Increase Interest with Video Brochures

Integrated marketing has taken over the communications landscape. Online technologies, Web video and direct-response marketing are increasingly interconnected. This trend allows producers to communicate a message in multiple ways and increase audience interactions through a variety of touch points.

How can organizations make the most of the online bandwagon? One way that successful marketers are extending their message is by embedding video into their other marketing collateral, creating interactive video brochures.

Create compelling stories
Video brochures combine text and static graphics with embedded video to create a story that pulls in readers. These brochures — or other integrated collateral, such as white papers, data sheets and case studies — go beyond a static description of a product or success story.

• After reading about a new product or service, customers can click to watch a quick demo.
• Instead of just viewing quotes from a satisfied client, readers can watch a testimonial — from within the case study.
• Interest in learning more about a service or product can be immediately satisfied through embedded video.

Brochures that integrate video encourage viewer interaction and response, making it easier to capture and measure information about viewer activity and response.

The business benefits of this type of brochure are numerous. Incorporating video allows you to

• Highlight important features and benefits of your product or service;
• Illustrate how and why your product or company is superior to the competition;
• Enhance the image and credibility of your brand; and
• Motivate the audience to take action.

Learn more about your readers
At the same time that video brochures offer a more satisfying reading experience, they can help companies learn more about readers. Video brochures are versatile tools:

• They can be distributed through email, websites, blogs or social media.
• Video brochures generate higher response rates than traditional email.
• They provide an actionable, interactive message through audio/visual content and direct calls to action.
• They can be pushed to target viewers.
• Embedded mechanisms can collect viewer activity and response data.

Furthermore, the audio/visual content in the brochures works in a variety of materials, saving marketing dollars and tying together a cohesive messaging strategy.

How Can Video Be Embedded in a Brochure?

Typically, marketing collateral are created and distributed in PDF format. Adobe’s Acrobat software can embed Flash video directly into a PDF file. However, given that video makes PDF files very large, an alternative would be to host your video on a special page on your site, so the video can be played back via a browser. Added benefits would be that website analytics can track the video playbacks and changes can be made to the video page without having to change the PDF.

What you need
To be effective, the audio/visual elements of your brochures must include some interactive elements. For example, you can give readers some level of playback control. The format of these elements should, of course, be compatible with multiple platforms and devices so that the brochure can be distributed online and will have maximum portability.

It is also important that reader action can be measured in a meaningful way. Successful video brochures feature a means to capture and store viewer interactions. These data can then be used for analysis, feedback or sales purposes.

Five factors are required to create an effective video brochure:

• Engaging content
• Portability and universal accessibility
• Intuitive viewer controls
• Viral capabilities
• Ease of use and modification for marketers

You can maximize your return on investment (ROI) by using professional content development. Doing so reduces the strain on in-house graphic- and content-creation resources, and working with a single provider to create multiple elements of your marketing collateral ensures a consistent message throughout.

At Digital Dazzle, our experts can create both the collateral and the video for powerful presentations that will inspire audiences to take action! Contact us for a no-cost consultation on what makes videos work. Call us at 415.937.1791.

Solve the Partner Catch-22 Problem

Did you know that 70 percent of all new corporate partnerships fail to drive revenue? This is because of the notorious “Partner Catch-22” problem: Neither partner wants to invest its own money and resources in developing joint partner solutions until the partner relationship has generated a pipeline of leads. Yet, building such a pipeline is traditionally impossible without first making the aforementioned investment.

Luckily, a Partner Enablement Video can offer an end to this vicious cycle in several important ways:

• Bring integration solutions to life for sales teams and clients, even when those solutions are still in the planning stages.
• Demonstrate key partner differentiators and benefits — cost-effectively.
• Start pre-selling offerings in as few as two to three weeks.

A video will demonstrate your partnership, its offerings and its benefits — even before the joint solution(s) has been created. What’s more, creating a video can decrease work for engineering and design teams and enhance innovation as many video concepts and designs are incorporated into the final specification.

One plus one equals more than two
It’s often difficult for one company’s clients to visualize how a new partnership will benefit them. After all, they’re used to using the current solution in one way — by itself.

By creating a video that demonstrates the benefits of nascent partner offerings, you can create an actionable vision that will generate enthusiasm among your sales team members and your clientele. Both gain an immediate understanding of the joint solution’s benefits and experience a deeper level of engagement.

Better yet, you can use video to customize your message. For example, you can produce separate versions of your video for different customer verticals so that customers can understand how the partnership applies specifically to them. You can even target a video to your own and your partner’s sales forces so that they have a true understanding of how to adapt their selling strategies.

A successful Partnership Enablement Video accomplishes several essential goals:

• Exhibits how the companies’ combined efforts will work
• Clearly demonstrates the solution’s benefit to viewers
• Clarifies the strengths and boundaries of the partnership
• Differentiates products and services
• Educates viewers about the other partner’s technology or reputation
• Increases brand awareness for both companies

Having this information upfront will save time and money.

Take the example of two tech companies that decide to integrate their software products. Posting a laundry list of the benefits of each partner’s products doesn’t actually show customers the true benefit of both partners’ software components working together. Instead, the companies can use video to bring the integration to life and actually walk users through use cases and demonstrate how the new integration will work — in a way that makes the benefits immediately apparent.

Create compelling stories to strengthen your brands — and your partnership
The key to putting together a great video that will boost your partnership is making sure that your selected video producer truly understands both companies, their particular industry or industries, the benefits of the new partnership and its offering, and what it takes to capture viewers’ interest and clarify the message for them.

A quality video producer has not only specific skills and knowledge about video but also these qualities:

• A thorough understanding of your company and your industry
• A tried and consistent method for researching others
• A strong foundation of communication for finalizing details

Put these pieces together, and you end up with the story of your partnership and its benefits. And compelling storytelling is the quickest way to strengthen your brand and connect with your existing — and future — clients.

 

A Case in Point
Lithium Technologies worked with Digital Dazzle to establish a systematic approach for using its partners’ distribution channels and eliciting leads from partner accounts.

The solution included creating Partner Enablement Videos, which were used, first, to train each partner’s sales teams and, secondly to present to prospective customers. According to Henry Bruckstein, then Lithium’s director of partner alliances, Lithium enjoyed a dramatic increase in qualified leads from its partners, a significant acceleration in the sales process and an upsurge in the number of sales.

 

Help Yourself
So you’ve decided to create a Partnership Enablement Video. There are few things that you can do to make the process easier and more successful:

• Be committed to the partnership. Don’t get possessive about which company is the “stronger” partner;
• Know your selling points and communicate them to the video experts;
• List the benefits and differentiators of your joint partner solution; and
• State what problems your joint partner solution solves.

 

Rapid Presentation Design for Lithium/SAP

 

 

 

 

 

Digital Dazzle completes Rapid Presentation Design mockups depicting interaction between Lithium online communities and SAP software. The mockups will enhance Lithium’s presentation to SAP by helping SAP to better visualize and understand Lithium’s vision. Lithium is the premier producer of Social Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to Fortune 500 enterprises and SAP is the market and technology leader in business management software.

Learn more about our Rapid Presentation Design service offering

Welcome to the Digital Dazzle Blog

Welcome to Digital Dazzle's Blog!

We are excited to report that today is the beginning of the Digital Dazzle Blog!  It will keep you up-to-date on the latest happenings at Digital Dazzle and give useful insights about the world of Marketing.

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- News about Digital Dazzle

- Impact of visual Marketing (i.e., demos, videos & visualization) on your business

- Marketing trends

- Tips and Tools of the Trade

 

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