Shooting for the Stars: How to Boost Your Video Strategy

People frantically looking up ‘How to…’ video guides was one of the defining features of Covid lockdowns. Without easy access to plumbers or builders, it was up to the video tutorial to help guide our shaky hands through fitting a new shower head or fixing the fence.

For Robin Kirchhoffer, CMO at media solutions and service provider Dalet, the rush online was no surprise and it’s a trend that’s set to continue. That’s because, firstly, he says viewers on average retain a whopping 95% of a video message – much higher than written communication and vital if you’re taking a hammer to your house – and secondly because business marketing teams have been steadily growing the quantity and quality of corporate video content.

“People love watching video to help them understand, buy and enjoy things, and the pandemic just led to more proliferation,” Kirchhoffer explains. “Corporates have responded by creating more video content, both internally as well as externally on channels from YouTube to TikTok. Most industries were already doing this, but the need to have it properly wired as part of your marketing strategy has increased. It can help build a brand message, customer trust and contribute to a firm’s top and bottom line.”

Tutorials and product demonstrations are a great example. They are valuable because they help customers get the most out of their new products and services. One of Dalet’s clients, Audi UK, produces and distributes such video tutorials to its car dealers as well as training content and commercials to its sites and applications. Another client, American Family Insurance, manages all kinds of assets, including training and marketing content.

As marketers, you need to make sure that video is there for customers and clients because this is how they want to access information,” Kirchhoffer explains. “The C-suite also sees the shift in usage and is asking for new initiatives to be launched more quickly. Marketers need to be fast on their feet with new and more video content.”

However, this growth has created several pain points for marketing teams in their media supply chains. This encompasses all parts of the video journey including content creation, commissioning, production, distribution to multiple platforms and storage.

“Most businesses using video content are not native media organizations,” Kirchhoffer explains. “They don’t have the toolsets and processes in place to manage and plan their video content and campaigns, document and categorize everything and understand how and why it is performing. There isn’t a single point of truth where everyone can work together.”

Instead, he adds, the content is very siloed, with some stored in cloud services, some offline on hard drives and some on a shared server. As a result, it is hard to leverage value and have true transparency and visibility. Many organizations also manage these tasks manually with filing, indexing and planning taking up valuable employee time.

“The question is: how do you control these video assets? A marketing team managing and creating different videos needs a level of automation and centralization to help manage the flows,” he says. “It helps drive the consistency of messaging, format, graphics and quality control throughout an organization, either with local or multi-national campaigns. It also frees up marketing minds to come up with new creative ideas and designs.”

The Dalet Flex software product, used by Audi UK, American Family Insurance and leading media organizations, provides these centralized toolsets and processes as a service. “Marketing groups and corporations want to unify their teams so that internal staff and outside agencies, remote video producers and freelancers can see content processes on one system,” says Kirchhoffer.

“With Dalet Flex, they can ensure that their assets are visible, properly indexed, centralized and documented much more efficiently. You can also use analytics to see how each video is performing, how it is helping the bottom line or whether it needs to be amended or repurposed and used on a different channel.”

Kirchhoffer expects demand for video content to continue growing both long and short duration films and more cinematic high-resolution campaigns for specific events or product launches. “Already there is a need for specific branding, logos and color schemes for different countries or channels,” he explains. “You need to manage it well to help grow your brand.”

For those of us soaked to the skin after a failed plumbing attempt – that can only be good news.

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