Social Video @Kickstarter

Ever wonder how to build a company around an invention without fabulously wealthy Venture Capitalist friends?  Kickstarter leverages the power of web 2.0, social-media, and video to crowd source startup capital. Artists, designers, entrepreneurs, activists, and storytellers appeal to the world-wide-web for funding and launch their ideas from the collective small donations of many. In the past few years I’ve been watching Kickstarter quickly become the place for DIY creative startups. They host every kind of project including technology, theater, food, comic books, and so on. Non-profit and for-profit are both welcome. It’s a bold, new model for business and art.

Kickstarter is also an unlikely host to a wide variety of marketing video examples. Each and every Kickstarter project must have a video pitch. They place videos above all other content. Kickstarter recognizes that video is essential to marketing your ideas. According to Kickstarter (and SVG), everything can be marketed with video even electronic prototype kits and mead and whatever your company offers. Designers and entrepreneurss profiled in a New York Times article talk about how important videos are for getting funding because the Kickstarter crowd is tech-saavy netizens. Anyone who finds you on the web expects video, and if you don’t have it you are behind the curve.

The site hosts every genre from documentary style to movie trailers to humble webcam-style. Some just use flashy imagery. Most are very simple. The trick is to match up the style and content with the brand and message and connect with your audience– things SVG is really good at. We’ve made videos in nearly every one of these styles for a wide variety of clients and worked in fundraising videos.

Marketing videos may be the most important  part of Kickstarter’s success and that of their users. It follows that it will be essential to your company or organization as well — not just for making an appeal to customers and clients, but also for SEO and brand. We’ve talked about this many, many times on our blog. If you don’t have video, you might be dismissed or ignored.

If you don’t know where to start with marketing your company, follow Kickstarter’s lead, check out a few examples there, and call Skillman Video Group.

Eliminate Your Customer Engagement Gap with Professional Video!

Written by Harry Klein, President
Customer Engagement Strategies, Inc.
www.customerengagement.com

In my consulting practice I define Customer Engagement as:  “The degree to which Customer Experiences are equal to or better than the Customer Expectations set by your Brand Promises as delivered by Customer Touch Points.”

Let’s break that down a bit:
• Brands = Promises
• Promises set customer expectations
• Business processes – touch points – are how promises to customers are met, exceeded or not met at all
• Companies enjoy higher levels of customer engagement when they meet or exceed the expectations they set.

When customer experience falls short of brand promises a company has a “Customer Engagement Gap”.  Customer Engagement Gaps result in:

• Higher Costs of Sales
• Lower Profits
• Lower Marketing ROI
• Fewer Customer Referrals
• Lower Customer Loyalty, Retention and Life-Time Value
• Higher Customer Turnover

Here are 5 ways that a professional video produced by Skillman Video Group can help you eliminate your Customer Engagement Gap:
1. Set Customer Expectations – Create a brief video for prospects and new customers in which your CEO explains the company’s commitment to them. Tell them how they’ll be treated and what to do if their experience falls short of your promise. This will set your company apart from the pack and gain you extra consideration and loyalty.
2. Start Customer Dialogues – Set your company apart by using video in your CEO’s blog. No need to do video for every posting. but think about the possibility for a monthly video from the CEO in which they addresses customer feedback and what actions the company is taking as a result. Customers will feel that they’re being listened to and that the company is taking action.
3. Provide Technical Support – For companies with highly technical products or services or for companies that supply products that require customer assembly, professional training videos that explain the most challenging parts of the process are extremely useful. Your printed or online instructions can feature alerts and URLs that a video is available that will show you that specific step and walk you through it. Customers will be thrilled that you took the extra effort to help them get off to a good start. That kind of effort generates lots of word-of-mouth marketing.
4. Help Customers Understand the Impact of Current Events – There are circumstances that arise – for example, the financial market collapse – that require a CEO to put customers at ease even if the circumstances were not created by the company. Addressing these issues with a brief video supported by additional documentation can be an effective outreach strategy when your customers are worried, nervous and not sure what current conditions mean to them. Customers will further understand that you’re in this together and for the long haul.
5. Invite customers to submit video testimonials – Video certainly brings passion to the forefront. Ask your best customers if they’ll deliver a written AND video testimonial. Tell them you’ll help them write it and will send the video crew to their place. These videos can help prospects and other customers understand your commitment to them and how other customers work with you to ensure they maximize the value of the relationship.

The above listed videos can serve more than one purpose as many will be suitable to incorporate into your social media marketing efforts.   You’ll want to be certain to track how viewers are getting to those videos and what impact they have on site traffic, lead generation, sales, support and customer engagement overall.

To learn more about Customer Engagements, please visit http://www.customerengagement.com

PRODUCER’S NOTES: The Producers at Skillman Video Group are ready and willing to custom design a video program that can meet some or all of those Customer Engagement “touch points”.  The Internet Marketing specialists at Skillman Video Group will be able to design a marketing campaign around your videos that includes monthly reports to track your success.   Call today to learn more about how video can directly impact your customer retention.