A Very Unusual Client Conversation About Video
This is a recap of a conversation I had with a client about video a while back. She had hired us to create a suite of videos for her company.
Me: So, once we’ve made the videos, have you thought about distribution?
Client: Oh yes. We want you to do slightly different versions of each video. We will have call-to-action videos on our social pages, especially Facebook. We’ll be targeting a cold audience there, so it’s important we get their attention and hold on to it. If they like what they see then we will have a slightly different video on our landing page, where we are going to give them something in return for their email address. Once they’ve expressed interest, and if they go to our main website, then we will have richer, more expository video content. We’ll also need you to do slightly tweaked versions for Twitter and our other main social platform, Instagram.’
This conversation doesn’t happen about video everyday, so I remembered it and thought it was worth relaying. It’s still extraordinary to me that even now, in 2017, the majority of marketing people I speak to still think that just ‘putting the video’ on YouTube is the beginning and end of a decent video strategy. It’s not, and when they go back and see a video channel with low views, they wonder why.
On the other hand, our client above had thought about a number of things:
- She’d worked out her audience. In this case it was ‘cold’, and we helped her refine that definition a little bit more. - She had an idea of a funnel in which the videos would play a part. - She understood that videos were one part of a campaign. - She knew it was a good idea to consider slightly different style versions for different platforms. - She wanted to turn this cold audience into a warm one by giving them something valuable for free.
If you’re thinking about using video as part of your communication strategy – and you should be – this is the kind of conversation you should be having.














