The Boston HubSpot User Group held our first in-person meeting in over four years. It was wonderful to reconnect with Boston’s inbound community after so long. And what better place to gather than at the home office of one of Boston’s most loved brands, Wistia.
Wistia’s video marketing platform for businesses makes it easy for marketers to do video well. Wistia users can upload and customize their videos, add in calls-to-action and email capture forms, and embed videos on their websites or share them on social media. The platform also offers in-depth analytics and viewer insights, allowing users to track engagement, measure performance, and make data-driven decisions to improve their videos. Wistia aims to empower businesses of all sizes to leverage the power of video to captivate audiences, build brand awareness, and drive conversions.
Wisita KNOWS video. In fact, they provided the video section for HubSpot’s State of Inbound report. So, you can just imagine how much knowledge Chris Lavigne and Taylor Corrado dropped on us during their presentation, “How Your Business Can Use Video Across Your Customer Journey.” It was loaded with insider tips and best practices.
Taylor and Chris set the scene by sharing the latest trends from Wistia’s State of Video Marketing Report. The long and short of it is – video is everywhere and it’s not going away anytime soon. They then shifted into how video can be used throughout your entire customer journey. Taylor broke this down into three key stages
- Discovery
- Engagement
- Conversion
These three categories match up with HubSpot’s flywheel, representing the stages of a customer journey.
From there, Chris walked us through examples of different kinds of videos Wistia created for their customer journey, that other marketers can create as well.
They shared examples of:
Acquisition Videos:
In this stage, the goal is to attract and convert prospects into customers. Videos can be used to grab attention, create brand awareness, and generate interest in your product or service. By leveraging compelling visuals, storytelling, and persuasive messaging, videos can effectively communicate your value proposition and differentiate your brand from competitors. They provide an immersive and memorable experience that captures the audience’s interest, encourages social sharing, and increases the likelihood of conversions.
Wistia – Video Hosting and Marketing Tools for Business
Adoption Videos:
At this stage, potential customers are aware of your product or service and considering adoption. Videos provide an engaging and dynamic way to showcase the features, benefits, and unique selling points of your offering. They can demonstrate how your product solves their pain points, highlight success stories, and provide in-depth tutorials or demonstrations. By utilizing videos, you can build trust, create emotional connections, and provide valuable information that helps customers make informed decisions. Videos have the power to captivate and influence potential customers, making them an effective tool for driving adoption and accelerating the customer journey.
15 Types of Videos That Every Business Can Use – Wistia Blog
Brand Awareness Videos:
In today’s digital landscape, where attention spans are shorter and competition is fierce, videos offer a dynamic and engaging way to convey brand messages, values, and stories. They enable brands to showcase their personality, connect emotionally with their audience, and leave a lasting impression. With the power of visuals, music, and storytelling, videos can evoke powerful emotions and create a deeper connection between the brand and its target audience. They can be used to communicate brand identity, highlight unique selling points, and reinforce brand positioning.
2023 State of Video Marketing Report – Wistia
Chris even gave us some great examples of how Wistia is using video in out-of-the-box places, like using video to communicate the text-heavy Terms of Service!
If you were unable to attend, check out this webinar from Chris and Taylor. It contains many of the same lessons they shared with us in person.
The best part of our meetup was the thoughtful questions from the audience and insightful responses from Chris and Taylor. I didn’t want you to miss out, so here are the ones that stood out to me.
1. We have some staff members who hate being filmed. What’s the best way to help ease someone into becoming comfortable on camera?
“Walk before you run. If you’re working with someone who hasn’t been on camera a bunch of times before, just start with small one-liner parts in your video. Or lots of voice-over parts. Then once they see that it’s not that hard and that the end product looks good, they’ll be more likely to offer help and do a good job the next time around.”
2. What’s your best advice for an organization just getting started with video?
“Find some low-hanging fruit to make lower-risk videos. Don’t try to make a front-page video as your first video. Try answering a frequently asked question with a video. Or try adding a video to a product page. Check the stats, find your brand’s voice, and start to get conviction over what types of videos are working.”
3. Our organization doesn’t have a lot of expensive video equipment. How important is quality when creating a video?
“The story is more important than the quality. The pandemic has reduced the bar for what quality of video is acceptable. Authenticity trumps everything else. Viewers can spot something that is inauthentic or fake, so if you don’t have a huge budget and your brand can support it, it’s fine to be scrappy. There are also tons of tools on the market (Wistia’s built-in editor and screen recorder, Screen Studio, Adobe Podcast Enhance, etc) that can add polish to even the lowest-quality video and audio footage. But, again, if your video tells a compelling story, viewers will be forgiving of lower quality.”
4. How do you get into creative mode when working on videos? Do you have any tips?
“I like to keep a log in Asana or Slack of videos, commercials, music videos, or scenes from a movie that inspire me. Then I come back to that repository when I’ve hit a creative roadblock as a form of inspiration.”
5. How do I determine how long a video should be?
“It depends on so many factors! Do you have your audience’s attention? Or are you competing for it? Is it a transactional video? Is it informative? All of these things need to be considered. We go through all of this and much, much more in Wistia’s 2023 State of Video report. Check it out!”
6. What are some non-traditional places movies can be used in an organization?
“When folks think about video at a business, they’ll usually think about going viral on Youtube…or maybe a front page video. I challenge you to try not to go viral, but rather, go helpful. Where can video help your customers? Where can a video improve customer experience or an outreach attempt? How can a salesperson at your company make a more personal connection with a lead or a potential customer? There are spots all over the company and the customer lifecycle where you can implement video. You just need to think beyond going viral.”
7. What are table reads and how can they be used to improve my videos?
“Table reads are not nice-to-haves. They are non-negotiable. Reading a script out loud BEFORE the cameras are rolling and the lights are on is a great time to provide line delivery feedback and fix any tricky word combinations. It’s much easier to provide critical feedback at this stage than while the talent is in front of the camera lens and feeling self-conscious.”
8. Are there any common challenges that businesses should be aware of when integrating video into their marketing strategies?
“Video is an iterative process. We like to think about the cycle in terms of Make – Promote – Analyze – Iterate – Repeat. If you aren’t looking at the analytics, you’re not getting the full picture. A successful video marketing strategy isn’t just a one-and-done scenario. See what’s worked. See what has NOT worked. Do more with what’s working, and improve on the stuff that isn’t. And if you’re not connecting your video analytics to the rest of your marketing stack, you’re missing out on massive opportunities to put your video to work and to gauge the ROI on your video efforts.”
9. What are your thoughts on the future of video marketing? Any emerging trends or technologies that businesses should keep an eye on?
“Video content creation is getting easier and easier. From Chat GPT to webcam and screen recorders, to the latest iPhone and AI-powered text-to-video, video is being democratized. But there’s still a lot of mediocre, vanilla content out there. And as more and more AI-generated content will flood the internet, there is a massive opportunity to leverage Artificial Intelligence to create more content, quicker. That being said, now is the time that brand matters. To cut through the clutter of mediocre content, your content needs to shine. Personality, brand, and authenticity will be key in this post-AI world.”
10. If you had to choose just one key takeaway from your presentation that you’d like people to come away with, what would that be?
“Video is not a monolith!”
Join Boston-Area Marketers and HubSpotters
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