If you aren’t currently using videos to promote your financial services business, you could be missing one of the greatest opportunities to build your practice, branding and visibility. Did you know that one third of all online activity involves watching videos and 90% of viewers say a video is helpful in the decision making process? If you have a website or social media account, these stats alone should prompt you to take advantage of this growing trend. But where do you start?
First, consider WHY video marketing works. With consumers spending an average of 4 hours and 25 minutes online every day and 2 hours and 25 minutes on social, it’s safe to say that your prospective clients are online. So, you want to meet them where they are.
But it’s not enough just to post online, what's necessary in the world we live in today is putting video content online. According to Hubspot — 78% of people watch online videos every week, and 55% view online videos every day.
When done right, your marketing videos should be easily consumable, entertaining and educational. Plus, they should help your prospective clients get to know and like you before they ever meet you.
The process of creating a more effective professional video can be divided into three sections:
1. Pre-Production
2. Production
3. Post-Production
1. Pre- Production
Pre-production involves everything that happens before the camera starts recording. First, you should have a detailed script planned out (storyboards) and rehearsed in advance of the video shoot.
To ensure you hit all your main points and achieve the end goal of your message, it can help to follow this format:
Engaging headline- A headline is one of the most important factors in capturing attention online. An engaging headline will stop the scroll and get people to watch your video. The headline should be specific, unique and hint at a promise of what they'll get out of clicking on it. Also, you’ll want to include keywords in the headline that will help someone searching that topic to find your video.
Compelling intro- You want to open with your most important information. If the first few words don’t grab the listener, they’ll be gone. Most of your videos should be short — some only 2-3 minutes as shorter videos perform better. About 68% of people will watch a business video all the way through if it’s under 1 minute so it’s critical to get straight to the point.
Story- Including even a snippet of a story will draw the listener in, connect, and make boring content more interesting. Your story should briefly introduce a problem or conflict and resolve it at the end.
Call-to-Action- Your videos should tell your listener the next step to take whether that's to book a call or sign up for a consultation or download a checklist. There should always be an action you want the listener to take after consuming your content.
In addition to the script, you need to consider what will be on screen to accompany the script. Will it be a graph, an image, or you? You'll then need to figure out where you will shoot the video and what equipment you’ll need to make the video look professional, such as a high-quality camera, tripod, microphone, lights, and a teleprompter to assist you with delivering your lines.
If you're going to be in front of the camera, you'll need someone controlling the camera and audio recordings while you speak. And, believe it or not, the audio quality of your video is as important, if not more important in conveying the professionalism of your shoot. Just think of all the YouTube videos you've seen where the audio quality is just poor, even if the visuals are nice, the overall quality is greatly diminished.
2. Production
Now's the time to call "Lights, camera, action!" This is the phase of video production where the video is recorded. This may be the quickest step of the process to complete, but it is just as important as the others. Unless you took acting classes, you may want to have someone provide you with direction and help you appear confident and professional to your prospects and clients.
What type of videos should you produce? Let's see... you could do:
· Tutorials for a video library on your website, leading to an average 2.6x more time on pages. (Wistia)
· Videos embedded on a landing page, which can increase conversions by 86%. (Eyeview)
· Explainer videos shared on social media because videos are shared 1200% more than images and text combined (WordStream).
· Email marketing, where video increases the click-through rate 62%. (AdWeek)
At Partners Advantage, we've helped qualified financial professionals create pre-scripted, compliance-reviewed explainer videos on common financial topics. These can be extremely valuable to your prospects and clients. In fact, 96% of people say they’ve watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service. (Wyzowl)
3. Post-Production
After the video has been recorded, the video, audio, images, and graphs need to be combined in a video editing program. You'll have to balance the audio levels with the music, color correct the video, and insert or animate the images and graphs. A video editor can use the storyboards you created in pre-production to combine the video and images together in the way you originally envisioned.
Once editing is complete, the video needs to be exported and uploaded to an online video hosting service so it can be displayed on your website. And we don't recommend that you use YouTube because your viewer can easily rabbit-trail away from your content. Instead consider a professional, reliable and fast video service, doing so will make a big difference. Plus, if that service adds in detailed reports on views, and gives you a way to capture possible leads, that's a great benefit too.
Is video marketing really worth it?
If you’re looking for good ROI, more qualified leads and increased website traffic, research shows it is. In their 2020 report, Wyzowl found that for 89% of video marketers it provides good ROI, 83% say it helps with lead generation and 87% say video has increased traffic to their website.
When it comes to lead generation, there is even more good news. The Aberdeen video marketing statistics reveal that the people who use videos attain 66% more leads each year and video marketing can result in two-thirds more qualified leads. (Impact)
Simple solution for a complex process
The amount of work involved in creating a video that looks professional can seem overwhelming, and extremely expensive. If you do not have a video production background and do not own professional video production equipment, you should consider having a professional video producer assist you with your video marketing projects. Don’t let I don’t know how to do that stop you.
