A video is not just for Christmas – make your video a cracker not a turkey

Simon Banks tells how to unleash the power of profitable video – and how to ‘get video right’.

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas, it’s said in the UK, without the John Lewis ad. Forget the promise of snow, presents and a turkey dinner, the assault of retail Christmas ads is what really makes it feel like a lot like Christmas.

And having a successful ad or video, with the backing of a conventional media campaign, is crucial for Christmas sales. It’s a tough world out there in retail-land – look at the announcement recently by Marks and Spencer about closing stores. The Christmas ad campaign for John Lewis is worth the money spent, increasing increase festive sales by 16% over the last four years.

2015’s ‘Man on the Moon’ campaign had more than 25 million views on YouTube and according to Marketing Week: “for the week ending 14th November, the department store reported its first weekly sales total to surpass £100m. The £110.4m total was an increase of 1.5% year-on-year and up a whopping 15.8% on the previous week when the ‘Man on the Moon’ ad launched.” This video campaign was a cracker indeed.

Video must be seen as an investment in your brand. A video made this year could be next year’s sales and marketing tool. Return on Investment (ROI) is key in business. What you put in should generate profits several times your original cost.

For example, in the world of Hollywood, studio executives measure the sign of a successful movie, not in the glitz and glamour of Oscar night, but the ROI. The average movie earns about four-and-a-half times its original budget in global box office revenues – so around 450% ROI. That means that every £1 spent they will get £4.50 back (on average.) Of course, there are different ways of calculating the original budget and it may or may not include marketing. But anything less than 400% ROI gives Hollywood accountants long, sad faces.

Using video for business marketing

The same rules should apply when you use a video for marketing your business. What is the return you want on your investment in making the film? It’s not necessarily financial. Filming and creating a video of a conference can be used as a marketing tool to attract more people to next year’s event. Video may also enhance your reputation by showing your company as a leader in its field. A video can communicate to your staff, making them feel valued and helping to retain your best people.

And when it is about money, of course, a sales video is the obvious choice to generate more customers. However, thinking of the return you want on the film shows the value of video – see it as a business tool that generates profits, both in a monetary or reputational sense.

Having video on your website significantly increases your ranking on Google – some say by about 80%. Calculate how having a video could lift you in the rankings and, in turn, estimate what that lift would mean in terms of potential increase in customers.

Not investing in video and trying to do it as cheaply as possible will not necessarily give you greater ROI. Imagine a huge annual conference of a large corporate organisation. The keynote speeches from the conference would be made into a video that would be used on the website. Other speeches would showcase the senior management team in staff training sessions during the year. Of course, recording speeches can be done cheaply.

Last year’s video promoting this year’s conference

However, 6 months later and it’s time to plan the next conference. This is where a where a video is essential in attracting potential speakers, attendees and sponsorship. The video, as well as showing the speakers, could have shown how great the event was – the excitement, the staging, the people attending saying how much they enjoyed and learned from it. In short, a video that says you missed out last year – don’t miss out now.

Therefore, looking ahead and spending a bit more on the additional production budget (invest in a producer and another cameraperson) would have meant getting more content on the day of the event so that it could be used for future use – and maximising the return on investment.

Planning ahead means carefully thinking through all the requirements and making the most of the opportunity to get footage. Thinking a video production through from a strategic perspective can reap rewards and give a greater ROI in the long run. It may mean spending a little more on a larger team, more kit and an experienced director who gets the bigger picture and knows how to get the most out of the shoot – but cutting costs may turn out
to be a false economy and just mean finding additional footage, setting up another shoot some time later, or needing a much more complicated edit to get the video you want.

You may not have the budget for a John Lewis style ad. And a video is not just for Christmas. Plan ahead. Think about what video communications you will need over a 6-12 month period. Don’t plan your video budget based on what you think you need to spend. Budget for a video by thinking about the impact that it will have on your marketing and business and the results that you expect to see. Think message and content – rather than the medium. This will increase your return on investment.

Download a free sample of Simon Banks’ book, here.