Every company needs an effective way to communicate with their teams and customers. But how do you do that without leveraging several channels?
This is where corporate videos come in handy. Corporate videos ensure effective internal and external communication within a company. They facilitate interactions with employees as well as customers.
So, if your goal is to learn how to create compelling corporate videos for your business. This is the article for you.
It’s a comprehensive overview of making corporate videos. You’ll learn why they’re important, what are the different types of corporate videos, and follow the basic steps to create your own.
Content
What exactly is a corporate video?
Corporate video refers to all types of video content brands use to communicate with their employees and core audience. This can be any video used internally (e.g., employee training videos) or externally (e.g., marketing content).
How does a corporate video help your business?
So why should your company produce corporate videos?
Corporate videos are versatile
There are many types of corporate videos and countless business/marketing goals you can achieve with each. Whether you want to market your services, tell your brand story, or encourage a specific behavior change within your organization, corporate videos are the best way to do it.
Corporate videos are powerful educational tools
Corporate videos are a powerful tool for education because they explain things better. They enable you to combine images, storytelling, and sound to easily explain complex projects or products in a fairly short time lapse. Corporate videos create a more engaging experience. Viewers see and hear the content being taught and absorb the information more easily.
Corporate videos facilitate conversion
The power of corporate videos also extends to persuasive content for increased conversion. While they teach and explain things easily, they also facilitate conversion for your business. According to WordStream, including a video on your landing page can boost your conversion rate by up to 80%. On the flip side, Wyzowl has found that 79% of consumers say a brand’s video convinced them to buy an app or piece of software.
Corporate videos boost your SEO
Corporate videos improve both the quantity and quality of traffic to your website. That is, they will help soothe your SEO efforts and earn you a lot on the SERPs. Google prioritizes websites with videos. According to Forrester, websites with videos are 50-times more likely to be ranked on Google’s first page. Plus, having videos on a website can significantly increase the engagement rate of your audience. This is especially true since people spend more time watching videos than they do reading.
What are the common corporate video types?
Below are the most common types of corporate videos any business should consider.
Brand videos
Brand videos are a specific type of corporate video you create to share your brand’s story and solely do so. The story can be anything related to your business, like your vision, motives for creating the company, etc. This is especially a good corporate video type you should think about if you want to increase brand awareness and win new audiences.
Announcement videos
An announcement video is a corporate video designed to inform your investors, customers, and the general public of the latest news about your company. It can be about a new product release or a new addition to your tech stack. Announcement videos instill consideration in customers’ eyes and help keep the entire company on the same wavelength.
Explainer videos
An explainer video is a corporate video used to explain your product or service offering. These videos generally present the ins and outs of a product or service and hook viewers with a compelling call to action. This is the perfect corporate video type to tell new visitors who you are and what you can do for them.
Training videos
This video type allows companies to easily teach their teams or customers a new insight or skill. You can use a training video for staff and customer onboarding, software training, or other purposes. However, you should not confuse them with explainer videos. Explainer videos are generally short, succinctly scripted, and quite often include animated elements. Training videos, however, are improvised, mostly use live-action, and can go ten to fifteen much longer.
Team videos
Team videos are usually used as part of the onboarding process for new employees and customers. For this type of corporate video, viewers are given a complete introduction to all members working in the company. It helps companies highlight what it is like to work with the company or be part of it.
How-to/Demo videos
A demo video is a video that presents the features and benefits of a product and possibly shows it in use. Companies use demo videos to show or teach users how to achieve something specific with the product or service they’re using. Unlike explainers, they show a real-life use case of a product/service rather than simple explanations.
Testimonial videos
A testimonial video is a video in which a company’s customers share their experience with the company and explain how its products or services helped them solve a problem. This is a powerful conversion tool as viewers get to see actual people bring their faces in line and tell how a company helped them. Customers explain “why they needed the solution” and “how the company helped alleviate their pain” and possibly who they are to get the audience to identify with them.
Crowdfunding videos
This is a type of creating corporate video to attract potential donors for your crowdfunding campaign. Here you describe your business idea and present a solid argumentation to convince the target audience (generally investors) to fund you. Crowdfunding videos aim to create an emotional connection with the viewer in a short period of time and prompt them to take your desired action.
4 Steps to create your corporate videos
Now that you know the different types of corporate videos to focus on, it’s time to learn how to create your own. We’ve analyzed different strategies and extracted four steps you can always follow to create your corporate videos. These steps will help you create quality videos and get an incredible return on investment for your videos. Here are the four steps.
Step 1: Plan your corporate video production
As with anything else, you need to start with a plan. A good plan will give you a 360 overview of the creation process of your corporate video — from ideation to promotion. Here’s what you need to ace your planning.
Know what you need it for
Just ask yourself, what is it that you want to achieve with your corporate video? The answer to this question will help you determine the type of video that suits your business needs and how to create it.
Plan a budget
Price always hits businesses differently. You need to talk to professionals, think strategically, and allocate the budget accordingly. Here are a few things you need to keep in mind before budgeting your corporate video creation.
- The location: Where will you shoot the video? Will you need to decorate or not?
- The actors: Who is going to be in the video? How many people?
- Shooting sessions: How many days will you be shooting the videos?
- The video talent crew: Who’s going to help bring your video to life? How many people?
Etc.
Step 2: Align it with your funnel
True, not all corporate videos you create will be for marketing use or purposes. Certain corporate videos like announcements or staff training videos can’t fit into any marketing funnel.
At the same time, corporate video types like demo videos, explainer videos, or brand videos cannot serve you unless they’re part of a more significant marketing strategy. So you have to analyze your marketing funnel and insert your corporate videos based on their types and where they fit the best.
Here is how you can do this perfectly.
Top of the funnel
The goal here is to use your corporate video to build brand awareness and strike a first good impression. You will need to tell your story, tell viewers who you are, what you do, or the problems you solve. Your videos should appeal to viewers’ emotions and inspire them, so they move on to the next stage in the buyer journey. Corporate video types you can use here include brand videos, explainer videos, product announcement videos, etc.
Middle of the funnel
Here, you need to further educate viewers and create an interest in your service or product. Your corporate videos should engage and convince them of the quality and usefulness of your offerings. As such, you can use corporate videos like testimonials, sales videos, product videos, etc.
Bottom of the funnel
First thing here, you need to ensure you cover all potential objections your customers might have. You will also need videos that show them how to use your product/software, facilitate their understanding and use of your solution, help them make up their minds about your offers, and pique them to buy or subscribe. Common corporate video types here include demo videos, walk-through videos, case study videos, customer training videos, how-to videos, etc.
Retention
Now you want them to keep coming back to purchase from your company. The corporate videos you produce here should make them feel valued and increase your customer lifetime value. Here you can create personalized videos, training videos, team videos, vlogs, etc.
Step 3: Execute
The video creation process is divided into three main stages. According to each phase, there are specific actions you should perform and goals you should seek. So, let’s break this down.
Phase 1: Pre-production — Write the scripts
Ideally, you will create the script and storyboard for your corporate video here. You need to ensure that what you write resonates with your brand, your audience and that it helps you achieve your goal. Besides, you need to make sure your script is concise, fun, clear, and to the point so your video doesn’t get boring.
After writing the script, you will need to write the visual script. Put simply, writing the visual script is all about painting the graphic scenes of your video but with words. You need to match each line of your written script with the perfect action. Here’s how Monday.com does it.
Phase 2: Production — Shoot the video
This is where you start shooting your corporate video. You will need to record the different takes and shootings for the video. Here are the things you need to consider.
- Location: This is important because of the background. You can also choose to produce your corporate video in a studio. Anyway, make sure the background colors or elements you choose don’t hurt your video quality.
- Music: This is not mandatory, but it can make the difference between a video that engages and a video that does not. Again not all corporate video types are great with music. Video types like training videos, sales videos, or crowdfunding videos don’t need any piece of music to be great.
- Tools: You will need a camera, a voice recording tool, a lighting tool, a make-up kit (if needed), a video production or editing platform/services, etc.
Stage 3: Post-production — Edit your corporate video
This is where you actually create the corporate video. You will need to assemble and edit the various shots to perfection. You will weave all the footage, photographs, and sound together into a final corporate video.
Once the edit is complete, you should get a team member to evaluate, comment, and contribute their vision and ideas for the video. Then, together, you can proceed with the final cut and make the video what you want it to be.
Maximize ROI on your finished corporate videos with distribution
After the production, you need to ensure you get the most out of your videos. First, you need to ensure the videos get as many views as possible. Then, you should look for opportunities to win more with your videos. Here are a few ideas to get you up and running.
-
Post the videos on your website
You need to ensure your corporate videos are posted on pages where they matter the most on your website. For example, you can post a brand video or an explainer video on your homepage, and you can post product and demo videos on specific product/service landing pages, etc. You can also add videos to some high-traffic potential pages to maximize views.
-
Share it
What you need here is a video distribution strategy. A good video distribution strategy will ensure each video asset you create is taken to the right audience and gets you the most relevant views.
So the first thing you need to do is learn about your audience, especially the places they spend time on the web and share your videos there. It can be video sharing sites like YouTube or Vimeo, a social media platform like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc., or specific online communities.
-
Leverage more with your corporate videos
You can also leverage pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll video gates to win more with your videos. You can include interactive elements like email opt-in forms, survey polls, etc., as pre-roll gates. You can also embed CTA or annotation links to other pages where viewers can learn more about your company as mid-roll or post-roll gates. Embedding CTAs and annotations as clickable links can help drive conversions.
5 Examples of corporate videos done right
Here are five examples of the best corporate videos you can learn from to create your own.
1. Vervoe – Never Make Another Bad Hire
Type: Explainer video
Vervoe is a company that sells AI software that helps companies hire the best talent for their open positions. The video first depicts a situation wherein a company made a bad hire and then introduced Vervoe as a hero in their case.
2. InsideView Insights – Software walk-through
Type: Demo video
InsideView provides software solutions for sales and marketing leaders. They created a complete walk-through video that first lists the many goals the audience can achieve with the software and breaks down how they can do it.
3. Buffer – Life with start page
Type: Product video, overview video
Start Page is a ready-made landing page that you can quickly build, easily update, and share anywhere, designed by Buffer. For this tool, Buffer created a video that simply introduces the tool to struggling business owners and describes how the Start Page eases the burdens of early-stage businesses.
4. Unhedged – Investing made simple
Type: Brand video, crowdfunding video
Unhedged is a software company that makes investing simple and accessible to everyday investors. The video serves as a marketing piece and an asset to increase their chances of obtaining funding. Unhedged raised over $2.3 million in equity crowdfunding with this video within 45 minutes.
5. SPS Commerce – SPS Commerce and The Iconic
Type: Customer testimonial video, case study video
SPS Commerce provides cloud-based supply chain management software to retailers, suppliers, third-party logistics providers, and partners. They partnered with The Iconic, an Australian fashion company, to share their unique experience with the company. The video comes out as a complete case study breaking down how SPS Commerce encouraged and facilitated growth for The Iconic.
Wrap-up
Corporate videos crush any other types of content you can use for your business. They will help you better engage people, and you can be sure to get your message across. All you need is a well-thought plan and the help of a video production company to bring your video to life.
Vidico is one of the leading companies in the field of video production. Our portfolio speaks for itself. If you’re pumped about producing your corporate videos, you can reach out to us here.
