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VIDEO SERVICES BEST PRACTICES GUIDE
Copyright © 2018 Neural Impact Inc. All rights reserved. This document is designed to help you increase your marketing effectiveness. Feel free to edit and adapt it further for your internal use and to share it with your sales team or peers with the intention of increasing the relevance of your messaging. However, it is not for republication or broader circulation, or to be re-sold or reproduced for distribution outside of your organization without prior consent.
Expert guidance for integrating video marketing into your digital enterprise.
Neural Impact Video Services Best Practices Guide 2
Table of Contents
Introduction - Why Video? -----------------------------------------------------------------------------3
Content Structure and Flow --------------------------------------------------------------------------4
Emotional Engagement Maximizes Content --------------------------------------------------------5
Speaking to Specific Buyer Personas ----------------------------------------------------------------7
Style and Production Best Practices -----------------------------------------------------------------8
Pricing Packages ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------9
Neural Impact Video Services Best Practices Guide 3
Introduction - Why Video?
Video online is no longer just for entertainment purposes. It is taken seriously in a business environment and offers a very rich, stimulating communication medium that engages multiple senses. Video engages the mind and triggers emotions, which makes it much more compelling than text-based content. Our brains have an easier time processing visual stories than bullet points or straight facts. It is important to invest time and resources to create marketing videos for your app.
Video helps you deliver your value proposition and engage new customers:
• Hubspot’s 2018 Video Marketing Statistics showed that landing pages that included a video increased conversion rates by 80%. (Source: Hubspot)
• UK video production firm, Hyperfine Media, confirms that 59% of executives would rather watch video than read text. 50% of executives look for more information after seeing a product/service in a video.
• Demand Gen Report’s 2014 survey indicated that 58% of B2B buyers purchase video content. (Source: Demand Gen Report’s June 11, 2014 Content Preferences Survey)
• Forbes’ Insights shows that 75% of senior executives watch work-related videos on a weekly basis. Business-related video drives executives to take action - 65% visited a vendor’s website after watching a video. (Source: Forbes Insights 2010)
Neural Impact Video Services Best Practices Guide 4
Content Structure and Flow
We recommend the following structure for your video to maximize sustained engagement:
1. Gain immediate attention in the first 10 seconds of the video by stimulating curiosity. Ask questions about the prospect’s core pains or ask them about something they would like to do but can’t accomplish today.
2. Highlight the prospect’s problems. Use an empathetic approach when describing their current situation and demonstrate that you understand their current business pains and challenges. They must relate to this if they are to continue watching.
3. New learning. Teach them something they don’t know. Demonstrate how you have expertise and knowledge about their business or industry that they might not. Show you can offer strategic value to them.
4. Paint a picture they will desire. Highlight the benefits, rewards and value they will enjoy after they purchase from you.
5. Prove what you’re saying is true. Prospects don’t trust us when we say our products are great. Include objective and credible proof in the form of data, charts, graphs, quotes, statistics or testimonials as evidence of your claims.
6. Less reading, more visuals. Let imagery tell the story if you can. If you need to use text, keep it short or just a simple title and let your host or imagery tell the rest.
7. Speak to the lens. The camera lens is the viewer and this is a 1on1 conversation. This is a chance to connect on a more personal and casual level. Think fireside chat.
8. Ask them to take action. Tell them what to do next and include an interactive link to the next step in the buying cycle.
Neural Impact Video Services Best Practices Guide 5
Emotional Engagement Maximizes Content
It’s about creating content, not ads. The goal is to inform and educate, rather than sell. Lead with a story, not with your app or the technology. Your narrative should have a beginning, middle, and end. As B2B marketers with limited resources, we think we need to turn our videos into thinly veiled product pitches. Resist that urge. You’ll build more brand affinity and trust by shedding light on a problem your prospects care about than by pitching your solutions to them directly.
Here are the highlights of how to maximize content through emotional engagement:
• Make your video tribal. Use a lot of industry specific vocabulary, terminology and visuals. If possible, film onsite at a customer’s location rather than in your office or in a studio.
• Speak directly to prospects in the second person. Do not talk about them in the 3rd person, and avoid using terms like “our clients” and “companies”; instead, use “you” language as often as possible.
• Do not speak about you and your company; the prospect should be the hero of the story. Therefore, give them value so that they know you are listening and understand what they need to know.
• Speak to a particular persona; do not try to appeal to everyone at once, as you may not fully engage anyone with this approach.
• Ask rhetorical questions that stimulate pain and anxiety in your prospects in order to demonstrate that you understand their business problems. (Pain is the most compelling motivator for action). Example: Are your margins decreasing? Having cash flow problems because you can’t collect payments sooner than 90 days? Had another large write off? Lost an important customer recently due to a late delivery?
• Use visual and auditory language to help the prospect imagine a new possible future. Examples: “imagine seeing” , “picture yourself”, “ how would you like to hear your clients say…” etc.
• Use contrast whenever possible. Compare prospects’ experience now vs what it could be after implementation of your solution.
• Surprise and delight them. Use humour to make them smile. We take ourselves and our problems too seriously. Be warm, memorable and unique.
• Call out your competitive differentiators while anchoring your solution in prospects’ minds so that they can compare all others against the bar you set.
Neural Impact Video Services Best Practices Guide 6
• Make sure the first and last ten seconds are compelling, memorable and interesting. The brain is on alert at the beginning of the video and at the end. In between, we gear down in mental focus and often tune out.
• Where possible, use tangible, concrete language. Include quantifiable proof in the form of data or visual pictures. No vague claims like “transform your business with the Cloud”. This is an emotionless statement.
• Give your product and company a personality. Your prospects are real people and they want to see, hear and interact with other real people. Don’t use actors. To build trust you need to be authentic and genuine. The connection to your company becomes much more emotional if prospects connect with someone in your organization. Don’t just offer a cold, objective and emotionless product demo video like everyone else does.
• Let others speak for you. A customer testimonial video will always be more believable and compelling than a video of you saying the same thing. Providing customer references and testimonials is much more compelling and effective than selling your company or product.
Neural Impact Video Services Best Practices Guide 7
Speaking to Specific Buyer Personas
Wasting a prospect’s time by requiring him/her to listen to irrelevant data or information will only create frustration and lead him/her to form a negative bias towards your company. We recommend creating a video for each of the three core personas: Why, How, What. A horizontal generic message that attempts to speak to everyone will likely not reach anyone in an emotionally engaging way.
WHY Persona (Business owner/executive/leadership)
The question you must answer beyond a doubt is WHY should they invest the time and money to buy your app? What will they get out of it? They have limited time and financial resources as well as many competing priorities and resource requirements. Why should they spend money on a new system now? Can’t they put it off? You need to elevate the discussion to a strategic level, where you highlight market share, competitiveness, profitability, differentiation, revenue loss and more. WHY messaging teaches, and is industry specific, results oriented, as well as memorable. It engages the emotional/limbic brain and leads to meaningful action.
HOW Persona (Business line manager)
Speaking to the HOW starts to separate you from the pack. HOW focuses on the operational benefits your solution will provide and HOW your organization will support the implementation.
HOW messaging begins to appeal to the limbic brain because it is focused primarily on emotional business pains and problems. HOW content is VISUAL in nature and ACTION oriented. It allows your prospects to identify with you at a FUNCTIONAL business level and to connect with you. It provides evidence that your organization has relevant industry experience. Tribal acceptance increases while risk decreases.
WHAT Persona (IT buyer, User)
You must survive the “WHAT inquisition” and provide product related feature and functionality information and data so that prospects clearly understand your solution offering. However, this will seldom trigger an emotional response and therefore, it is likely there will be little or no emotional engagement with your content. Logical WHAT content is a necessary evil because many prospects initially go looking for it, but stopping here means remaining relevant only to WHAT personas. WHAT is binary. WHAT is a commodity. WHAT is unemotional. WHAT people are often tasked with finding a solution and are important influencers in the decision, but they are not the financial decision makers, and their opinions are easily overturned by HOW and WHY people in the organization. Don’t invest all of your marketing time, money and effort into providing content just for them.
For more understanding of buyer personas, see the Neural Impact online assessment:https://neuralimpact.ca/buyerpersonaprofile/
Neural Impact Video Services Best Practices Guide 8
Style and Production Best Practices
Make it easy for buyers to find your site and engage with more content. Include a call to action at the end of all videos. When viewers watch your videos, they should feel inspired to take the next step towards purchasing. Make sure to indicate what that step should be.
Don’t over produce your video to the point where it distracts the viewer from your message. Casual and well produced authentic content with value will convert best while overly produced sales videos do not instill trust. A balance between strong strategic messaging and production quality that represents your brand is where you want to aim.
Speak directly to the prospect as if you were having a fireside chat.
Make your video easily shareable via email or LinkedIn, or post on YouTube.
Our attention span has decreased from 12 to 8 seconds in the last five years alone. The ideal length of videos is 90 seconds (minimum 30 seconds / maximum 2 minutes).
Make sure your audio is high quality.
Add interactivity where possible, overlay text, charts, animation, questions, etc. Visually call out key messages.
Track views and attention span. Observe and measure viewer patterns so that you can learn from prospects’ actual behaviors and then improve future content.
When it comes to the quality of your video, research shows that the more authentic and natural your video is, the longer the viewing time and the higher the engagement. When your video is too scripted, and your delivery is too polished, and professional viewers don’t trust the message and content and feel they are being sold to.
Here are some quick recommendations on how best to structure your videos to maximize sustained engagement:
Pricing Packages
Need help creating your own videos? Producing emotionally engaging customer case studies and testimonial videos does not have to be expensive. In fact, creating thought leadership videos can be very affordable. You don’t need a huge crew, professional actors, or expensive studio locations. Just an authentic, knowledgeable team member, customer, or topic expert, and proper post-production.
We can help.
ACTIVATION STUDIO GROWTH STUDIO
$9,670 US $14,350 US$4,879 US
CustomerSuccess Story
(3 personas, 4 videos, 1 written success story)
Full Case StudyMulti-Perspective
(4 videos, 2 locations, 1 written case study)
Customer Experience Testimonial
(1 interview, 1 video, 1 written story)
4 x 2-3-minute-long customer success story videos showcasing
your customer’s experience from 3 persona perspectives
4 x 3-5-minute-long case study videos showcasing both the customer and the partner’s experience, view of the
project from 3 personas, as well as the partner’s perspective
1-2-minute testimonial video of a customer experience from one
persona perspective
Up to 3 customer personnel sharing the Why, How, and What perspective
on the projectUp to 3 customer personnel, plus the partner (or an external 3rd party), to be interviewed sharing the Why, How, and What perspective on the project
1 member of the customer team sharing the Why, How, and What
perspective on the project
Shot at one customer location with webcam direction from
Neural Impact Shot at two locations, customer and partner/or other location with webcam
direction from Neural Impact
Shot at one customer location with webcam direction from
Neural Impact
Local onsite videographer for shootLocal onsite videographer for shoot
Local onsite videographer for shoot
Product screenshots or other graphics added to video, as well
as office/work environment inserted footage
Product screenshots or other graphics added to video, as well
as office/work environment inserted footage
Product screenshots or other graphics added to video, as well
as office/work environment inserted footage
Written format of (1) combined persona success story for use in a
variety of marketing mediumsWritten format of (1) combined persona case study for use in a variety of marketing mediums
Written format of (1) testimonial for use on website and other
marketing mediums
3 Case study briefing call 3 Interview question design 3 Up to 3 persona interviews 3 Transcript of interviews 3 Customer story editing 3 Design and production 3 Word and PDF written case
study up to 2 pages
3 Case study briefing call 3 Interview question design 3 4 persona interviews 3 Transcript of interviews 3 Case study editing 3 Design and production 3 Word and PDF written case
study 3-4 pages
3 Briefing call 3 Interview question design 3 One persona interview 3 Transcript of interview 3 Testimonial editing 3 Design and production 3 Word and PDF written
testimonial up to one-page
3 3 success story videos 3 Each video 2-3 minutes in
length (Why, How and What personas)
3 4 case study videos total 3-5 minutes in length
3 Each video 3-5 minutes in length (Why, How and What personas)
3 1 testimonial video 3 Video of 1-2 minutes in length
3 4th integrated video with all 3 personas’ perspectives integrated - Why, How, What
3 4th integrated video with all 3 personas’ perspectives integrated - Why, How, What
MOST POPULAR
ACCELERATOR STUDIO
Neural Impact Video Services Best Practices Guide 9
Neural Impact Video Services Best Practices Guide 10
Additional Choices
Thought Leadership Video (1-4 minutes)
One thought leader or expert discussing a specific topic with the goal of educating the buyer and establishing credibility.
Add on to Customer Case Study Video $2,560 US
Stand Alone Shoot $3,850 US
Included: Video direction, videographer, shooting and editing.
Written Case Study without Video Includes briefing call, interview questions, one persona interview, case study writing, editing, design and production.
Written testimonial up to one-page
One page, single persona perspective $1,580 US
Up to 3 personas and 3 pages US $2,350 US
3 Personas + Partner perspective, up to 4 pages $3,750 US
Thought Leadership Animated Explainer Video (60 – 90 seconds)
Create an animated explainer of an industry topic to educate the viewer as well as establish company knowledge and thought leadership.
Includes: Scope and design, script writing, animation, editing and voice over.
Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi_EtaDi8_g
$5,575 US
Making your own videos now? If you have your own team, in-house studio, equipment and film your own videos, but want help with video editing, adding visual graphics, post production or best practices training, call us - we can help as much or as little as you need!
If you want to get started on creating your own thought leadership or customer testimonial videos, we have a number of remote services at various price levels to kick start your content creation and production.
We can help you as much or as little as you need, so you can be off and running on your own when you are ready.
Happy video producing!
www.neuralimpact.ca
+1 604-987-4275
North Vancouver, BC, Canada
