Meet Erik Robinson: The good, bad, and ugly of marketing videos

Thursday member spotlight: On Thursdays, we like to introduce you to a fellow myMarketing Cafe member. This might be through a guest blog post or by our sharing about a member and their business. Today, I want to share about Erik Robinson.  He’s a talented videographer and founder of Capman Media.   Please take a look at Erik’s website and show him some love on his blog post below. You can find Erik on LinkedIn.  Introduce yourself and by all means invite him to connect!

The good, bad and ugly of marketing videos

The popularity of marketing videos is increasing because audiences want to be entertained, videos are easier to share, and businesses can communicate a lot of information with one click. Although more and more companies are using videos such as business-to business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C), I see many trapped into using the same phonetic style video creations.  If you have seen more than one “here is what our company is all about” video then you’ll know what I’m talking about.

I encourage small business owners to create something unique or it will just fall into the haystack of other memories.

Let’s take a look at a do and don’t from my perspective.

Video 1: Video 1 doesn’t capture my attention.  This is not to slight their efforts, and the company may be awesome, but the video focus is 100% on the business. I would recommend this company share about their clients and show actual results of what they have done using customer testimonials.

Video 2: Video 2 is pretty perfect.  It’s a commercial but this concept will work for a business video.  As the audience, you relate to the situation, you laugh, you understand the benefits the company offers and you leave with the company’s name memorized.  No wonder it’s award-winning.

I’ll share two tips to help when developing your content.

Identify your target audience.  Just like any other marketing strategy, you really need to decide who is the target audience. If you’re thinking, well I want to market to everyone, then perhaps you should think about having more than one video created.  (Here’s a link to an interview by Marie Forleo that shares the danger of marketing to everyone. Scroll forward to exactly the 5:00 minute mark and listen to the great analogy.) Your company video can reflect your company image or identity without it being the focus. The main focus of the video should be the audience and the things they relate to. Just like any persuasive speech or advertising, you work in the benefits of using your company, product or service and end with a call-to-action.

Try to put yourself in your audience shoes. What are they looking for? They are on the internet browsing different companies and they happen along or they somehow get linked to your website. Before you start thinking about all the neat stuff, you want in your video think about that guy or gal who is going to click the play button. What is of interest to them?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and advice on video creation?  Do you have a favorite you can share for cafe members?