There are two important takeaways for you in this post about brand message using video:

1. The first is that you don’t need to be a big-time corporation to publish a video that becomes popular. Today, if you have a smartphone, you can make a great marketing video to depict your brand message. A one-minute video highlighting the things that make your company unique could become your best customer acquisition tool yet.
2. The second is that successful videos by SME / SMB businesses or solopreneurs are always about delivering a brand message with strategic intent. It’s got to give a value-add message or contribute towards enhancing your target customers lives. Alternatively, it needs to incorporate story building and showcase your brand’s characteristics. Injecting personality into a company’s online presence is what sets your business apart from the crowd so video is the perfect vehicle to showcase your brand at its best with its stand out personality.

Publishing a video just for the sake of it will not bring success because it’s the brand strategy behind the video content coupled with the people delivering the message to the camera, which makes it successful.

Related: Video Brand Strategy Top 11 Tips for How and Why You Need To Use Video

Codifying Your Brand Message to Stand Out and Create Great Videos to Attract Your Ideal Customers

Every business has its own brand, whether it’s strong because it’s been created with deliberate intent, or whether it’s weak and undeveloped as a consequence of a series of unplanned actions.

To codify your brand means to plan the messages you want to send out to attract your ideal customers and the manner in which you send those messages via the personality of your brand. Video is one of the brand strategy mechanisms for sending out those messages. Every message your business sends out must be in line with what you want your brand to be saying about itself and what it stands for — it’s purpose.

Related: Personality Matters: Bringing Your Brand to Life to Grow Profits

It’s often the case that SME / SMB businesses unintentionally neglect their own branding, to their detriment, because they lack the big brand know-how. Our mission is to empower business owners and entrepreneurs so they can transform their brands and increase their sales.

So the question here is, what’s the big deal about brands and branding?

Well, think of your brand as a store. What would it look like in a mall or shopping centre so it attracted the right customers? Because not all people or businesses will buy into your brand and what it stands for, and not all people or organizations need what you offer. So if your brand was a store you’d want to attract those for whom your product or service really meets their needs and is a great fit and deter those who are not really your ideal customers.

So. What would your brand look like if it was a store in a mall or online?

If you’re having trouble relating to this question consider asking these questions about your brand because the answers will provide some insight to help you codify your brand so it stands outs and attracts your ideal customers:

1. What makes your brand unique?
2. How do you want those you serve to feel when they’re doing business with you? For instance, is the experience uplifting, fun, spiritual, exciting, or something else?
3. Who are your customers, or who do you want them to be? Picture them in your mind and describe them in detail.
4. Who are your competitors and how do they compare?
5. What problem does your company solve?
6. Is your value proposition relevant to your customers?
7. When people think about your brand, what feelings do you want to evoke?
8. What kind of personality should your brand have in order to attract the right customers?

Codify who your brand is, it’s personality and promise, into a core concept that becomes the filter and directional reference for building and implementing your message and brand strategy.

If you want some direction developing your brand and your brand strategy so you can build your brand using really strong shareable videos then take a look at our brand building programme called the Personality Profile Performer™. This online course takes you through all the key steps you need to implement in building your brand. You can watch a free course preview here.

Want to create your strong brand message so it really attracts your ideal customers? Find out how here

Use Video to Stand Out and Make Your Brand Matter to Your Customers Through Your Brand Message

Statistics show that on average, a person abandons a website, or blog post on a website, within 10 – 20 seconds^[1] of arrival, but the average video holds 37%^[2] of people’s attention right to its very end. Since the majority of videos are just under two minutes long^[3], we can safely state that video is more effective at getting and keeping attention, than the written word alone.

In addition, according to SocialFresh^[4], video produces the 2nd highest return on investment out of all content types:

Image via SocialFresh

Reason enough to incorporate video as part of your brand strategy, right?

Related: From Zero to Hero; How To Become a Must-Have Brand

As a practical example, let’s take a look at Code.org^[5], whose success is attributed to one smart video that happened to go viral…

Code.org, a nonprofit committed to bringing computer science education to all children, was founded in 2013.

In the video, co-founders Ali and Hadi Partovi interviewed the world’s top entrepreneurs, like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. They were questioned about their early experiences with computer programming.

Image via Code.org

The interviews were edited down to a five-minute clip with the purpose of inspiring a new generation of coders and teachers.

The video, titled “What Most Schools Don’t Teach,” reached the number #1 spot on YouTube on its very first day. As a result, 15,000 schools reached out to Ali and Hadi for help after the video went live.

Today, just a few years later, Code.org boasts 15 million student accounts with 10,000 additional created every day.

Being a small non-profit, and to keep expenses down, the videos they distribute today showcase their staff instead of paid actors.

Have a look at their first video which launched their nonprofit:

What separates them from other struggling non-profits, is their strong brand vision which is carried out in everything they do.

Code.org’s brand strategy development has always been simple and consistent: it is to be inspirational to students (the video that went viral certainly is, providing motivation and inspiration to thousands), to “think big but act small”, to be personal, transparent, thankful and community-based. They are good at demonstrating their brand values in clear video brand messages.^[6]

Related: Brand Profiling, How Brand Performance and Purpose Are Inextricably Linked

To Use Video To Share Your Brand Message You Don’t Have to be Bill Gates

To use video in your brand message does not mean you have to have the pockets of a Bill Gates. Anyone with a smartphone that can record a video has the means of video marketing!

Image via MarketingWeek

Many small businesses have successfully gained traction with video in various, affordable ways, like:

1. Featuring their own employees
2. Using their leaders
3. Interviewing their customers
4. Building brand stories

Related: Brand Stories: 5 Compelling Examples That Sell Themselves

A great example of affordable, but wildly popular branded videos, is Catmantoo who for one of the owner’s videos, got a whopping 7,858,920 views.

Catmantoo is owned by Robert Dollwet, a solopreneur who has no website but shoots videos that people love. They are actually ads, but you wouldn’t know it, which is precisely why they’re so popular. Robert sells all of seven products from his Facebook page^[7] which has an extraordinary 959,145 likes:

Image via Catmantoo

This entrepreneur uses the animals he trains to make entertaining videos. It’s pretty clear that his online success and cute cats are tightly intertwined; strong personality, compelling storytelling and clever brand strategy which achieves results. All his videos tell a story and then only briefly at the end, mentions Robert as the trainer of all the animals involved. Clever!

Discover how to build your stand out, customer attracting brand personality here so you can grow your business more profitably and faster.

You can demonstrate your product or services and broadcast your brand message just as effectively by video too. The key for video is either to add value, touch hearts or be entertaining because it’s only when you emotionally engage people positively that you’ll move them to buy.

Even the more traditionally conservative B2B service sectors can get it right, just like Taulia^[8] who provides a cloud-based invoice, payment, and dynamic discounting management solutions. In a niche not widely recognized for blazing creativity, they’ve managed to carve a place for themselves by building a strong brand personality, creating entertaining videos that become beloved to their primary customers.

Related: Use Humour in Branding to Create Strong Emotional Bonds so You Increase Sales

In amusing worst-case-scenarios, Taulia demonstrates by video what can happen when you don’t use their services, not only giving a laugh but providing a humorous take on a serious B2B solution. Their videos build a connection between their customers, their brand and their company. Their videos have pushed them above their less creative competitors so they stand out and attract their ideal audience.

The proof is in the results – this brand attributes more than $125M^[9] in their marketing pipeline to video content, and found that 45% of all closed-won deals had involved prospects watching their videos.^[10]

The lesson here is that Taulia creates videos that appeal directly to its target audience. Bhaji Illuminati, Senior Marketing Manager explains, “Rather than trying to make one video that appeals to the entire world, we’ve learned that we can get stronger results by making many videos that appeal to specific audiences.”^[11]

Image via MarketingWeek

Their primary branding strategy is to use humour and infuse personality into communications in order to deliver what might otherwise, in another format, be perceived to be a bit heavy going or not get noticed at all by their target audience. With your phone, you can also use Facebook Live to host a live video broadcast, similar to a webinar, to your primary audience and followers and make it a highly interactive experience.

Conclusion

If other entrepreneurs and small business owners have accomplished great success sharing their brand message through videos, so can you. All you need is a smartphone, good planning and a clear, well-developed brand strategy. Find out more about how you can build your brand here.

Questions to consider

• How can you inject vibrant personality into your brand message using video so it stands out and attracts your ideal customers?
• What would your brand look like if it was a store in a mall, what are its key stand out elements to attract your ideal customers and how can you convey that in a video?
• What are the key factors you need to integrate with your brand strategy to increase your sales?

Want to develop your brand so you can increase your profits but you’re not sure where to start to get a successful return on your investment?

If you want direction and support empowering you to transform your brand so it increases your sales then the Persona Brand Building Blueprint™ Mastermind is the perfect fit for you.

This is a two-day brand building intensive shared with a small group of like-minded peers where you work on your brand with our leadership. In fact, over the two days, you reevaluate your brand, codify it and create your brand strategy from the ground up whether you’re revitalising an existing brand or creating a new one.

This is a highly empowering workshop where we take a deep dive, step-by-step into how to build a brand. You discover and apply the systems and methodologies used by some of the world’s greatest brands as you work on your brand under Lorraine Carter’s direction and tutelage so you can grow your own brand and business.

This is not a theory based programme but a highly interactive fast-track course where you work intensively on your brand throughout the programme duration using our ten step system to:

1. Completely re-evaluate your brand to make it much stronger so it’s highly visible enabling you to increase your profits
2. Map out your brand in full so it’s codified and comprehensively documented to grow your business faster
3. You leave with your total brand road map or GPS of your brand empowering you to manage your brand, stand out and attract your ideal customers so you multiply your sales

Outcome: Your brand transformed so you can increase sales.

At the end of the two-day Persona Brand Building Blueprint™ Mastermind you leave with your fully documented brand strategy ready for implementation in your business or organisation.

Just drop us a line to [email protected] or give us a call T: +353 1 8322724 (GMT 9:00 – 17:00) to discuss your preferences and we’ll develop your brand building intensive bespoke to your particular brand requirements so that you’re empowered to develop your brand and take your business further a lot faster.

^[1] https://www.websitemagazine.com/blog/5-reasons-visitors-leave-your-website

^[2] https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/video-marketing-statistics

^[3] https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/video-marketing-statistics

^[4] https://www.ibm.com/think/marketing/social-keeps-mobile-marketing-tactics-current/

^[5] http://www.code.org

^[6] https://code.org/about/values

^[7] https://www.facebook.com/pg/CatmantooOfficialPage/shop/?ref=page_internal

^[8] https://taulia.com/en/

^[9] http://www.dmnews.com/marketing-strategy/taulia-a-b2b-brand-with-a-strategic-approach-to-video-marketing/article/345971/

^[10] https://www.clickz.com/b2b-companies-can-buck-the-norm-and-win-big-in-marketing/26174/

^[11] https://www.vidyard.com/blog/how-taulia-became-a-video-marketing-powerhouse/