In this #ContentChat recap, Erika Heald is joined by Molly St. Louis, brand and communications director and co-founder of Mosaic Group Media, to discuss how to craft video content that drives brand growth.
They explore the evolving role of video in content marketing and share innovative ways for brands to engage their audiences through authentic storytelling and data-driven insights in video.
Watch the entire conversation on YouTube or read through the highlights below.
Why Video Content is Valuable for Content Marketing
Marketers have traditionally avoided creating video content because it seemed too expensive and would take time away from other content priorities. However, it is now significantly easier and more cost-effective to create video content for social media and other channels.
“Prior to the pandemic, people were, I think, less likely to do video because it was expensive (sometimes). The way we were doing it before, we always thought we needed production crews and things. And now people are realizing they can do quite a lot on YouTube just using your iPhone. We’ve gotten to be video-centric. At least in B2B, it’s become kind of a must-do.”—Molly St. Louis
Video content is especially powerful for establishing thought leadership, engaging brand audiences, and unlocking new public relations opportunities.
“A lot of the way that I’ve been thinking about it comes out of having worked for public relations firms. And one of the major things when you’re representing thought leaders—CEOs, CFOs, people who are experts in what they do—normally, when you’re pitching [them] to the news, people always ask, ‘Show me some video on them.’ Because they want to make sure that they’re going to be entertaining in front of a mass audience. And so a lot of the thinking on this was born out of helping CEOs and really, really smart people get their very complex ideas across in a way that is digestible for a mass audience.”—Molly St. Louis
Crafting Engaging Branded Video Content for Your Community
Television news segments provide valuable lessons on how to keep audiences engaged, which can apply to brand videos.
“HubSpot, for example, will probably tell you don’t make your videos longer than a minute because nobody will watch it. My theory was that if we use television formats, then maybe we could get them watching for three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, et cetera.”—Molly St. Louis
“If you notice what happens when you watch the news, they’re constantly moving. They’ve got one guest, then maybe they have a segment where there’s documentary style footage [and] stats, [then] they bring on three more guests… [they] constantly give people something else to look at. And so I find that if you do that, you can keep people watching for a longer.”—Molly St. Louis
Talking heads alone do not make for engaging branded video content (most of the time).
“And it’s so much more engaging than just having a talking head talking for four minutes. And we’ve all been assigned those projects, and they’re the worst kinds of content projects to get assigned because you know it’s not going to do what they want it to do. It’s not going to engage people, it’s not going to drive them to take action, and definitely no one is going to comment on it or share it.”—Erika Heald
Videos should speak to more than just your brand or your product.
“For decades in other countries, they would frequently hire folks like arty or independent film directors to create longer form commercials or mini films. So you think that we would have caught on a little bit more quickly that this was something fun to do that really has the opportunity to delight our communities that we serve and show them that we can be creators of something that’s just beautiful and entertaining.”—Erika Heald
“It shows that we can be creative and go beyond trying to just tell a product story. I think when people hear branded content, they think that means it’s content that has to be really in your face about being from the brand.”—Erika Heald
Video content to support thought leadership
Content marketing teams should prepare videos of various lengths that position the speaker as a thought leader who can share compelling insights and sound bites.
“When you’re trying to pitch from the comms side—so your PR team’s out there trying to pitch the executives because you have built up their expertise in an area—[if] you don’t have a really good video that shows that they can be succinct and on point and have those great sound bites, it can be really hard to get some of those kinds of engagements for them. And you can’t just be like, ‘Oh, here’s a recording of their 40-minute keynote speech,’ because that’s too long, it’s the wrong format, [and] it doesn’t show that they’re going to shine in this kind of thought leadership realm, because that’s a whole different ballpark.”—Erika Heald
Review raw footage to identify the valuable nuggets of information you should highlight when editing. Collaborating with the speaker can help them improve their video presentation skills.
“It helps the executives to see what they look like when there’s the raw footage and then when we edit it. When we edit it, then you can see this is the nugget of information I need to get to pique people’s interest. So it actually helps them later on when they do media, when they get the media opportunity.”—Molly St. Louis
Learn more about how to create a thought leadership platform that earns people’s trust.
Collaborating with Industry Experts, Partners, and Media Outlets for Video Content
Consider partnering with other brands or external subject matter experts to create and amplify your videos.
“It also depends on who else is in it. If you want reach, you’ve got to tag people and tag companies.”—Molly St. Louis
“One of the things that people kind of forget is that when you have a podcast or a video series where you’re having those interactions, and you’re lifting up other people’s work, that helps validate that you have those industry connections, and that you understand your audience and what really concerns them. I’m surprised how frequently people say, ‘We can only use our own experts and our clients, we would never want to have an outside brand.’ And that, to me, just seems like such a missed opportunity.”—Erika Heald
“As long as it’s not one of your direct competitors, why not? I think you make more friends that way. If you think of your video program as making friendships and supporting other people in the same way that you should be doing on your social media—not just talking about yourself, but talking about everybody—you open it up. And the people that you’re supporting will support you. So it does broaden your network. As long as they’re not like going head to head with you on sales meetings or anything like that, do some cold marketing.”—Molly St. Louis
Media outlets can be great partners for branded video content and extend your reach, however, they will enforce their editorial standards and can require a significant investment.
“You can also think about branded opportunities with a media partner that are paid. So what I’ve been talking about up to this point is earned and owned content. But then, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic… they have these incredible opportunities for brands to partner with them, in which you collaborate together to make content that both speaks to your brand and what you’re doing and then also speaks to their audiences.”—Molly St. Louis
“One of the things that people can have trouble getting their mind around is that you can’t just write something and say, ‘Wall Street Journal, I paid you, so put it up there.’ No, they have to make sure that it is journalistically sound, that it sounds like their brand. But the great thing about that is that it reaches a much wider audience.”—Molly St. Louis
“If you’re going to go for a media partnership, you really, really, really need to make sure it’s the right one [and] it’s the one that your audience is reading. You need to make sure that, if you have a niche audience specifically, they can get to those people.”—Molly St. Louis
Overcoming Challenges in Creating Branded Video Content
Gain executive support on your video strategy.
“You definitely have to get some C-suites who are forward thinkers. A lot of the C-suite now really understands the value of corporate branding. And in that, your audiences want to know how you think as an organization, what you support, what you stand for, what causes you support. If we’re taking a step back and we’re looking at this as a holistic comms strategy, you have to know what you respond to and what your culture is. And I think a lot of the C-suite is starting to understand that and make investments in that type of marketing.”—Molly St. Louis
Be realistic about what success looks like on your chosen channel(s). “Going viral” is likely an unrealistic goal for B2B organizations.
“If you’re reaching a B2B audience, set a benchmark for what viral means to you. Because if it’s 500 shares or 500 engagements, that wouldn’t be viral as it pertains to TikTok or like that guy that does the Bridgerton hairstyles on Instagram, who is a genius. If you can get 500 on a small audience, that’s really good.”—Molly St. Louis
Plan videos ahead of time to streamline your filming process. You may film multiple videos in one day and use them throughout the year.
“We had to film, a lot of the time, board members and investors; people that don’t have a lot of time, and you might get their time for 15 minutes because they’ve got meetings to go to, because it’s their job. So you figure out how to carve the turkey, as they say. And if you haven’t seen that analogy, they have a turkey that looks like a [piece of] content, and the leg is a different part of the talk that you are carving out. So it’s serving the same content in different ways.”—Molly St. Louis
“When are those people going to be together someplace where you can easily ask them a couple of things that then can inform multiple pieces of content? If you’re lucky enough to have a user conference, that’s a great place. But also industry events.”—Erika Heald
“With one of my VC clients, I would get to go to the investor day with all the portfolio company CEOs, CMOs, and all of their executive teams. We made 14 different videos that had snippets from conversations with three different people with the same role in very different companies. And we only had 10 minutes per person. We had a room, and we just cycled people in and out. We had people go run, get the person, bring them in, we ask them the questions. But we did all that planning in advance about what are those videos that we want? Who are going to be the right people who we want to ask the questions for their perspectives? Padding it to make sure that if somebody bombed that we had enough other people that we were asking that we would be able to tell a really good story.”—Erika Heald
“You need to batch everything that you’re doing. As a marketer, if you want to be effective in producing video content, if you lackadaisically do it whenever, it’s gonna be so much harder and cost so much more, and take longer. If you just get it done at one time, you get into the flow, and you get everybody excited about it. And then you schedule it out.”—Erika Heald
“We figured out what we would actually be sharing on social well before it was even shot. Because then that way, those can become 30-seond videos and a minute video. And if you want the full interview, then that looks like a whole other thing. It’s usually done in one day. For example, all four of those episodes were shot on one day, because we had a crew with a crane and everything like that. “—Molly St. Louis
Use tools to make the video production process easier. We highlight several video and audio content tools in this post.
“On the video production side, there are some cool things coming out. There’s AI that does your storyboards for you. If you’re a creative person that maybe doesn’t have the tactical skills of drawing and doing storyboards, there are things coming out for that. I think it’s just going to make things a lot easier.”—Molly St. Louis
Understand your budget and be prepared to face trade-offs depending on how much you are able to invest.
“I’ve done budgets of $250,000 for video production for five minutes. This one was like $6,000 per episode. It makes financial sense to plan.”—Molly St. Louis
Tips for creating great brand videos
Be authentic and share learnings that show how your brand has gotten ahead, including challenges you’ve had to overcome.
“Authentic stories. People love stories. If you’re telling a story about how you totally bombed and what you learned from it, people love that.”—Molly St. Louis
“No matter what kind of brand you have, if you can be a human being it is helpful.”—Molly St. Louis
Use data to your advantage.
“They like anything that has to do with data. You can do a total mic drop moment. I have a client right now that is doing some incredible things in the construction industry and lifting productivity by 10%. 10% might not sound like a lot if we’re talking about it in context to 100%, but when you realize how much money and revenue that represents, it’s kind of a mic drop moment when you can bust out numbers like that.”—Molly St. Louis
Position your brand within your industry and current trends.
“Link what your product is doing to current trends. It’s not just about your story and what’s important to you and your company. People are tuning in to watch you to learn about what they can do better with their companies. So the more that you can link those things to a broader narrative and what’s going on in the industry [the better].”—Molly St. Louis
Borrow lessons from your favorite videos.
“Watch TV. Everything that, if you grew up in the 80s and 90s, your parents said would rot your brain? Watch it. Because that’s what people are used to. If you look at Netflix documentaries, for example, watch how long they stay on a certain subject. Watch the show The Mind Explained, or one of my favorites was Brain Games.”—Molly St. Louis
Make it easy for your audience to digest the information using on-screen visuals.
“We used to call those tweetable moments, which kind of encapsulated that short and sweet, giving people something that they would share about by having it be a beautiful visualization of the data or having those kinds of pull quotes written out on screen. I mean, that’s so smart, because it helps people really easily articulate ‘What it was that they just said that I loved? It really resonated.’ Well, there it is.”—Erika Heald
Ensure your video content speaks to its intended audience and does not underestimate their intelligence.
“I tend to do content for experts, data scientists, and the C-suite, mostly. And so the challenge that I often run into when I’m working with production companies is that a lot of work has to be done to make sure that it is actually for that expert audience; that it is deep content, and no, it is not going to be entertaining for a broader audience. But the audience that you really want, which is this audience of people with MBAs or PhDs, it has to be as smart as they are, because otherwise, they’re not going to watch it. It’s as if, you know, somebody did a documentary for marketers and said, ‘You have to grab their attention,’ and made that the mic drop moment. Yeah, I know, I’ve been doing this for 20 years.”—Molly St. Louis
Use motion graphics to keep the content engaging. Adobe stock image .mogrt files can be a great starting point.
“If you have a more conservative brand, I think you should take a take a page out of the news media. [Use] motion graphics. Get a really great motion graphics animator. Motion graphics are the more 3D-looking ones that you’ll see on CNN and those kinds of those kinds of newscasts, where you trust it, because it looks like it’s made of money. To be honest, you can get a lot of those by going to Adobe stock images, and looking for .mogrt files. For all of you editors out there, they’re templatized, you can change them, you can change them in your brand colors, and you’ll pay like five bucks.”—Molly St. Louis
Use data to propel your storytelling.
“For the conservative brands, you want to lean into the data a lot. And you want to lean into experts. Think about things like throwing their quotes up onscreen with a beautiful picture just to keep everything dynamic, so you’re not just watching them next to each other talking about big data. Give people some ways of digesting the information that you really care that they get.”—Molly St. Louis
Educate your audience.
“From an investment standpoint, you can clip those and use them all over your marketing as well. So even if the film doesn’t make it to Sundance or doesn’t make it to Cannes or any of those things, you can use those things as other distribution channels. You can use them in your product marketing. Perhaps you do a cut of it where it is a tutorial like HubSpot has and HubSpot Academy, where they’re teaching this sort of mindset of what’s new. I’ve worked with category creators and so the idea behind category creation is that it’s going to take a lot of market education. If category creation isn’t your chosen strategy, then maybe it’s harder. But for the category creators, they know that they have to educate.”—Molly St. Louis
Brand video examples
Molly shares a few branded video examples below:
“We did one during the pandemic with a company called Clari, which is the revenue operations leader. And we did a branded series with them in which we interviewed experts in the revenue area just as they were building this category. And the cool thing was that Clari has had an incredible point of view, and it brought other experts into the fold to validate that in a lot of ways and add to it.”—Molly St. Louis
“I had a viral one. It was about the science of chocolate chip cookies. Who the hell doesn’t love chocolate? Of course, it went viral, and people are still pulling it up years later. [One] was about cyberbullying and why women shouldn’t bully each other. Again, if half the population is women, you have a good chance that you’ve got a big audience. They were very, very broad subjects. Everyone loves chocolate chip cookies, not everybody loves the science of how to increase your antibody or whatever [your brand is doing].”—Molly St. Louis
“There are some really cool things happening with video. If you’re not aware of Brand Storytelling, it is Sundance’s program for branded films. They’re called brand-funded films, and it’s essentially happening for a couple reasons. One of them is because commercials—we can skip past them if we want to. We don’t have to watch them if we don’t want to. The other thing is the changes with third-party cookies. There are a few trends that are fueling this particular trend of brands making films that are sort of about who they are as a company, not them necessarily, but their values. It’s the idea that their audience is going to connect with them on a more personal level because of that, and they’re not being sold anything.”—Molly St. Louis
Brand Video Foundations
Before you start planning your next video, learn more about how to define your brand voice for better content marketing and establish these essential branding elements to ensure every video you create reflects your brand identity.
