Everyone’s got a screen in their pocket.
And between YouTube, Tik-Tok, Reels, and other platforms, video is the number one consumed media.
Meaning, your audience gets most information from video
So why not use videos to introduce your company and your offers?
In this clip from B2B Forum 2023, video marketing expert Tony Gnau breaks down the three essential videos your brand can use to connect with more buyers.
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Let’s start with some video basics.
We’re going to begin with the five questions you need to ask before you begin any video project.
This is before you start talking about the creative. This is before you ever pick up a video camera or hire a video production company.
I want you to answer these five questions.
First one is, who’s your audience?
I mean, now this is as basic as it gets, right? I mean, you’re all marketers. Whenever you do a campaign, you probably start with something like this, right?
I want you to apply that same sort of stuff to each individual video project that you do. So we’re going to ask, “who’s the audience?”
You know who this is really important to right now? Me! I mentioned that I’m doing this new thing, T60 Health. We are pivoting T60 Productions, focusing on healthcare videos. We are going to become a healthcare video specialist. We have a ton of experience in that area. So we are pivoting and we’re going to become video specialists in healthcare videos.
Now, T60 Productions is still going to stay around. They’ll service any customer. But T60 Health is this new venture. So T60 Productions, organic stuff comes in? Great. But all of our marketing efforts are around T60 Health.
And as you might imagine as a video company, we produced a fair amount of video content ourselves.
And it would be so easy to repurpose that video to just go in, take that T60 Productions logo off at the end, and take the new T60 Health logo and—bam—we’ve got a repurposed video.
But we know how important this is.
So what I said is, “let’s take our top five videos and we’re going to reshoot them. We’re going to re-edit them. Because we now have a better defined audience.”
You want to hone in on this as closely as you can.
It’s not good enough to just say, “our customers!”
Hopefully you have customer personas. Make it for that persona. Let’s really hone in what’s going to appeal to that person. So this is super important to do.
What’s your goal for the video and, sort of along with it, how are you going to measure it?
You would be shocked at how many companies do not answer this question before they start a video.
It’s like somebody in the meeting raises the hand, says, “let’s do a video.”
And everybody just goes nuts. “Yeah, let’s do a video!”
But they don’t ask something as simple as, “what’s our goal for this video? What are we trying to accomplish?”
I don’t want you to make that same mistake.
Where are you going to show the video? What channels are you going to use? Is this just for your website? Is it part of a campaign for social media or email? Are you going to show a video at an event?
I mean, it could be more than one thing, but write it down. We want to write this stuff down all in advance before we get going.
What’s the story? And who are your characters?
I want you thinking about this from the very beginning.
Now, I will grant you a little leniency on this one.
If you don’t quite know the answer to this right away, I’ll let you punt. It’s okay.
Because sometimes this doesn’t reveal itself till you start getting into the creative and all of that stuff. So if you don’t know right away, it’s fine.
But I do want you to come back and answer it.
So once you do know what the story is, I want you to write it down. Come back to this sheet and write it down wherever you’re putting the answers to this.
And when I say, “who are your characters,” I simply mean: who’s going to be in the video?
If you’re doing interviews, who are we going to interview? If we’re shooting video of somebody, who are we going to shoot?
Just start writing down those people. Okay. Alright.
And then last but not least, how are we going to promote the video?
Now I’m in a room full of marketers. This is where you folks really shine, but I want us to be intentional about it from the very beginning.
I don’t want you to get that video file and be like, “oh, well, we’ll know what to do with it when we get the video file,” and then all of a sudden you’re like, “now what?”
I want you to have a plan in place so that you hit the ground running.
As soon as you get that video file, you know what you’re going to do with it because we’ve already made a plan.
It’s on our content calendar, whatever it may be.
I’m not saying you have to share it constantly or anything, but have a plan in advance. And we’re going to hit more on promotion in a bit. Okay?
Now we’re going to talk about just a few types of videos.
You are only limited by your own imagination here. I’m not even going to get into Tik-Toks, and Reels, and Shorts. You’re only limited to your own imagination.
I’m going to give you what I consider to be the three core videos.
These are a great foundation for your videos that you’re doing.
And the first one is the About Us video. And this is simply who you are, what you do, and why you do it.
And I like to refer to this as the “first impression video,” because so many people, when they come to your website, they want to learn more about you. Wouldn’t it be great to have a video there telling them?
And this is your first opportunity to get in front of them and actually speak to them and show them what you’re all about. I love the About Us video.
Product and service videos. If the About Us video is who we are, this is what we offer, this is what you sell. Produce videos on those things!
Testimonial videos. I mean, come on marketers. We all love ourselves. A good testimonial, right?
You get that quote. Maybe you put a picture next to it. You go into Canva, you make a little graphic or something, you’re like, “yeah!”
I mean, how much better would it be to have a video of that person actually telling the story of how you help them?
Super powerful.
So those are your three core videos.
And again, you’re not limited to these. I mean, if you have other ideas for a type of video that you want to do, by all means go for it. Okay?
Now we’re talking big picture strategy kind of stuff here for the project.
We’re not getting into the actual content, but I would be remiss if I didn’t give you at least one content tip.
As a video producer, if I have a mantra, this is it:
Video isn’t about facts and figures. That’s for all your other content.
Video is about emotion.
We’re not going after people’s minds with our videos.
We’re going after their hearts.
And the shortcut to the human heart is storytelling. Now, all of you are storytellers. We should all be doing storytelling in all of our marketing.
But if there was ever a platform where storytelling shines, this is it.
So I want you to bring your stories.
I love what Seth Godin says about it. He says that people crave stories. And that logic—facts and figures–logic is a battering ram.
It’s really hard to go after somebody’s heart with a battering ram.
But I mean, master marketer-storyteller, of course he’s going to say that.
What about one of the wisest men in all of Westeros, Tyrion Lannister? I’m looking, my fellow Game Thrones geeks reveal themselves at this moment, every time.
(For those of you who don’t know, Tyrion Lannister is a character from the HBO show, Game of Thrones.)
And in the very final episode of the series, the leaders of Westeros asked Tyrion, “who do you think should sit on the Iron Throne?”
And he said, “well, what unites people? Armies? Gold? Flags?
“Stories. There’s nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it. No enemy can defeat it.”
Published June 05, 2024
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