Table of Contents Introduction. . . . . . 3 #1 Identify Content Types . . . . . . 4 #2 Make a Plan . . . . . . 7 #3 Film Your Video (or Not!). . . . . . 8 #4 Enhance Your Footage. . . . . . 10 #5 Give it Some Volume. . . . . . 11 #6 Make It Interactive. . . . . .13 #7 Post to the Web . . . . . .15 #8 Share via Social . . . . . . 17 #9 Leverage SEO . . . . . . 19 #10 Create an Email Marketing Campaign . . . . . . 21 #11 Go Mobile . . . . . . 22 #12 Track & Report Viewership . . . . . . 23 #13 Enable Your Sales Reps . . . . . . 25 About Brainshark . . . . . . 26
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Introduction Why video marketing? There’s no doubt that online video is popular these days. An argument can even be made that it’s become THE preferred medium for receiving information – a trend that’s not lost on B2Bs. Over 80% of senior executives watch more online video in 2015 than they did last year, and three quarters of them are watching business-related videos on a weekly basis. What’s more, 59% of executives would rather watch a video than read an article. As such, video is becoming essential to B2B digital marketing strategies.1 In fact, studies show that video is not only one of the most used marketing tactics among B2Bs, it’s also ranked one of the most effective.2 Today’s technology has
made the creation and delivery of video easier than ever, allowing more companies to create compelling content at lower costs with higher ROI. Combine that with the rapid popularity of social media sharing and the universal use of mobile devices, and it’s clear why more businesses are leveraging video to increase brand awareness and attract new customers. With a well-planned video marketing strategy, companies can get their messages in front of more people than ever before. So isn’t it time you got started? This eBook provides 13 essential steps and concepts to consider as you draw your video marketing roadmap, including tips for using Brainshark specifically as a video marketing solution.
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#1 Identify Content Types While there’s a wide variety of video marketing content out there these days, they generally fall into three buckets: Company or product-centric These are typically product-focused or promotional videos that fall into the realm of more traditional sales and marketing content • Videos providing a general overview of your business and its offerings • Videos focusing on specific products, services and recent updates • Product-focused videos with messaging geared toward specific verticals and markets for targeted campaigns • Product demonstrations The video below is an example of a promotional video that walks viewers through the primary features, benefits and use cases of the Brainshark Sales Accelerator for Salesforce.com.
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Thought leadership Here, the object is to draw prospective buyers in with nonpromotional videos geared around the interests of your target audience. Thought leadership material is a primary component of content and inbound marketing, where the goal is to engage buyers and position your company as a trusted resource and authority in your particular industry. • Short “how-to” videos and visual tips • “Talking heads” that cover a hot industry trend or topic • Video “podcasts” where multiple participants engage in a Q&A or free-form conversations
This is an example of how to leverage video to establish credibility around a topic AND amplify the message of another content asset—like an eBook or whitepaper.
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Humorous content Many of the most popular online videos use humor to get their messages across. Comedic videos also have a greater chance of going viral and being shared. (Note: These videos are supposed to be fun, so it’s OK to get a little outrageous!)
• Song parody videos and “lip dubs” • Short skits featuring employees in the office • Parodies that poke fun at popular video memes and trends • Funny commercial ads
This “Use Your Brainshark” video pits our company mascot—a life-size shark— against a dull office setting (a la “This is SportsCenter” ad series) to make a splash among our target audience.
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#2 Make a Plan Who is your audience? Before creating content for video marketing, it’s critical to identify the audience you plan to reach. That way, you’ll be able to craft your videos effectively for that particular group of. This is equally important for promotional and thought leadership content types. For example, as with any content type, videos geared toward a specific vertical should take into account that audience’s unique challenges, needs and use cases for your product or service. Creating buyer personas is a great way to ensure that your video is relavant for the group you are targeting. For example, is your video geared toward C-level executives, VPs, managers, or specialists? What are their priorities and challenges? Once you have a strong understanding of who these people are, your video should tell a story that reflects that.
stakeholders and subject matter experts in a room to discuss the themes, challenges, and ideas that you want to address in your video. Once you’ve crowdsourced insights, you can put pen to paper and map out the narrative. Once a script is complete, storyboarding can really help move the planning process along as well. This can work as half-instructional/ half-brainstorming session, where potential script improvements and visual ideas are discussed. After this session, team members will have a road map for the messaging and visuals each frame of the video should convey. More on storyboarding for video marketing
What’s your story? Before drafting a script, it helps to get all the key
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#3. Film Your Video (or Not!) Filming When it comes to shooting live video footage in-house, the type of equipment you use will depend on a number of factors – most notably cost. While top-of-the-line video cameras can cost several thousands of dollars, this type of investment is rarely necessary with today’s low-cost alternatives for video production. Affordable equipment for recording digital video can be had today for only a few hundred dollars, and even most mobile devices like smartphones and tablets can produce reasonably high-quality footage. Skype, Google Hangouts and GoTo Meeting have also become popular tools for recording simple “talking head” videos or Q&A-style interviews.
Sales for Life hosts a Social Influencer Series where they leverage GoToMeeting to connect with thought leaders and record their interviews. This Q&A video demonstrates how easy it is to create video content with the right tools.
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Lighting
Videos without cameras
No matter what option you choose for filming, the difference between high and low quality video content often comes down to lighting. It’s critical to make sure that your video subjects are well-lit by using basic lighting best practices.
With today’s technology, dynamic video presentations can be created without shooting any video footage at all. You may even find that the tools to create an impressive video marketing product are right in front of you. Combining static documents like PowerPoints, PDFs and photos, with voiceovers, music or audio files, can be equally impactful as film.
Achieving proper lighting is not difficult, but it’s important to research various techniques (color balancing, light placements, etc.) to ensure you get it right. You can also opt for natural light by shooting outside or in front of a window to keep the cost of production low. More tips and best practices for in-house video production
Especially for marketers on a budget, this can be a quick, lowcost alternative to investing in the resources for a full-fledged video production. The better your slides are, the better your Brainshark videos will be! Learn more about the keys to creating a winning PowerPoint slide deck.
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#4. Enhance Your Footage While most video editing software offers basic functionality to polish the look and feel of your content, professional-looking videos sometimes require a more seasoned hand. Working with graphic designers or video editors can be a boon here. Even if you don’t have access to these people internally, you’ll find that many can be hired on contract for reasonable compensation. Of course, if you’re a “do it yourself” type, editing tools like Adobe Premiere and WeVideo are reasonably simple to learn.
But don’t neglect the graphics and images that your marketing team has developed for other purposes. These libraries could provide all the compelling visuals you need for your next video.
You can also try checking out sites like iStock or Shutterstock to browse thousands of royalty-free images of stock photos, artwork, and video clips.
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#5. Give It Some Volume Voiceovers Whether you are shooting live footage or using simple voice-over narration, quality audio is critical. After all, the last thing you want is to distract your audience with echoes and static that can distort your message. In both cases, it’s a good idea to invest in a quality microphone to record all audio. Clip-on lavalieres work best for talking head and interview content, while any simple microphone can drastically improve the quality of pre-recorded narration. In some cases, you may even want to invest in hiring professional voice talent to bring your audio to an even higher level. Brainshark makes it easy for anyone to add audio to presentations via phone, microphone, or even pre-recorded MP3. Check out these Brainshark best practices for more details.
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Background Music When used properly, background music can add a whole new dimension to your video content. This can include audio that is played as an intro or outro to your content, or music that plays continuously throughout. Just be careful to avoid issues with copyright laws when selecting music to include. As with images, it’s usually best to utilize royalty-free content from sites like Royalty Free Music Library, Premium Beat, and AudioJungle. More on copyright law for music in video marketing
Background music makes up one of the 7 different ways you can easily add audio in Brainshark. Check out these steps to add a new dimension to your presentations.
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#6. Make It Interactive A great finishing touch—and a great way to measure your audience’s engagement with and comprehension of your content—is to make it interactive. Different platforms provide ways to add interactive elements right within the video player. This can come in many formats, including:
Quizzes and Surveys Try including surveys that can give you additional insights into what you’re customers are thinking or doing. Short multiple choice questions related to your content can also gauge whether or not they are understanding your message. Here’s what a survey question looks like in the Brainshark player:
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Calls to Action At the end of every video, consider using a call to action that encourages viewers to take an additional step. For example, “Learn More”, “Contact Sales”, or “See a Demo.” If they are truly engaged, don’t miss the opportunity to get their contact information so you can continue to nurture that lead. With Brainshark, you can include a clickable hyperlink to direct your viewers wherever you want them to go next. See example above.
Annotations It’s tough to add interactive slides or calls to action in any old video. But in YouTube, you’re able to overlay hyperlinked messages using the Annotations feature. Simply select the part of the video where you want to grab your audience’s attention, and enter the text and URL you would like it to link to. That way, they aren’t left on YouTube wondering where to go to find out more—you can drive them there right within the video!
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#7. Post to the Web Once your videos are created and ready to go, the next step is to share them with your audience. Depending on the type and context of your content, there may be multiple channels to consider. Here are a few of the most common and effective delivery channels for video marketing content:
Websites Many companies nowadays enhance their business website with some form of video to guide the user experience. Whether you feature broad videos introducing visitors to the company’s products or services, or timely content focused on announcements, events, or new releases, video is a welcome alternative to the more traditional marketing copy. Not only is video more visually appealing than text-heavy pages, it creates a more engaging and interactive experience for your visitors.
Blogs Blogs are more than just the written word. In fact, they are an extremely popular landing spot for video marketing content. Blog posts are ideal for embedding thought leadership videos to expand your audience and reach new people. They are also great for videos that promote new products or upcoming events.
YouTube While other video hosting sites like Vimeo can certainly add value to your video marketing, YouTube is the unquestionable leader in online video (and with over 4 billion views each day, it’s easy to see why). Posting videos to YouTube is simple and intuitive, and YouTube videos naturally possess high authority in search rankings.
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It’s also important to take advantage of the various options in YouTube for making your content more visible. For example, many companies set up their own video channels, which essentially serve as a homepage for all of their YouTube video content. Within the channel you can assign featured content, organize videos into groups and playlists, and best of all, add subscribers to your feed. Google (which owns YouTube) has a paid offering for promoting business-focused videos called YouTube TrueView. This service works very similar to the traditional AdWords pay-per-click process, allowing you to bid on particular keywords and have your videos target specific demographics, locations, and so on.
Brainshark videos can be easily embedded onto your blog or web pages, just like YouTube videos. You can also publish Brainshark presentations directly to YouTube to increase visibility of your content.
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#8. Share via Social Sharing video content via social channels is another great way to extend the reach of your content and encourage audience engagement. While there are many options to choose from in the social media universe, smart businesses generally focus the majority of their efforts on the following:
Twitter Hugely popular with media and technology professionals, Twitter is home to 288 million active users. YouTube videos shared on Twitter can be viewed directly from your profile page or a follower’s news feed, removing any extra steps between the audience and your message.
Facebook At this point, seemingly everyone and their parents has a Facebook profile, so the site’s popularity needs no explanation. But the use of video throughout the site has exploded, with 3 billion video views per day—trailing the YouTube viewership rate by only 1 billion.
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Videos—whether uploaded directly to Facebook or linked though a third-party site like YouTube—can be played directly from the Facebook newsfeed. However, with the launch of auto-play video ads at the end of 2014, native videos are automatically played when a user scrolls to them.3
LinkedIn Over the past few years, LinkedIn has arguably become the foremost place to connect with business professionals in a nonintrusive way. Because of the site’s focus, users are often more receptive to business-related content and messaging, and video can give you a major advantage. The simplest way to share content across your network is to post videos on your company page and groups for current and prospective customers to view. However, marketers can also connect with new prospects and influencers by sharing videos in other industry-related groups, embedding them in LinkedIn blog posts, or using them in sponsored updates or ad campaigns.
Keep in mind that social media marketing is a two-way street. While the obvious goal is to share your own content and attract more customers, it’s also important to share content and ideas from other sources that would be of interest to your audience. Companies that are too “me-focused” risk losing credibility in the eyes of social users, while those that take the time to share information from external sources are likely to build stronger relationships and trust throughout their networks.
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#9 Leverage SEO The best search engine optimization strategy is always to create quality, engaging content. But with Google and YouTube being the top two most popular search engines on the planet, there are some additional things that marketers can do to increase the chances of their videos being found organically. For example:
• Write effective titles.
While a good title is critical for all content types, it’s especially important for video. Be sure to use target keyword phrases in all of your video titles, usually as close to the front of the title as possible.
• Use additional text. Since search
engines can’t crawl video content as effectively as text, the words around the player are especially important for SEO. Make sure you write engaging, descriptive, and keyword-rich summaries for all of your YouTube and embedded videos.
• Create and submit a video sitemap. Since video is indexed differently than text-based content in Google, you can increase the online visibility of your videos by putting together a video sitemap in addition to a standard sitemap. This will essentially help Google identify which content items on your site are videos,
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while providing the search engine with more information on what your content is about so it can be indexed properly. The video sitemap also allows you to indicate the location of your video thumbnails. These images will show up in both video and standard search results to help your listings stand out from the pack (see the example below). Once your video sitemap is completed, you will need to submit it to Google (via Google Webmaster tools), Bing and Yahoo.
Video thumbnails can help your content stand out from the pack in Google and other search engine results. More on best practices for creating a video sitemap
• Use video meta tags. In addition to the video sitemap, content editors and developers can also take advantage of proper metadata and attributes to expose more information about their videos to search engines. Using meta tags in this manner presents a way for search engines to obtain “rich snippets” that provide more details on your content in search results – without the use of a video sitemap. Keep in mind, however, that both strategies are recommended for maximum SEO value.
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#10 Create an Email Marketing Campaign More recently, video has become a popular tool for company newsletters and email marketing campaigns. (In fact, some studies have shown that simply including the word “video” in an email’s subject line can increase click-through rates by as much a 13 percent.4) Video is a great tool for promoting product updates and general company details via email, but can also be a very effective form of webinar marketing. For example, many companies have found success creating short “trailers” for upcoming events. These work similar to movie promotions in that they quickly inform viewers of the content to be covered (usually under two minutes), all while driving registrations ahead of time. There are also some best practices to consider when marrying video with email marketing. For example:
Short Brainshark videos work great for webinar trailers to promote in email marketing campaigns. To find additional tips and examples for promoting webinars with Brainshark, check out this article
• Make sure the link to your video stands alone. Don’t embed it within the text
of your email. This will make it easier for recipients to see what your email is about and know exactly what to do from there.
• If your trailer is short (and it should be), say so right in the hyperlink. Something like “View
Joe’s 45-second trailer to learn more” might encourage a higher click-through rate, as it lets people know that the video won’t take up much of their time. More on using video to drive email marketing
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#11 Go Mobile The rise in smartphone and tablet technology has also opened up a whole new opportunity for marketers to reach customers with video content – anytime, anywhere. Projections indicate that by 2018, over two-thirds of the world’s mobile traffic will be driven by video content. Mobile technology adoption has not only driven the popularity of mobile video, but is also redefining our expectations of video content itself.5 For this reason, it’s more important than ever to make sure your video presentations are mobile-friendly. Keeping videos short is especially important for mobile viewers who lack a high-speed connection and tend to have an even shorter attention span than those using PCs. As with other mediums, paid video ads tend to be no longer than 30 seconds, while other content intended for mobile viewing should stay right around the “two minutes or less” mark. With Brainshark Conditional Redirects, you can create presentations that automatically redirect to different videos that are optimized for a viewer’s mobile device or language preference. Check out this article to learn more.
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#12 Track & Report Viewership While dashboards and reporting timeframes will vary depending on your particular campaigns and goals, there are certain key metrics to monitor. Keeping track of this data will help build a stronger understanding of the impact of your videos.
Views – This is the most basic metric in video marketing, but it’s also the most popular. Simply put, a View is achieved anytime someone clicks to play your video. Some analytics tools also allow you to filter out Unique Views (the number of singular people who have watched the video at least once), which can also have value.
Total Views make up the easiest way to determine the popularity of your videos, the effectiveness of your messaging, and your ability to entice people to click on your content. However, it’s important to keep certain variables in mind that can skew these numbers, such as the amount of promotion a video receives and whether the content is geared toward a broad or specific audience.
Viewer Retention – While Views is an
important metric, it doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story. As with most content and inbound marketing efforts, quality is usually more important than quantity. Reports that track things like Average Time Spent will give you additional insight into how popular your video content really is. In other words, viewers who click “Play” only to leave after a few seconds aren’t nearly as valuable as those who stay to watch the majority of your video.
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Viewer Data – This is where direct business
benefits can really be gained through video marketing. Believe it or not, even relatively simple analytics tools (like what YouTube offers) can shed quite a bit of light on who is actually viewing your content. Common data points include demographic information like age, location, and in some cases even industry or position. For important campaigns, many companies make use of registration fields for accessing video content on their websites, allowing them to gain even more information from viewers. Details like names and contact information can then be compiled into lists as potential sales opportunities, and additional data like views and retention can be used to help qualify those leads.
With Brainshark’s Clickpath Tracking feature, marketers can dig deeper into viewer retention, right down to the amount of time viewers spend on each section and the path they take through the video. For more details, click here.
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#13 Enable Your Sales Reps While video content is an excellent marketing tool for top-of-the-funnel use cases, it can be equally as valuable further along in the buying process. Increasingly educated buyers expect more value from their interactions with sales reps and the content being shared with them. As such, marketers are now tasked with creating video content to help sales reps engage buyers in meaningful conversations throughout the (often long and complex) B2B buying process. From thought leadership videos to customer testimonials that speak to the ROI of a product or service, sales reps can use this content to communicate real value to their prospects. Sales enablement video content has the greatest potential for impact when it is: • In-context with the selling situation – When videos are developed with buyer personas, industries, and the stage of the sales cycle in mind, it is much easier for reps to engage the people they are selling to (and of course, know which content to use and when). • Personalizable – Consider providing a script that sales reps can use to voice over an introductory slide, introducing prospects and customers to the video content they are about to view.
With the Brainshark Sales Accelerator, marketers can create videos for reps to access and share right in Salesforce.com, organized in context with specific leads, contacts, accounts and opportunities. content.
• Mobile-ready – Content that can be easily viewed and sent via mobile devices is critical for a geographically dispersed sales force to view, access and share in the field.
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About Brainshark Brainshark sales enablement solutions accelerate revenue through faster training, increased demand, and more successful sales conversations. Brainshark’s easy-to-use solutions ensure that key audiences – regardless of location – are always up-to-date with access to anytime, anywhere video training on virtually any computer or mobile device. Sales enablement functionality – including tight integration with Salesforce. com – helps reps win deals through better training, improved demand generation, and live presentation delivery. Detailed analytics help identify the best opportunities, the highest-value content, and provide insights that improve the effectiveness of managers’ coaching efforts. Thousands of companies – including half of the Fortune 100 and millions of individuals – rely on Brainshark to increase the impact and reduce the cost of their sales, marketing, and training efforts. Learn more at www.brainshark.com.
Contact Brainshark Inc. 866.276.7427 info@brainshark.com
© Copyright 2015 Brainshark, Inc.
Marketing Tech Blog, Why You Should Be Implementing Your Video Marketing Strategy in 2015, 2015. Content Marketing Institute, 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America, 2015. 3 TechCrunch, Facebook Now Has Over 3B Video Views Per Day, 2014. 4 Experian Marketing Services, 2012 Digital Marketer: Benchmark and Trend Report, 2012. 5 Brainshark, Marketing in the Social-Mobile-Video Age. 2014. 1 2
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