Is Your Association Leveraging Promotional Video to Solidify Relevance?
One billion hours. That hefty number is how many hours per day YouTube videos are consumed, according to Global Insight Media. Video is clearly a powerful tool that is sought after by a highly engaged audience. Associations should take particular note that 86% of YouTube viewers want videos that educate them in some way.
Educational videos don’t have to be used solely for instructional purposes either. Associations can utilize this medium to illustrate all that they offer in a short video that is explicitly for promotional purposes. These are known as enterprise marketing or brand identity videos. When brand identity videos are short, easily digestible and entertaining, they can help frame an association as one that is relevant and savvy. These videos can be featured front and center on an association’s website homepage; can be shared on social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram; and can be leveraged in email campaigns.
If you’re not creating videos that visually illustrate your association’s identity to market all it has to offer in the digital age, it’s time to reconsider.
Why Associations Should Consider an Enterprise Marketing Video
For associations wanting to engage existing members, reach new members and partners, and solidify their position as a thought leader, video can serve as a highly effective and important vehicle to share their message. An enterprise marketing video can succinctly encapsulate everything your association does, including your mission and vision, plus the value and benefits that membership offers. A well-produced video can tell your story in 90 seconds or less.
High-quality video can also help your association:
- Find new members and re-engage existing members
- Help boost non-dues revenue when highlighting your services and events
- Simplify your website and get your message across more succinctly
- Draw attention to special events, career centers and more
- Improve overall member satisfaction
- Offer more shareable, relevant content on social media
- Better maintain member attention
- Provide clearer insight and better context to what your association is all about
Create the Right Enterprise Video to Market Your Association
Enterprise marketing videos can explain the association’s offerings in an actionable way that drives viewers to submit a member information request or seek information on sponsorship, depending on the call to action included. By tapping into intent signals, these promotional videos can better funnel potential new members or partners into joining the association, using the career center, attending an event, becoming an exhibitor or simply meeting them wherever they are in their journey.
In order to produce a valuable video that holistically represents your association and conveys its relevance and leadership within an industry, it will require the development of scripts and storyboarding, quality camera work, sound design and potentially animation. This effort is important because you definitely don’t want a sponsor or new member pulling up your homepage to see a poorly executed video. That might even make you go viral — in a bad way. For as short as a 60- to 90-second marketing video that lives on your homepage may seem, it actually requires a tactful, professional approach that ensures your association is properly represented.
There are a few important steps to creating a great marketing video well before the cameras roll:
- Scriptwriting: Typically the first and probably most important step is drafting a concise and exciting script that encapsulates all your association does for the narration of your video. Tip: Try reading your script aloud with a timer and see if you can fit everything in under 90 seconds.
- Shot selection: This is where you match up the script to your visuals (typically in a PowerPoint) and your video starts to come to life. This is the most creative part of the process where you actually type out what you want to see in each shot and each frame. Tip: Carefully consider how complex you want to make the visuals because the more complex it becomes, the harder the actual video production (or animation) becomes, which can also affect how long the video is.
- Storyboarding: Also known as sketchboarding, this is where you’ll have an artist literally sketch images to match the shot selection so that you begin to get a sense of how the video will look in real life. Tip: Remember to instruct your sketch artist to create exactly what you want to see in each frame and be sure to include the motions and/or logos you want to include.
- Production: This catch-all basically is where things start moving. Regardless if you go with a live-action video using stock footage of your facilities, people and processes, or you go with animation that follows a problem/solution format, it’s important to be diligent in keeping track of time, camera equipment, lighting, narration recording and budget. Things can spiral if you’re not organized in this process. Tip: Spreadsheets are your friend! Use them to help you stay on top of all your deliverables during this time.
Creating the right video that is dynamic and representative of your mission and values is an important corporate reputation asset and not something to be taken lightly.
Video can be a heavy lift, so if all of this seems overwhelming, consider turning to experts who can help. Whether your association needs help with storyboard and script development or video production management, or your internal staff doesn’t have the bandwidth or expertise to manage complex video creation projects, Naylor is here to help with tailor-fit stories that convey the unique offerings from associations of all sizes. Learn more.
