Concreate
Concreate’s managing director, Chris Vincent, explains how he uses creative video content to market his sustainable flooring product.
”When sculptor Brendan Hesmondhalgh contacted us about using Concreate floor and wall panels for his Chelsea Flower Show Garden, we thought his story could make a great film. This is precisely the kind of content we look for for marketing films because if we make a film about how to install Concreate we only reach a small audience, but if we make the focus of the film about the artist then it has a much wider appeal.
We promoted the video on Twitter and were retweeted by high profile gardening-related accounts, such as the Grand Designs magazine account. We also used Facebook ads where a small budget goes a long way and you can be very targeted, which enabled us to effectively tap into a garden and garden design audience.
Our video has had over 20,000 views in six months and has significantly increased traffic to our website. More than anything it creates great brand awareness and is far more cost effective than a similar budget spent on magazine advertising.
Blog sites and online magazines are always craving content so if you make a film that has the potential to appeal to a wide audience most of these sites will jump at the chance to be linked to your film – this in turn will also help you reach more people.”
Droplet
Steffan Aquarone is a UK entrepreneur, film producer and co-founder of mobile money app, Droplet, which lets you load money onto your phone and send payments to anyone for free.
”Droplet is a new way of paying and collecting loyalty rewards at the same time and it can be helpful for people to understand how it works. We wanted to put together an explainer video to tell our story.
Droplet is very active on social media, primarily through its Twitter account, so we used this forum to market the video. As a relatively small player in a big pool, this has proved a massive plus for the business and has seen us actively grow user numbers.
It is difficult to attribute specific commercial benefits to online video unless you work in retail. Importantly, for Droplet, this video is an essential ingredient rather than a question of “does it deliver X ROI?”
When producing video content you must have a clear brief: what are you looking to achieve? What problem are you trying to solve? How are you going to determine whether it has been a success? Consider [video] suppliers carefully, hold two selection rounds – one via paper, maybe just credentials, one meeting/pitch, and be clear about what you want at each stage.
Ask where the money is going, what you’d get with more budget and what you’d lose with less. It is also important to invest as much time, energy and money in distribution (how are you going to get people to see your video) as you do in production.”
Mopp
Tessa Pettman is Mopp’s marketing manager. Mopp is a cleaning and handyman service and has recently become part of larger group, Handy.
”We created a spoof video, the ‘App Rap’, as a way of drawing attention to the launch of the Mopp iOS app, which is now called Handy. We wanted to create something fun and tongue-in-cheek, a spoof rap video, that would make our app’s press release stand out amongst the numerous other products that are launched every day.
The App Rap was a defined focus within our launch PR and we made sure to post to all of our social channels. We included the series in our on-going social media strategy and they were important for SEO.
The App Rap had over 2,000 views, but the real benefit of the video was the way it enabled us to stand out and get noticed by the media.
Our advice to other small businesses would be to be creative; hire students or graduates interested in film production. But most importantly, don’t be afraid to show your personality.”
Briggs Equipment
Briggs Equipment is a British business that distributes forklift trucks and warehouse equipment. The company’s marketing manager, Sally Baker, explains how the company has run a successful YouTube channel for the last few years.
”Briggs was concerned about the rising cost of forklift-related incidents. In order to address this and raise awareness of our brand and products, we created a YouTube channel, which now has 28 videos and 28,600 views. Our videos focus on education and the channel features how to videos designed to help reduce damage and improve safety as part of overall customer service.
‘How to change a gas bottle on your forklift truck’ achieved 5,400 views on YouTube and has drawn attention to our website and the forklift and warehouse equipment we provide. This figure was aided using promotion via social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+).
It is important to think about the length an online promotional video runs for – we’ve found 90 seconds to be the optimum length to keep an online viewer engaged.
However short the film, it can help to think of an engaging storyline, what journey are you trying to take the viewer on? How can you engage them emotionally – emotions such as awe, curiosity and surprise should help people to remember the video.”
Content on this page is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with Kia Fleet, sponsor of the Guardian Small Business Network Accessing Expertise hub.
