per quarter, and you don’t need to receive an Emmy to see results. You can keep the effort manageable and build it over time. We’ve compiled a list of the five types of videos you should and can produce no matter what your budget or resources.

1.) Product or Service Video

All the videos on this list are important, but your product or service video is the must-have, especially on your website. Why? Because prospective customers can read about your product or service, but they’ll really understand its full capabilities and value when they see it.

Video viewers said they retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text. Now that’s a profound stat! So by repurposing your content into a short product or service video, your prospective customers will actually remember your company and the message you wanted to convey to them. It’s a win-win.

For our product videos we like to focus on three key value points upfront so if viewers only watch the first 30 seconds they will be left with our top messages. And for this type of video we aim to stick it in 90 seconds because we know there will always be context and content around it. 

Here’s an example of one of our Brightcove product videos:

2.) Company Explainer Video

Your explainer video is the view into your company’s mission, culture, and day-to-day operations. This is a great opportunity to get your executive team and employees in front of the camera so they can talk about the heart and soul of your organization and what makes it unique.

Your company explainer video only needs to be 2-3 minutes long and can include B-roll shots or photos of your team working together in their offices, at their desks, and even out in the field. This video humanizes your brand and helps your future customers put a face to the people they will be interacting with on a daily basis. People like to work with people, so let the personality of your employees shine through.

3.) Recruiting Video

You’re only as good as the people around you and those people can help you attract talent. The right talent. So for a recruiting video, turn the camera around and spotlight your team and workspace to show prospective employees what it’s like to work at your company. You should have at least one recruitment video on the careers page of your website and you can also share it on social media, especially LinkedIn.  

I love our recruitment video. We wanted to help guide prospective employees and take them on a tour of our headquarters, which includes a look at our team and where we like to go for lunch or after-work happy hours. Through this video, they can immediately feel the corporate culture and can visualize themselves working here. 

4.) Sales Video

How many hours a week does your sales team spend setting up and hosting demo calls with prospective customers? You can drastically reduce the time dedicated to these prospecting activities by creating informative and entertaining demo videos for your sales team. But it shouldn’t be your standard demo video that’s simply a screen share of your product or service and a voiceover from an employee.

Instead, start the video like you are in a face-to-face meeting and show the team member who is giving the demo. You can make your demo videos more dynamic by showing a human face and other shots in between product views. With Brightcove integrations , you can add call-to-actions into your video to lead a prospective customer to learn more on your website or to set up a call with an account manager. With interactive demo videos, your sales team will be able to cut down the length of their sales pipeline and can focus on doing what they do best — building relationships with your customers (instead of sending emails back and forth to schedule that demo meeting).

5.) Social Media Marketing Videos  

According to Social Media Examiner’s 2018 Industry Report , 65% of marketers use video in their social media marketing, up from 57% in 2017 and surpassing blogging. You should definitely jump on this bandwagon if you haven’t already since video on social media has shown to increase post engagement and conversions.

Your social media videos should be treated a little differently than the other ones in your toolkit. They should be short (30 seconds or less), should have catchy imagery and text, and should get to the point of the video in the first five seconds. It’s also a good rule of thumb to make your videos in a square format so they take up more real estate on a user’s news feed. And you don’t have to spend hours creating and producing videos for social media either. You can simply grab your iPhone and start recording.

Where To Use Your Tools

Now that you have these five videos in your toolkit, keep in mind that they don’t just have to live on your website. You can (and should!) use these videos on a variety of channels, including social media, landing pages, emails, and digital advertising. You’ve put in the hard work to create these incredible videos about your team, services, product, and culture—it’s time for the world to watch them.
 

To view our Partner blog, click here

Video is one of the top avenues for marketing, but it’s no longer as impactful to just set up a camera and become a talking head without clear direction or a purpose. Instead, the most effective videos tell a story. They evoke emotion, get to the heart of your audiences’ pain points or desires, and present an actionable solution.

I absolutely love the filmmaking agency Stillmotion because they tell profound stories in their videos. They do this by adhering to the Muse Video Storytelling Process : People, place, plot, and purpose.  I think this framework is absolutely wonderful for organizing your ideas to tell a story in any medium.  However, it doesn’t quite align if you are working outside a traditional storytelling format. Many of us are shooting product demos, internal communications, or quick social media pieces. To work this process into a B2B strategy, I expanded the Muse Storytelling Process so we can regularly use it here at Brightcove.

The 4 P’S + A + D

Every story has a beginning, middle, and end, but the most profound ones evoke emotion. The Muse Storytelling Process is my recommended way to inject emotion and engagement into your videos. This works perfectly in a B2C context, but I like to take it a step further and add additional parameters to my video storytelling process when working in a B2B context. When following the 4 P’s, we also need to identify who the “A” audience is, and the “D” distribution platform, or where the video content will live once it is produced. When planning your videos, ask these questions:

• Plot: What is the story you are trying to tell?

• Purpose: Why are you telling this story? What do you want people to do as a result of watching this?

• People: Who are the people in this video story? How do they relate to the story you want to tell?

• Place: Where is this being shot? Not only from a logistical standpoint, but how does place influence story? For example, interviewing a CEO in his office has a much different vibe than interviewing the CEO on the manufacturing floor.

• Audience: Who is the intended audience for this story? Existing customers? New customers? Staff?

• Distribution: Where will this content live and be shared? Social? Blog? Landing Page? Front Page? 
   

Having a great process in place allows me to focus on making sure I get what I need while I am on set.

How I Use This Video Storytelling Process 

I am part of an internal creative agency, so one aspect of my job is to help guide content requests that need video.  I usually have at least one brainstorm session where I gather all requirements and then apply them to the framework above. This helps me filter all the ideas that emerge from the meeting so I can scale the information and stay on target, on message, and on time.

Don’t get overwhelmed with the different ideas you or your producer might have. After an initial conversation about what I pitch, the stakeholders and my team continue to iterate on the idea. Sometimes this is incredibly fast, sometimes it takes a few meetings for everyone to land on a concept.

And although you want to tell a great story, don’t get caught up on the “storytelling”. By following this process, it will fluidly form, but if it doesn’t don’t stress, just showing how something works is a great story in itself.

Remember, most of the work is going to happen in the early stages of production, so you don’t have to spend a ton of money and time on shooting or fixing things you missed while coming up with your idea. For the purpose of this example, let’s keep our idea simple, so we can align it clearly to our process.

Let’s look at a basic example of the process in execution:

• Plot: Highlight the new feature of product X.

• Purpose: To educate our customers on how the feature works. (Purpose MUST be measurable. Inspiring people, making them laugh, etc. is not something we can measure, so I throw these terms out. More on that in a bit.)

• People: Whoever can deliver the story in the most engaging way. Most of the time it is someone tied to the product, but think unusual suspects too!

• Place: Our in-house video studio – living room setup (this is a go-to generic set for us).

• Audience: Existing customers who have an Apple TV. (Keep this simple to start, don’t overcomplicate the range of audiences – it will complicate how you tell your story. Make a second video that nuances some language towards new business and send that out through the proper channels.)

• Distribution: Blog and social. (If I wanted this on Instagram or Twitter, this would drastically affect the concept, per restrictions of data, usability, and viewer attention.)

Once this is mapped out, I come up with various concepts that tie into each of these elements. As I filter through each idea, I can remove ones that don’t work because they don’t align with the purpose, the audience, the place, or the distribution channel. Here’s the truth – I don’t prescribe that the concept I pitch is the best and only way to tell a story in video. I pitch it because I came to an idea that hits the points above, is doable in the timeframe, and is fiscally appropriate for the stakeholder. We produce,  measure, and make adjustments from there.

Apply a Process to Your Work

Whether you have internal or choose external production help , you can save time and effort having a process that helps you outline the important elements of creating a video story that drives action. Best of all, it’s another step forward in getting going with video .

To view our Partner blog, click here