As your brand pushes into the future, how will you build trust and credibility with customers? Now more than ever, conversational marketing is a requirement for building long-term relationships with customers. Video is a tool that can open your brand up to a better conversation with them.
Your customers and prospects are looking for the right content in the right context. By incorporating video into your conversational marketing—through webinars, live streaming, simple FAQ videos, serialized shorts, and more—your company will be ready to provide it to them.
There is nothing wrong with playing it safe. But there is something wrong with faking it. In today's world, customers can spot fake interactions and disingenuous intentions. Fortunately, the cure for this is very simple: Build an authentic brand that stands for something.
Your fans should love you for the things you support and the content you share with them. So get in the habit of sharing content that is true to your vision, mission, and beliefs while truly entertaining your audience. Your fringe customers may not care or may fall off, but your fans will feel closer to you and join in on the conversation.
Recommendation: Search for a bold, authentic, and fascinating story that separates you from anyone else, and produce a high-level brand film that aligns with your customers and prospects.
Zappos has famous stories of employees trekking great distances to ensure their customers received the shoes they needed on time.
Don't make your employees live under a rock. It's time to bring their personalities to life. Put your faces forward, using video conferencing, live webinars, and tools like Wistia Soapbox to improve internal communication and revolutionize the way you speak to customers. Your team members might not be media trained and this idea might sound scary, but if you believe in your people, let them share their voices.
Recommendation: Let your subject matter experts host a live webisode or Facebook Live and your sales folks put fun cold-email videos together with Wistia Soapbox.
As Malcolm Gladwell points out in The Tipping Point, Airwalk rose to fame by following its customers and crumbled the moment it stopped. If you're afraid of engaging your customers, you won't survive the future. Brands are losing steam as customers are empowered by review platforms and social media.
Rather than losing steam, it's time to embrace your customers' voices and engage them. View live webinars and user-generated content as your friend, not your enemy. Step out even further by sharing their stories in honest ways and produce content that they want, even if it doesn't lead to a direct sale.
Recommendation: Prompt your customers for video testimonials, reviews, or commercials. Consider turning this into a competition where the best video wins a prize. Think of what Doritos did with its "Crash the Super Bowl" competition.
Every day, your brand, your people, and your customers are having a conversation. Embracing this mindset will allow you to leverage tools, like video, that promote authentic interactions and better conversations. Video is a powerful tool for showcasing the tone and style of your brand and its people in a way that attracts the right customers.
Bonus recommendation: Remember that "done" is often better than "perfect." So don't overthink your efforts, and get started sooner rather than later. Pull your marketing team together and review a current campaign. Host a separate brainstorming session around how video can be leveraged to communicate your brand, give your people a voice, or allow your customers to get more involved in the campaign.
Learn best practices for creating and implementing a marketing plan that meets your company's unique needs.