When you’re planning your explainer video, consider developing a series of videos to build awareness and to align with the often varying needs of your customers. Here are just a few of the reasons planning a series can really amplify the effects of your video marketing:
Keeps your message concise and consistent
Aligns your message(s) with different customer needs
Brings viewers back to older videos
Creates another ‘touchpoint’ with customers
Focuses on new features and use-cases
Let’s look at these in more detail, starting with your message.
The Two Minute Conundrum
Explainer videos are usually designed to deliver a powerful hit of information in an easily digested, shareable format. Their ability to combine visual and audio messages means you can deliver a lot of information in just a few minutes. That’s a big plus. But if your product or service serves multiple markets or solves multiple problems it may not be possible to cover all those needs in one video. The solution? Create a series.
A series doesn’t mean starting from scratch with each episode. Much of the visual content, style and delivery can be reused or adapted. Animated elements like characters and audio elements like narrators or voice-over talent can be reused, and production sessions can cover more than one video.
For a great example of how to leverage video assets across a series check out this series produced for the Ontario Health Study.
When you have a more complex story, the answer is not always a longer video. Very often, it’s more effective to break up your story into elements designed to align with the different needs of different customers.
Aligning Your Video Purchase With Personas
Your video series should target the varying needs and range of characters who influence the decision-making process. These characters may include:
Users. Those who will actually use the product or service, not always involved in buying. In the medical device market, for example, buyers may be hospital administrators or purchasing departments while users may be nurses or Physician Assistants.
Purchasing Managers. These are people charged with doing research and recommending purchasing options.
Professionals. Professionals like designers, attorneys and financial advisors often have input into buying decisions.
Decision-makers/Executives. The individual(s) who authorize the purchase and sign the check.
For example, a catering software provider needed a video to convince corporate managers at a big commercial food service providers of the benefits of using their platform. The message was easy management across multiple locations with integrated reporting, inventory and financial processes. Their first video was successful at these objectives and helped them reach into several different departments involved in the buying process. But there was a problem.
The people in the kitchens didn’t see the advantage of dealing with software, in their world. They were the users and if they did not embrace the system, it wouldn’t work. So a second video was created to explain how the software would make their lives easier and save them time every day, a key problem in their lives.
Attracting New Viewers to ‘Old’ Videos
Adding more videos gives you an opportunity to leverage earlier video assets by linking back to those videos and creating a video channel on a service like YouTube or Vimeo. Newer videos in a series should build on the message of earlier videos without repeating it. If a customer comes across your latest effort you should always encourage them to check out other videos in the series.
Touchpoints
The concept of touchpoints in marketing is simple: Customers tend to require multiple contacts with the same message before it becomes a part of their buying process. Each time you reach out with a marketing tactic you create one of these marketing touchpoints. Explainer videos are very powerful touchpoints because they deliver a lot of information in a concise, entertaining manner– and are easily shared. Creating a video series multiplies this viral effect and creates more powerful touchpoints, leading to more customer engagement.
“I don’t care about that feature”
Your product or service may offer different value to different market segments. If you serve multi-sided markets like education or healthcare, one video may not be enough to address the different value propositions you offer. In the catering example above, the guy in the kitchen didn’t really care about getting financial reports across multiple locations (he may not even like it!). But he did care about gaining an hour a day because of automated inventory management. It’s difficult to tell those two very different stories in one video.
Addressing Complex Markets
Your video marketing can be amplified through the use of a video series, especially if you are selling or communicating with a complex market. Check out this whiteboard series Switch Video produced for Comet Technologies.
It includes five videos about different product groups developed by Comet. While there may be some prospective customers that are interested in all five, it is more likely that they will reach a broad spectrum of customers with varying requirements by offering a menu of videos. And there is the added benefit, when you create a channel, of your series introducing current customers to products and services you offer that they may not have been aware of.
Planning A Video Series From Day One
You can start with one video and add others. If you are considering a series, let us know so we can help you leverage the messaging of your video marketing campaign. You will reach more customers and get more bang for your investment.
