Five Tips for Video Marketing from Chris Savage – CEO of Wistia

Last week we had the absolute pleasure and privilege of welcoming back Chris Savage, Co-Founder and CEO of Wistia for a BoS Hangout following his BoS USA Talk in 2014. A talk about his talk soon turned into a conversation about the state of video marketing in general and a play list for anyone thinking about using video in their marketing.

A long time BoS attendee, Chris has been coming to BoS since he started the company so it was a pleasure to invite him on stage and talk about some of the mistakes he has made in building Wistia. Some highlights from the hangout after the video below, although more can be found in the full video.

Highlights

1. Where Video is now.

Video marketing alongside social media is democratising marketing back to the people by giving them control over their own brand. This is both for good and for bad as brands do not always help themselves.

2. Where video is going.

Asked about whether video being an accessible marketing tool for all to do in house would be a long term trend, Chris used graphic design as an example. To start, anyone could do it, but eventually businesses had to turn to graphic designers to take advantage of the specialist skills these people had. In a similar way, at the moment video is open to all, another five, ten years down the line this might not be the case.

3. Platform choice will go a long way to defining your video strategy

Once a platform (YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia etc) has been chosen, it is difficult/laborious to go back on this. Make sure to ask the questions of not only what the platform’s specialties are, but also how these relate to business goals.

The below table gives examples of how to begin to analyse platform choices. It may be that a combination of these will suit best, but will create extra workloads.

Platform	Specialties/Advantages	Disadvantages
YouTube	High Traffic Great for views and general brand awareness	May not redirect back to site High in funnel point where conversions are unlikely
Vimeo	High quality video Highly concentrated arts community New ability to sell or rent videos direct from platform	Smaller viewership than YouTube, with the same disadvantage of traffic may not convert back to site
Wistia	Better for on site videos Customisable video presentation Designed for further down funnel to gain information which may then lead to sales	Works in combination, rather than as an alternative to the other platforms as not optimised for off-site usage, which means maintaining videos in two or more places.

4. There are specialist considerations for video SEO

One of the problems with listing videos on larger platforms is their SEO could be better than the business that posts the content, to the point any video placed online will rank higher than the business that created the content. For example, a search for ‘Chris Savage – Three mistakes BoS’ could lead you a YouTube hit, rather than a Business of Software one.

There are some things a business can do to counter-act this issue. For example, if video content is on site, then there are things you can do for SEO. Chris discussed tips such as making videos larger on the page, making sure it sits higher up the page, ensuring a site map is present on the entire site, creating transcripts, captioning the video and open graph tagging.

5. Key to creating great videos: Time, focus and authenticity

The final lesson was simply, what sticks with video marketing? The answer is was a combination of three elements.

Time – The less of a relationship a user already has with your product or business, the less time they are likely to commit to watching your video. Chris recommends taking your content and splitting it up into manageable pieces for potentially new customers, before leading them onto longer content.

Focus – As with time, new customers are likely to be less forgiving if your content does not get the the point quickly enough. Focus on your key message, and deliver what you promised to.

Authenticity – Despite the possible movement from in-house to professional video production, one saving grace is if video content is viewed as authentic, then this can make up for a lack of perfect professionalism. As with focus, be genuine in what you want to deliver, and then give the customer that.

So there you have it, five top lessons from one of the highest rising stars in the video marketing business. For the full video, see below, and be sure to sign up for our newsletter for announcements of more interviews with industry leading figures.