Last week we were zooming and looming like nobody’s business. This week I want to talk about a slightly different type of video.
As I said last week, video is an intensely powerful way to communicate with your audience.
The reasons are simple: at heart we are visual creatures and – let’s face it – lazy.
Video content helps you talk through complicated ideas, establish trust, but perhaps most importantly, capture and hold attention in an increasingly distracted world.
And you can do it at scale, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and reach clients anywhere in the UK – hence the ‘Digital Adviser’.
The video marketing methods I covered last week are great for more familiar interactions: a webinar, a live chat, or sending a personal message to a client you haven’t been in touch with for a while.
However, when you’re dealing with people you don’t have an established relationship with yet – people who’ve just landed on your website or seen you for the first time in their social media feed – you need a different approach…
Think of it as making the right first impression in real life; you might turn up in a jacket and tie for the first couple of meetings before you graduate into jeans and a Starbucks latte for the second.
With video you want to start with professionally produced content: this is a ‘top of funnel’ piece of marketing. It should have its shoes polished and fresh breath. As you move people through the funnel, you can graduate to the more homely authentic messages recorded through your laptop with your cat meowing in the background.
Mixing both high and low production value video is the secret to using video effectively.
But when we say ‘high value’, we’re not talking flamethrowers, barnacled zombies or CGI-generated crowds, but clean, crisp audio and video which is well lit and professionally shot.
So you’re probably wondering, what does all this mean? Let’s take a look.
Flagship films
A ‘flagship’ film (or ‘corporate’ or ‘brand’ film) should sit on the home page of your website. The goal here is to explain who you are, what you do and why it matters – and, crucially, to do this in a professional and concise manner.
The best way to do this is to interview key members of your team talking about what financial advice and planning is and why it matters.
Combine this with short pieces to camera from your clients giving real accounts of how they benefited from working with you. And some out-of-focus Scorsese-esque shots of your office signage, of course.
If this sounds a bit abstract, so check out an example film I shot for Smarter Financial Planning.
The best part about these films is that when someone has watched it and gets in touch, a lot of the initial relationship will already have been built. They’ll feel a lot more comfortable when they come to see you.
This why people approach celebrities in the street convinced that they know them from somewhere. That’s the power of video to build the feeling of a close, trusted relationship. Never underestimate the power of these kinds of videos.
