Marketers are missing opportunities to produce more lead-generating and funnel-filling video at lower cost. They just need to look at video from a different point of view.
What stands in the way of producing more videos?
A technology solutions company we have worked with asked us to gear up to produce 70-100(!) 2-Minute Explainer videos over several months. Of course, we were pleased to take on the challenge.
Seven months later, the company had managed to finish — one(!) video. They are very happy with it, and we continue to make videos for them. But the salient fact here is that after all that time, there remained dozens of solutions that still lacked video content to help move people through the sales funnel. Why? It’s not lack of financial resources or video production resources.
The most common conditions that delay or halt video production about tech solutions are these:
- key people have other tasks that are more pressing; the more people involved, the more “other priorities” lengthen the critical path
- people can’t agree about “messaging”; the longer the production takes, the more additional delay will be introduced by massaging the messaging
- the product itself may be undergoing refinement
- there’s no deadline
A tactical, practical solution: video content before “videos”
Start small, with a sure win. Figure out which aspects of the solution absolutely must be covered, and make standalone video segments about them before you tackle the overview that attempts to perfect the sales pitch.
For example, is there agreement on how to present the problem you solve in a new light? Make a video about that. Are features A, B, and C up to the mark, but not feature D? Make simple, straightforward videos about features A, B, and C. Is there a single message everyone loves — put that in a standalone video.
With this approach, you’ll generate more short videos you can deploy sooner — where people who need a nudge down the sales funnel will find them.
You’ll have your videos faster, because the key people involved in each one will be those with the most to gain by making this particular video content available to prospects. You’ll encounter fewer delays caused by other priorities or uncertainties about messaging.
But won’t making additional videos cost more? Not necessarily.
You know that these useful, valuable videos you start with are essential to the full story of the solution. The graphics and animations they contain would have been produced eventually, anyway. Like excerpts made in advance, it will be easy to trim and assemble these videos into a succinct, sales-oriented whole later on.
Even if you end up producing several videos which add up to four minutes of content, your costs should not be significantly higher than for a single two-minute video. The total cost could conceivably be lower, because delays reduce your video production team’s productivity, too. They will be able to schedule work more opportunistically, work more effectively with subject matter experts, and get the incremental projects completed efficiently.
Most important, since you have already produced several minutes of relevant video everyone agrees is good, making an overview “explainer” video out of it will not require a lot of additional time or creative effort.
And keep in mind, however narrow the focus of the video, it’s going to be surrounded by text and graphics that provide additional context.
