Benefits Of Corporate Video: What You Need To Attract Dream Clients

The benefits of Corporate video are amazing. Want to learn how to use a corporate video to attract the clients you've been dreaming of?

What is a Corporate Video?

A corporate video is a promotional video used by a corporation to help achieve a business goal, often sales or marketing related. The term has been typically used to separate itself from narrative videos such as feature films or documentaries.

But that was a long time ago.

More recently, the breadth of what corporate videos can include has grown tremendously, and narrative storytelling has become quite integrated into it, becoming a huge part of the success strategy.

Do you need a corporate video? If so, which is the best kind for your brand? How do you get the most results?

Let’s take a deep dive into Corporate videos so you can get the results you’ve been hoping for.

Biggest Benefits Of Corporate Video

Top of Mind Awareness

Boosting sales and closing leads is quite a tall order for just one corporate video. Frankly, it’s not often a realistic sales goal. However, if your video quality is good, your corporation can remain relevant to your audience, and that’s a great benefit!

We live in a very distracting world, and making touch points along the way keeps your leads warmed up to you. 86% of people would like to see more videos from brands (Wyzowl 2020), so having a video keeps you in the game, and on the score-board!

Capture New Leads

Corporate video can be very effective in capturing new leads that you can nurture into new sales. If you’ve got a lead magnet or special offer designed to capture leads, a corporate video is a great tool to speed up your results.

SEO Boost

Having a video on your website will actually boost your Google ranking. I mean, what more motivation do you need?

In a well researched study, Wyzolw discovered that 86% of video marketers say video has increased traffic to their website.

So if your corporation is looking to get the competitive edge on Google (and who isn’t), a corporate video is your ticket to the top!

Close or Influence Warm Leads

Video is also quite beneficial at later stages of your sales funnel, where there is already familiarity with your brand. If you’re close to closing a warm lead, a corporate video can be the difference maker that actually helps you close that sale.

About Us videos, as well as Testimonials, and Case Study videos are timely tools for warm leads.

Speaking of which, let’s look at the different styles of corporate videos in more detail, so you can decide what might be the best option for you.

Most Common Corporate Video Styles

Promotional Video

This is the most common type of corporate video. It focuses specifically on what makes you different (which is very important these days). Whether you’ve got a new service, new marketing campaign, or just want to have relevant branded content, this is the place to start.

A good promotional video either sums up all that you do, or one very unique element of your brand, and highlights it so that clients see you in a different light.

I really like this example below from Tangerine. It’s short, sweet, punchy, and keeps attention while peaking interest from their target demographic:

Assuming your corporation has something special or unique in the way you do businesses, your promotional video will communicate more powerfully than a web page or photo ever will.

Digital Advertisement

A corporate video works great if you’re running paid ads. 66% of people online would prefer to learn about a product or service through video instead of text, and you can use this to your benefit with your paid ads.

Videos are also known to keep attention longer on social media platforms, so they make great content for your ad.

Here’s a good example that CIBC did as a paid ad. This ad is simply meant to peak interest, and remind young couples of CIBC’s relevant services.

Case Study / Testimonial

I mentioned earlier that corporate videos can be used to close warm leads. Case study and testimonial videos are your best best for that. These videos use another brand to promote your business, by telling their success story. Brilliant!

Why is this so effective? Sometimes your audience just needs to hear it from someone else.

This is an example we did for Widerfunnel:

About Us / Corporate Culture

Once a lead is considered warm, and is in the process of scoping you out, you can change gears with your video content and showcase something unique about your culture – which keeps building attraction.

An About Us video is perfect for that.

The video is less about your product or service, and more about your people.

Use it to highlight things such as your personal history, why the company started, or how you have fun on the job. It’s all about making you look more human, and less, corporate. (You know what I mean.)

This kind of video makes you more relatable, and that creates trust. And trust leads to sales.

We believe in About Us videos so much, we made our own!

Video Production Tips For Corporate Video

Script Writing / Storytelling

No matter what style of video you’re making, the success of your video depends on your story. What you say in the video makes all the difference.

As a film director myself, I wish it were true that great visuals alone could make your video successful. But that isn’t the case.

Your script is as critical (or more) to your video’s success. So make sure you spend the most time on your messaging. Start by choosing your desired emotional response, and build out your story from there.

Airbnb’s Success

Did you know, one of Airbnb’s most successful videos was composed of just photos?

While they have some other great cinematic looking video ads, this particular video resonated with a lot of people, and made a huge impact.

Over 5 millions views!

Interviews or Actors

Next, decide who is going to be seen in your video. You can either base your video around an interview (the CEO or VP), or for something more cinematic you can go with actors to play the role of clients or employees.

Generally speaking, having one main character (the hero of the story) gives the audience someone to focus on and relate to. Seeing them win, helps us see ourselves win! So don’t clog up your story with too many heroes, unless the concept you’re working with requires it.

Compelling Visuals

No matter who your main narrator or hero is, strong visuals will help you compete in today’s video-centric marketplace. The stronger your visuals, the stronger your impact.

True, the Airbnb example from above doesn’t have cinematic movie quality, however that video isn’t enough to carry the entire brand on its own, so they’ve got many other videos with stunning cinematography to supplement their channel.

Speaking of AirBnB, one of the reasons they’ve done so well is their video marketing is top notch. Consider browsing their channel for inspiration for your corporate video.

Next, what kind of visuals should you be considering?

Here are the types of visuals you can have throughout your video to help tell your story better:

Footage of staff on location
Actors on location
Stock video
Company Photos
Stock photos

Distributing Your Corporate Video Online

Once you’ve completed your corporate video, it’s time to spend some quality time distributing it online.

Where are the best places to post a corporate video for most exposure?

Youtube – As the world’s second largest search engine, most of the major corporations are posting their video to Youtube and getting great results.

Instagram Ads – If you don’t have a large online audience, your video will do well in the form of an Instagram ad. Instagram (and Facebook) offer great specificity with regards to whom you’re advertising to.

Make sure your video format is correct when posting to Instagram. It should be a square video, not a widescreen rectangle. The format will make a big difference in viewership.

Vertical video is also taking over the platform, so posting your video as an Instagram Story is a great strategy.

Website – Make sure you post your video to your website. Videos on websites have been proven to keep viewers on your website longer, which boosts your SEO on Google. Widescreen format (16:9) is the best option for websites.

Measuring ROI of Corporate Videos

How do you measure if your video is successful?

Keep in mind that prospects these days need multiple touch-points before a sale can happen, so there are little steps we need to measure along the way.

Your video can move a prospect one step closer to a sale, and that’s worth measuring.

Here are the main metrics you can look at to ensure you’re moving closer to that sale.

Overall View Count

This means, how many views the video has got. This number mostly highlights how much exposure your video is getting to people while their online.

Most often, this is a vanity metric, and doesn’t lead directly to sales.

But in conjunction with other metrics, you can start to form a picture of your video’s like-ability, and relevance of your message.

So keep an eye on this, but don’t get discouraged if you don’t get massive numbers. Sales can still happen with lower view counts.

Attention Span Data

This tracks how long people are watching your video. It’s common to have drop-off rates, since our attention span is short. But having rates go too high suggests your messaging isn’t working.

Maybe your video is too long, or too boring. Consider shortening your video, punching up the music, or changing up some of the visuals, and then re-test.

Broadly, you can consider a video successful if at least 60% of viewers watch the whole thing – Vidyard

Click Through Rate

This refers to what action is taken at the end of a video. Some corporate videos have a specific call to action, such as signing up to a form or clicking on a url, or landing page.

In this case, your click through rate is important to measure, so you know if your call to action is working. If it’s not working so well, consider simplifying it, or even making it more powerful. Changing the ad copy can often make a noticeable difference in your video.

Gaining Analytics

Where do these analytics come from? They come from your video hosting platform.

The most common platforms are:

Vidyard
Wistia
Youtube

Yes, Youtube is free while the others are have pricing options, but if I’m being completely honest, Youtube is the least effective.

The main reason? Youtube is entirely designed to keep viewers glued to their platform, so they end each video with ads for new videos, curated for your viewer.

This is a massive interruption to your sales process.

The other two platforms are designed to keep your viewer where you want them to be. That’s huge in the long run. They also have better data analytics, great customer service, and best of all, no distractions.

So…you get what you pay for when it comes to video marketing analytics. Nothing new here.

But studying analytics and using them as feedback is what increases your ROI. So make sure you spend some time gathering this info, and using it a feedback for your ongoing video marketing strategy.

Gordian, a construction company started using corporate videos during a marketing campaign and generated 6 million in revenue!

Here’s a quote from their in-house video producer:

Strategic planning and detailed video analytics can generate a tremendous return on investment for the organization. – Glenn Hughes, Gordian.