How Financial Service Marketers Can Take Advantage of the Hot Video Trend

Written by:  Christina Farrelly

You may have been considering video already.

Certainly incorporating video in your communication mix makes sense if you want your brand’s messages to really stick with your audience. So I was curious to understand how we could help clients with video given my experience in TV production. BlueChip allocates an ongoing professional budget to each team member so I used mine to find out how financial services marketers could make the most of video. Research by Insivia revealed that viewers retain 95% of a message that they have consumed in video, compared to a mere 10% retention of written text. This makes sense when you consider the countless studies proving that our brains are wired to learn from storytelling rather than reading facts, and that establishing a personal connection is vital to connecting with your audience. In fact, research conducted by Cisco projects that by 2022, 82% of all internet traffic (both business and consumer) will be derived from video content. It’s not a medium to be ignored. So, how can financial services marketers strategically leverage this digital trend to engage prospects and clients effectively? Based on what I learnt in formal training and my time working at Endamol Shine, here are the four key steps to developing and implementing a successful video marketing strategy.

1 - Establish your business goal – Ask yourself, what’s the ideal outcome you’d like to achieve?

Like other business plans, you can’t create an effective strategy without outlining a specific goal for the campaign. In asking yourself what the number one desired outcome is from a marketing campaign, consider which stage of the customer journey you are looking to impact:
  • Lead generation
  • Creating brand awareness/building a personal or brand reputation
  • Conversion

2 – Use this goal to inform your video content

Lead generation The goal here is to create content that is useful and valuable to the audience you’re trying to attract i.e. your ideal client. By creating material that is useful and informative, you are establishing yourself as an expert in your niche. The audience may not need your help right now, but as you’ve already provided value and therefore built trust with them, you’ll be top of mind when they do need someone in the future. Creating brand awareness/building a personal or brand reputation The goal in this stage is to nurture the traffic that your lead gen work has delivered to your website. You want to introduce who you are, what you do, and what you can offer to the prospect. Ultimately, this stage is about communicating who you are as a business and your unique value proposition. Conversion In this final stage your aim is to build trust. Why should the potential client choose you over a competitor offering a seemingly similar product? The key here is to establish an emotional connection through storytelling. Buying is an emotional process justified with rational data. Video is the perfect medium for showcasing the humans that power your brand and with whom your target audience want to feel they have some sort of relationship. Video allows you to build those relationships at scale.

3 - What does this content look like?

Lead generation The value-adding, educational video: These highly-engaging snippets should establish you as the expert in your field. It should:
  • Be under 1 minute in length
  • Be educational not salesy – do not use first person, do not talk about your services or company with the exception of a call to action at the end e.g. “for more information please see our website”
  • Have a simple structure related to an area of your expertise e.g. 3 key takeaways for advisors from the recent regulatory changes, minimise your downside risk by applying these 4 tips
  • Include subtitles as viewers will often be watching on devices in public without the use of headphones
  • Be part of the regular content you share on your social media platforms or eDMs – weekly is ideal
Nicholas Raeburn A LinkedIn post explaining why not to be clickbaity. This is affective because he is good talent – clear and engaging, it includes subtitles, is short and has a clear point, offers the viewer a useful tip, is not self-promotional. Creating brand awareness/building a personal or brand reputation The profile video: This is used to answer two questions – who are you and why should I buy from you? It should:
  • Be 1-1.5 minutes in length
  • Not use first person language in the first paragraph
  • Be professional and high-end in appearance to reflect your business standards
  • Communicate your values through message, images, and quality of production e.g. integrity, attention to detail, people focus, etc.
  • Explain your unique value proposition – what lifts you above your competitors?
  • Briefly but clearly explain your services and why you want to solve problems for your clients
  • Leave the clients wanting to learn more about you and the services or products you offer them
CFM profile video – very human and personal, showcases the people and places, explains their unique value proposition without being overly salesy. 
HubSpot profile video – this video effectively introduces the product by establishing the big problem that it can solve for marketers and then showing how HubSpot can help. The Webinar: this allows you to demonstrate your depth of knowledge, reach your audience live where you can engage with them and gather direct feedback. This is a cost effective way to reach your audience and deliver them great value. It should:
  • Be anywhere from 5 – 20 minutes in length
  • Be able to be repackaged as shorter clips which can be shared on social media and the content can atomised as a PDF cheat sheet to be downloadable, shared via eDM, or posted as a photo on social media
  • Address key problems or questions your clients have
  • Be helpful, not salesy
While this YouTube webinar has low production value it contains a lot of valuable content and the view count reflects this as does the quick growth of this channel. The video statement/press release: this is an innovative new way to share an important announcement, straight from the CEO or other spokesperson directly to the investors, all stakeholders, and wider public. This allows you to have full control over the message you are sharing without it being filtered through the media. This is more likely to be picked up for broadcast, online publication, and the audio can also be used on radio. It should:
  • Be 3 minutes or less in length
  • Feel authentic and genuine
  • Be shared across all channels in video form – attracting more views and interactions than a text post
  • Be included as a link at the bottom of all traditional text releases
This is a great example of a video statement. ASFA comments on a sensitive issue and comes across human, honest, and personal. Conversion The case study/client testimonial video: This should build potential customers’ trust and confidence in you by showcasing previous clients’ positive experiences. It should:
  • Be between 2-5 minutes in length
  • Showcase an ideal client of yours – the sort of client you’d like to clone!
  • Focus on the client’s success and business, not your own
  • Be professionally produced, just like the profile video
  • Should be filmed at the client’s office/place of work
  • Feel authentic (and therefore cannot be scripted)
Slack’s video is a very fun case study of a business. High quality production, a very human feel, and really strong value proposition offered by Slack to this business make up for the fact that this video is a little too salesy. 
This is a good example of a client testimonial video for accounting service FreshBooks. The video focuses only on the client and allows her the space and time to tell her story. Her account of this experience is authentic and convincing. A note on talent: While some people believe that anyone can be trained to be amazing talent, it’s also important to respect a person’s comfort levels and appetite for appearing on camera. If a person is uncomfortable with being on camera it results in an awkward or robotic (and therefore boring) performance. For camera-shy spokespeople, the webinar is a good option as it can be pre-recorded so there isn’t the added pressure of streaming live. It is still an effective tool using voiceover and a visual presentation. However, like most things, practice and enthusiasm are key to improving someone’s performance on camera and nearly anyone can become a great on-camera spokesperson with the right support and training.

Step 4 – Use a framework

Having a good framework is crucial to successfully implementing a video marketing strategy. It shows how this content can fit into and lift an existing marketing strategy and customer journey. Related: How To Create Financial Marketing Content That Converts