The term corporate video is a broad description for videos which are made for a business – to drive sales, improve engagement, retention and commitment. Corporate videos come in many forms and include web videos, training videos, product launch videos, promotional videos, advice videos and testimonial videos. They can be produced for the web, onto DVD or Blu-ray. With the growth of digital technology, there is now often convergence between corporate video and other types of video such as web, animated and promotional. Essentially, corporate videos are business tools – and in most cases are produced to generate business, inform employees, save costs or reduce risk in the workplace. Originally corporate videos were considered to be costly and poor in quality, however, with the advancements in technology corporate video production is now an affordable way of communicating your message. It provides a much more cost-effective tool than traditional marketing methods such as print media (leaflets, brochure, handouts etc) or one-to-one presentations.

At the moment we find that a particularly effective and popular way to reach your target audience is online via social media websites. This can be achieved by posting your video on sites like YouTube and Vimeo and then using social media tools like Twitter, Facebook to allow it to gather some real momentum. In addition to this, embedding on your blog, keeping a video library on your website (or Youtube channel) makes it easy for people to view relevant content. Don’t under estimate the power of word-of-mouth recommendation as this can also play an important role – when you have created engaging video content, customers will be happy to share it with others. Finally, an email campaign can also be very effective to engage with people and reach a wider audience.

There are many ways to tackle this but we would recommend creating a plan document that outlines your target audience, what you are needing to achieve and how you are going to achieve it. Then think more about the detail of the corporate video – here are some tips that may help:

• What are you selling? (e.g. product, service) or what do you want communicate to your audience? (e.g. company message, training incentive)
• In what tone would you like speak to your audience? e.g. fun and friendly or inspiring and compelling
• Would you want the corporate video to be purely animation or include filmed elements such as interviews, shots of your facilities and staff?
• Do you require any additional services like a voiceover or presenter to really drive the narrative and push your message?
• How quickly do you require the final video?
• Where is it going to be shown? (e.g. displayed on TV at an exhibition, embedded on your company website or streamed internally through your network).

If you have seen some other videos that have inspired you to want to create a corporate video, then please send us some links. This is a great way of letting us know what you are hoping to achieve. Once we understand your requirements, your company ethos and your positioning in the market we will be able to produce a video that will connect with your audience to help you to achieve your goals.

Video is a dynamic medium and especially useful when you want to demonstrate products, services or events that are not easy to show your clients in normal circumstances. Video is also very easy to update, and can be readily incorporated into live presentations, video conferencing and, more commonly, embedded into your company website. Business videos can increase the time users spend on your website, clarifying your product and increasing the amount of leads, conversions and sales generated. In today’s digital world, we are geared towards information, and the emphasis is on speed of access to this information. People simply don’t want to read infinite amounts of text to find what they are looking for. It slows them down and wastes time.