Do you think you’re ready for video marketing?

The goal of your video marketing message should be direct, clear and edutaining. You want your message to be educational and entertaining - edutaining. It should be exactly what your buying audience wants to experience by interacting with your product or service. Notice I said experience, not just view or hear. Think about how many times you can skip a commercial and ignore a brand message. You want your viewing audience to share your message!

"Be so good they can't ignore you."
-Steve Martin

The intention of video marketing is people experience who you are as a brand. Your product or service is personified or comes to life through video. Your personality should shine. Your confidence should beam through the screen. Your audience should feel just how much you love what you do. The information you provide should entice them to want to know more. You could take them behind the scenes of how you develop or make things. You could animate your message through text and graphics. You could walk people through your frequently asked questions and provide the answers in a creative way. You could offer customer testimonials. You could provide a moving photo gallery or slide show of your products. You could introduce yourself and your team. You could talk about the differences you've made for your clients. You could show how your product works and all the ways you can use it. You could share all the reasons people love your service or product. You could totally use your videos as a public relations tool. Consider interviews or a tour. This is the chance for some digital love. Who would you consider the gold dust contributor for your business? Take those blog posts you're writing and adapt them to visual content for video. The whole idea is to stretch your digital reach. These are just a few ideas that make total sense in video format.

You're bringing your business to life through video. This is your chance to break out of the "talking head" syndrome and bring those photographs to life! Get your creativity on. Stand out from the crowd. Take your lead from all the brands that are using video already. You might want to see all the ways your competition is using video, so your video message isn't droning in the market. Take some time and explore where you could take your video message creatively. Search out the video experiences that really speak the message of your brand.

We thought it would be fun to share some brands that are pushing the creative envelope. Think about how you could share your message incorporating just a few of these ideas in your message. Be daring! Remember you want your message to be share worthy. You'll want to read the comments below these videos in YouTube. Here are just a few of my edgy brand favs:

Progressive's Flo character has engaged many viewers in a fun way with the tedious topic of insurance.

Squatty Potty needed to shift the taboo purpose of their product, so they created the story of unicorn rainbow poop.

Purple Mattress wants to make sure they grab your attention, so they brought in Goldie Locks!

Taco Bell knocked this video out of the park! They want you to experience the grande fantasy.

The Concierge Office Suites wants to help you live your fairytale life. Check out the rest of our #businesstales with our resident business fairy godmother, Fleur De Lis.

Here's what you don't want to be. These talking heads put me in a coma and you may add a faceplant in the palm of your hand after you watch them too! 

There is something to be said for Mike and his golf shop. He did start right where he was, but please don't be Mike!

We'll have to agree with David Clark. This video is the world's most boring cat video. If you're going to video your pet and post it to YouTube, please make it more interesting than this and video your cat landscape instead of portrait for YouTube.

The New York Times in Education I'm sure has some great tips on how to write well. You can see there was zero imagination for this video shoot and they offered zero training for their speaker for presenting in video format.

I'm not saying there isn't a time and a place for stogy messaging. I'm just saying you want people to notice you are different! You're not plain vanilla. Add some variety to your "talking head"! Be that chocolate fudge sauce, sprinkles and whip cream on top of that plain vanilla business. I'm here to help you break the mold. I want you to start where you are! I want you to use the tools at your disposal and plan to step up your game. There will be some learning involved if you don't have the wallet for a creative team, script writer, actors and full-blown production crew. I'm here to help. You can create effective video messages without going to the extremes of my edgy brand favs. I'm here to help you do it on whatever scale you're ready to dive in! I'll help you brainstorm some ideas and provide a whole arsenal of shareware tools to step up your video game plan. Just take the time to explore the "what's possible".

Video marketing just like anything else in business needs a plan. A plan is a great thing to keep you on point and develop your messaging content. Your plan doesn't have to be complicated. It can be a simple list of "this is what I want to do" so you can check off that you're moving in a positive direction toward attaining your goal. If you're scattered, and don't know where to start your creative process consider using a mind map.

A mind map is a way to organize your randomly related ideas in a visual format.

A mind map is a fast way to get things out of your head. There are several mind map apps both paid and free. You can also go low tech and just draw/write it out. Message us if you would like links to some mind map apps we've found. This process will help in your creative research. On your mind map you can show the thought relationships between the videos that would appeal to your viewers. Here's an example of a mind map.

Map your problem. Find your solution! In the center of your mind map, state your problem or opportunity to improve. You don't have to "always" include the contributors listed in the example above, but these items will always be involved at some point in your process. You could use a mind map to explore some of the influencing factors for your ideal client or buyer persona. Mind maps are great for finding how things in the problem-solving process are related. You can incorporate photos and links to websites easily in a digital mind map. Mind maps can become quite detailed and have lots of legs as you connect subcategories.

You may want to explore how you can creatively incorporate your brand message in your videos. Your brand message should include your logo, contact information, colors, voice, and aesthetics in your video. The video Living the Fairytale Life a Business Tale had lots of branding influences scattered throughout the video. Think about how many brands you might see in a movie. Your video should creatively suggest you're the best thing since…you fill in the blank. Video can amplify your message across multiple social media platforms in multiple ways within the platform. Just like a well written blog post or speech you want to grab people's attention and engage them beyond the end of the video.

At The Concierge Office Suites we've been exploring all things marketing. We know that Google and YouTube are two of the world's most used search engines. Google is the most used and YouTube is the second most used search engine. It's why we are actively researching and creating videos. We thought you might want to travel with us through this marketing adventure. We want to help you and your business start where you are and take advantage of these search engine facts incorporating video in your marketing. If you have a smartphone, you can start incorporating video! In future blog posts we'll be walking you through just how to make this possible. We'll be introducing you to our video "pocket people" and resources. It's great to have a business concierge to help you find the "just right" experience for you!