Originally Written: Apr 2015Blog Updated: Nov 2019
Allocating a marketing budget can be one of a...
Digital 22 started fully using Inbound Video around a year ago. Although we’ve had some great success using the tool, we’ve also made a couple of mistakes along the way and wanted to share our learnings. At the May Manchester HUG, our Director, Mark Byrne, discussed what he’s learned from 12 months of using Inbound Video. Here are the key takeaways from his talk:
- Where can video fit into your business?
- What have we done well?
- Where have we gone wrong?
- What’s next?
Where can video fit into your business?
Whilst most people understand the benefits of Inbound Video and what it can offer, they don’t always know how to leverage it into their business strategy. In Mark’s talk, he highlighted some of the main ways video can fit into your business, some of which include:
Prospecting
Account-based videos and selfie-introductions are a great way to communicate with prospects. They give you the freedom to highlight your companies personality and outstanding customer service. In addition to this, they also allow you to stand out from the crowd. In many cases, they can even be the reason that a prospect is converted into a customer.
Sales
Another way in which video can be used is for sales pitches and trying to win new business. According to the guide to using video in sales by HubSpot, there are four reasons why video works so well when trying to sell, that’s because it’s more interesting, more visual, more human and more memorable.
Keeping in touch
Product announcements, stakeholder updates and team member introductions. These are just a few examples of how you can use video to keep in touch with your clients and ensure that your business activities are fully transparent. Research shows that being sincere can offer lots of different types of benefits including respect and positive public perception.
Training & support
The final example which Mark touched on was training & support. In most cases, training people through text can be a mundane experience. Whereas if you use video, it’s much easier for people to visualise your concept and immerse themselves in the topic.
Video training also allows you to accommodate different learning styles and makes the process much more straightforward when you’re training larger groups of people.
Digital 22’s video journey so far
What have we done well?
After Mark discussed a few examples of how companies can incorporate video into their marketing strategy, he then went on to talk about Digital 22’s 12-month journey of using video.
As I mentioned earlier, there were some things that we did well when we started using video, and there were some things which we definitely could’ve done better.
However, one thing we are sure of is that video has benefited us massively and you only have to look at what we’ve achieved to validate that:
Recruitment
Due to our head office being based in a reasonably remote area, we’ve sometimes struggled to attract the right kinds of talent to join our D22 team in the past.
Since we’ve introduced video into our recruitment strategy, we’ve had over 450 job applications, which is a 300% increase. Here are a few examples of how we used video for recruitment:
- Employee testimonials
- Culture videos
- Meet the team videos
- Dedicated social media content
Awards
Like every business, we’re always striving to win awards and gain recognition for our hard work. We’ve applied for a few awards over the years and for some time we didn’t really win any.
Video changed everything.
These are just a few examples of our outstanding achievements since we started applying for awards using video:
Find out more about how video has benefited Digital 22 by watching Mark’s full talk above.
Where have we gone wrong?
No one was analysing our video results
For several months, we never actually analysed the performance of any of our videos. Although we were producing loads of compelling video content, we never really knew what was performing well and what wasn’t.
Inbound Video is one small segment of the complete Inbound methodology and post-performance analysis is one of the most important stages of the process. In Mark’s talk, he emphasises that video analysis is something he wishes Digital 22 had started doing much earlier.
We didn’t hire a video team sooner
Something else which Mark wishes Digital 22 had done earlier is hiring a complete video team. For months on end, Mark was having to edit all of our videos himself. This was eating into his evenings and valuable time which he could’ve been spending elsewhere.
Since then, Digital 22 have several members of staff involved with our video strategy, including a Videographer who is responsible for both filming and editing all of our content.
Due to the impact of video in the world of modern day marketing, it’s crucial that you hire someone who has an understanding of how video works. If you or a current member of staff are looking to take the responsibility on yourself, be sure that you become familiar with all the ins and outs of the concept.
To find out more about what Digital 22 could’ve done better when we first started using Inbound Video, watch Mark’s full video above.
What’s next?
We’ve got loads of exciting ideas in the pipeline for our own video strategy and Mark ran through some of these in his talk. Here are just a few areas which we hope to focus on over the coming months:
Partnership with Vidyard
We recently went into partnership with Vidyard, a software platform which helps companies transform communications and drive revenue through the use of online video.
This partnership will allow us to take our video strategy to the next level and go above and beyond for our clients. We have plans to start using video for the following:
- Landing pages
- Thank you pages
- Workflow emails
- Reporting to clients
- Educational content
- Social media
- SEO outreach
- Weekly roundups
Get started with inbound video
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