How Sales Can Triple Response Rates With Video

There is nothing worse for a sales rep then trying to book a call with a prospect and hearing “Sorry I’m slammed, my calendar is too full, let’s reschedule next week, next month, next quarter, or next YEAR!” It can derail any rep and kill momentum, leaving you questioning if they were even a good fit, to begin with.

Just remember, it’s nothing personal. Buyers are bombarded with as many as 2,900 messages each day. They are busy with a lot on the go and have to be strict with what gets time on their calendar. The only way to process it all is to develop a subconscious filter for everything that sounds irrelevant. Filtering allows buyers to stay sane and only consciously engage with the messages that matter and make impact with them.

So what messages cut through the noise? Ones from friends, family, colleagues, and trusted influencers. As a sales rep, if you want to break through that superhuman filter, and get prospects to carve out time for you then be like your buyer’s friends and create a personal connection.

There’s no better way to do this than with video.

Video is transforming many organizations sales processes and their results, like Terminus who saw great numbers after implementing video into their sales cycle:

• 40% increase in email open rates
• 37% increase in click rates
• 216% higher response rates

Video is a simple way to turn your sales process around, and drive even greater results (like tripling response rates) and here is how you can get started;

Use Video For Sales Prospecting

When you’re freshly reaching out to a new lead, it’s so important that you stand out and get noticed. Prospecting emails have to stick out in crowded inboxes. For BDR and SDR teams, the best opportunities to spice up those prospecting emails with video are:

• Cold Prospecting
• Follow-Up
• Account-Based Sales Approach

The most prominent things to keep in mind here are similar to any other form of prospecting: you’re trying to capture attention with an audience that is overly busy and doesn’t know you yet. You’ll want to focus your videos on:

• Capturing attention – Use “video” in email subject lines and include the thumbnail in the email body.
• Establishing credibility – Reps should give their prospects a reason to engage with them other than to pull out their checkbook right away.
• Personalization – Top reps spend time learning about an individual and their business & then use this info to connect with leads individually.

Video isn’t just for prospecting, and it can be used efficiently throughout the entire sales cycle.

Avoid The ‘Me-Centric’ Approach, Make The Message All About Them

Remember that customers don’t care about your product until you prove that you can provide value to them. So make sure to drive the value home to encourage the prospect to want to carve out time to learn more. The great news is that video is the perfect channel to do this efficiently.

The key is to speak to how you can help that person and organization, NOT to simply tell them what you do. Video allows you to quickly share what you’ve learned about the company and/or contact that caused you to reach out and how you believe that your product or service can benefit them. It’s easier to share this in a video than to pack it all into a short email.

Use Personalized Video Throughout Your Sales Process

A personalized video is a devastating weapon for breaking through subconscious filters and achieving awareness. Correctly applied, it can:

• Increase click-throughs by 4.5x. Just as people scan social media looking for photos and mentions of themselves, you’re offering them the same dopamine hit in a B2B context.
• Keep viewers watching for 35 percent longer. Once a buyer’s attention has been captured, a video is a fantastic medium for interestingly communicating a lot of information. It has a higher informational throughput than text, audio, and images alone because it combines all three.
• Increase the chance that late-stage prospects buy. When buyers are shown personalized videos that demonstrate a solution, they experience it viscerally, increasing comprehension. The marketing team at Salesloft found that 75 percent of late-stage prospects who received personalized videos became closed won deals.

Video is your key to getting heard by buyers with the superpower of selective hearing. With video personalization, you’ll find that you’re no longer just one vendor among tens of thousands shouting in a stadium: you’re just one, sitting face to face with the customer who knows you have something they need.

If you’re a sales rep looking to learn what steps you need to take to embrace video prospecting, and throughout the entire sales process then “How Our SDRs Tripled Response Rates with Personal Video Messaging” is the video for you!

The post How Sales Can Triple Response Rates With Video appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/triple-response-rates-personal-video/

4 Ways Video Helps Maintain Control and Accelerate the Sales Cycle

We’ve been talking a lot about using video during the inbound/outbound sales process. But it’s time to dive a little deeper into how you can strategically use video to tighten up your sales cycle and maintain control of the buying process – at the same time, providing a seamless experience for your customers and prospects.

If you’re just starting out with video, head over to our Video Selling Institute to learn best practices for breaking through e-mail clutter, boosting response rates and booking more meetings. I also suggest you get yourself a whiteboard and check out Lauren Wadsworth’s blog: How I Get 5x More Meetings and Beat Quota Every Month (Hint: It’s Not Email or Phone).

It’s no surprise that video prospecting yields significantly higher results than traditional methods, but let’s explore some new ways video can be used throughout the entire path-to-purchase, to deliver on sales-sourced pipeline and convert your prospects from  lead to customer in just the click of a play button.

1. Waking the Dead (Dead Opps + Cold Leads)

Remember Paul the MQL who requested a demo and went cold as ice? You followed up with him for 20 days, 4 emails, 3 calls, 2 voicemails, a LinkedIn connection request and—nothing! New projects, minutiae and a flooded inbox had other plans for Paul.

Let’s wake the dead and turn these cold leads to warm, and then to hot.

Here’s an example of how video can help you stay top-of-mind, re-engage a cold lead, and leverage existing marketing content to further qualify and convert your prospects faster.

Dead opportunities are at least somewhat familiar with your product and typically convert faster than cold leads. Introduce a 2-minute micro-demo in a playlist to remind Paul why he was evaluating your product in the first place and try to drive urgency to re-engage.If there wasn’t a compelling enough reason before, be prepared to deliver why there is one now.

2. Land and Expand

Let’s dial-in on prospecting large to mid-market, and enterprise accounts. When you’re navigating through thousands of employees to prospect, you need to scale your efforts and prioritize your time working your most engaged leads. You still need to personalize your messaging – but in this case, the personalization is your targeted research on the company.

It’s about finding the right balance between quality and quantity; account based videos save you time and deliver on both.

Check out this example of an Account Base Video (ABV). ABVs should be based on persona, so while you’re sending the same video to multiple prospects, your messaging will always resonate:

The idea is to create one single screen share and send the video at-scale, using video analytics to hone in on the leads that are most engaged.

Once you’ve landed the first meeting, expand it. Reuse the same Account Based Video and prospect the same persona in a different territory or country. If Sandra, the Director of IT in the East is interested, there is a good chance David from the West could be, too.

Expanding into an account you’ve already determined is a good fit is like working a highly qualified lead – you should be able to get to a yes/ no/ maybe, very early on in your cadence.

At the very least, your prospect should be open to a conversation—if you’re extra cheeky—it’s because you’ve asked for the referral! Convert, convert, convert.

3. Enabling a Champion

It’s true; no one can sell your product better than you can. So, when you hear the inevitable “let me pitch this to my team /boss/VP, and get back to you,” use video to take back control of your opportunity and deliver your own value prop.

Shikha, SME Account Executive at Vidyard, shows us how to enable a champion, summarizing the discovery call, addressing the resolved pain-point, and positioning herself as a trusted advisor:

Encourage your champion to forward your video internally and use the video analytics to guide your next steps. Did multiple viewers see the video? Did they watch it more than once? Based on how invested your champion is, you’ll have some understanding as to how your deal will progress.

It’s important to note, if you’ve sent a video to your champion and you’re receiving a poor drop-off rate—or worse, no view at all—take this as a clear warning sign; your champion hasn’t bought in!

There could be competing priorities, you did not provide enough (or the right) value or your prospect simply isn’t ready. Either way, find the disconnect and get it back on track, or take this opportunity to nurture the account and focus your attention on other opportunities.

4. Proposing your Proposal

It’s not uncommon that a sales rep thinks they’ve got it in the bag and then suddenly, the entire deal falls apart. Video analytics provide a way to keep your finger on the pulse, appropriately tailor your next steps, and better yet, more accurately forecast your pipeline.

Summarize your proposal and be transparent with your champion and decision maker, let them know you will send a physical copy of the proposal once you see they’ve had a chance to watch your summary video.

Tom, Mid-Market Account Executive at Vidyard gives us a clip of what a proposal video might look like:

Again, let the digital body language from your video proposal be your guide. If there is limited or no interaction – set a plan! Have an executive sponsor create a video introduction to show you’re fully invested in, and committed to the future relationship.

This is where video can help you really move the needle.

Take these opportunities to get your face in front of your prospective customers and show off your best asset; you. After all, people have a hard time saying “no” to people they like, and there’s a reason you were hired to sell.

The post 4 Ways Video Helps Maintain Control and Accelerate the Sales Cycle appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/video-helps-accelerate-sales-cycle/

How to become your team’s outbound king or queen

Top outbound reps don’t reach the #1 spot by waiting in line.

They skip everything that doesn’t move real deals forward. That includes the pointless check-ins, the moonshot deals, and the customers who are happy to talk but will never buy. Their success has nothing to do with callousness, luck, or speed, and everything to do with prioritization.

If you want to ascend to outbound royalty too, here is how to be crowned.

1. Have a system

Sales can be an emotional rollercoaster. Cold-calling your entire list may sound totally reasonable (fun, even) after hitting quota, but after losing a deal it can feel like pulling teeth. To keep yourself consistent, develop a system that allows you to:

Silo your activities

Silos speed up your outbound because there is no such thing as multitasking—there is only doing multiple things poorly at once. And while many people claim to be the exception, neuroscience researchers at MIT insist that multitasking makes us 40 percent less efficient.

That means if you try to John Nash-it by jumping between building lists, adding contacts, and reaching out, you’ll only get about half as much done.

Segment your tasks and perform them on different days, or at least at different times.

Make the most of every conversation

Qualify every conversation heavily before taking it. No matter how excited you or your SDR are about the logo, push back politely and insist that they’re qualified to the right standard. Do they have budget, authority, need, and a timeline?

If so, prep heavily. Focus your conversations by anticipating their questions and concerns so you’re ready with solid answers and probing questions of your own. Encourage your prospect to prepare too. If they have a true need, they’ll be happy to engage in your pre-call diligence. If they don’t, this might upset them, and that’s a red flag that’s equally valuable.

Record your outreach (it’ll help you)

Whether chatting via phone or video conferencing, the ability to review interactions offers big learning opportunities: What questions do prospects ask most often? Which objections are common? How have you succeeded or failed at overcoming them?

Once you’re treating these conversations as what they are—tests—it’ll become easier to spot your shortcomings and improve your results.

2. Spend your time like it’s your money (because it is)

The more administrative tasks you can hand off to automation, the better. Calendar everything—including those siloed blocks for prospecting—and set reminders to do pre-call prep, follow-up, and deal diligence. And tighten up all meetings by changing your default calendar meeting length from 60 minutes to 25 minutes. Defaults are powerful and you’ll be forced to work more efficiently. When it all works properly, you should feel like these notifications are guiding you through your busy day like a personal assistant.

You should also take advantage of every automated insight. This is great news if your sales strategy includes video: Most next-generation video platforms allow you to set alerts for when a prospect watches a certain percentage so you can strike at the best time—while they’re thinking of you and have seen enough to be qualified—without wasting time on leads who’ve gone cold.

Salespeople who follow up with leads in under one hour are 7x more likely to have a meaningful conversation with a decision maker.

3. Make your outreach count

B2B buyers are more immune to outreach than ever, unfortunately. They’re bombarded with endless requests to chat and are fed up with salespeople who disrespect their time by “just wanting to touch base.”

Here are two ways you can command attention:

Personalized videos

Did you know that 70 percent of B2B buyers watch a video sometime during their buying process? Use this to your advantage and create your own personalized videos. They’re attention-grabbing and deliver your message in a way that’s far more exciting than just another text or email with a value-proposition followed by three bullet points.

If you’re spending your time wisely and only reaching out to high-fit accounts, you should have plenty of time to personalize these videos for maximum impact.

Want more video sales tips? Read 7 Ways to Use Video to Close More Business.

Build immunity to rejection
As a salesperson, routine rejection is an occupational hazard. But the better you get at eliminating bad options, that is, those prospects who were going to say no anyway, the more time you’ll have to spend on your best accounts.

Do as Marketo recommends and immunize yourself to the ‘rejection flu.’ Test your messaging constantly, practice getting rejected in low-risk environments, and take improv classes. And above all, use your system to outbound consistently. Whenever you take a long break, you’ll regress and rejections will start to sting again.

Keep it up

The most important part of having a system is sticking to it. Whether you’re on a post-deal high or breakup call low, knowing precisely where and how to spend your time keeps you consistent and helps you avoid the feast or famine of outbound sales.

And when you consistently deliver the results, month after month and quarter after quarter, you’ll earn yourself the title of king or queen of outbound—a sweet prize—and almost as satisfying as having crushed your quota on the way there.

The post How to become your team’s outbound king or queen appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/become-teams-outbound-king-queen/

4 ways to renew an account that’s gone dark

Do you hear that? It’s the deafening silence of another churned customer.

Don’t they know you care? Couldn’t you have saved them? Perhaps. But account management is like a game of cat-and-mouse: Customers only surface when they need something. And when it’s time to renew, they’re often nowhere to be found.

To bust through their inbox and create a reciprocal relationship, try video.

1. Use video to engage while you educate

When your customers need help, they need it fast. Offering them FAQs, long emails, or phone calls in a crisis is like offering them a textbook just minutes before an exam. Be a better teacher and create a help video library. It places customers at the front of the class where they learn faster and recall information more readily. The remarkable explanatory power of video allows reps who send them to resolve questions quickly—often on the first response—which opens the door to an ongoing conversation about other things. (Ahem, renewal.)

Now we know what you’re thinking: Sounds great, but I don’t have time to prepare an entire video library!

Oh, but you do—the #1 most important factor in customer loyalty is reduction of customer effort, which means you’ll need to increase your own. Spread the work across your team to create videos for onboarding, troubleshooting, and frequently asked questions that’ll save you countless hours going forward. Then arm your reps with the way to send personalized How-To clips.

Millennials who prefer personalized communications have a 28% higher brand loyalty than those who do not—so add a dash of personalized video.

2. Come up with a compelling reason to reach out

And by compelling, we mean beneficial to the customer. If you rarely engage them, renewal time can feel like getting a flood of “Let’s hang” texts from a person you met once at a party last year.

Since most customers churn without a peep, reaching out regularly to understand what’s working (and what isn’t) about your product is one of your best safeguards against churn.

Here are some reasons for your customers to reconnect with you:

• Follow up on feature requests

Feature request follow-ups cut straight to what customers care about—their own experience. If you’re diligent enough to keep notes on who’s asked for what, there’s no better opportunity to reach out. And if you haven’t kept track, start.

More than half of U.S. consumers are loyal to brands that keep them on the cutting edge by consistently offering the latest products and services. As your product team reveals their roadmap, pass it along. They’ll appreciate that you recognize their needs.

• Follow up after technical issues/outages

Have any bugs recently beset your customers? Get personal and apologize. It may seem counterintuitive to remind them of the bad stuff right before their renewal, but it’s better than silence. The most compelling apologies have six elements, including an acknowledgement of responsibility and an explanation of what went wrong. If you nail these two, you get a shot at earning their respect and perhaps start a conversation.

And, reach out even if the bug wasn’t yours. Data privacy is a hot topic right now and more than half of consumers cited breaking up with a brand after a data breach. Capitalize on their need to feel safe by letting them know you’ve beefed up security.

• Help them solve a problem

Every customer is struggling with something. As their account manager, you probably have access to a wealth of information about what they want. Look back at the sales handoff notes or onboarding transcripts and send them relevant research and reports, even if it’s not related to what you do. These are great as ‘flowers for no reason’ touches and might get your foot in the door. To maximize your chance of a response, ask if they’ve read something but ‘forget’ to include the attachment or link.

Every outreach needs an inspired CTA to reel busy customers in.

3. Get personal with video

When customers go quiet, it can be tempting to pack a hodgepodge of “Let’s connect soon” sentiments into an email that’s so radioactive with worry recipients never touch it.

Make yourself harder to ignore and send whatever you have to say in video. A well-lit video of your welcoming face that expresses genuine interest and excitement about something important to them lightens the mood.

Not convinced? Research indicates one-third of U.S. consumers are loyal to brands that engage them in “multi-sensory” experiences. While most videos your team creates will be a far cry from virtual reality, the dynamic nature of any video is capable of making customers feel like they’re somewhere else—in this case, face to face.

Pro tip: Optimize for mobile and keep videos 60 seconds or less where possible.

4. Expand within the account — send videos to stakeholders, influencers, even accounting

Everyone knows it costs less to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones, but here’s something you may not have considered: Video is a scalable way to showcase your most relevant offerings to everyone inside the business.

Use regularly scheduled meetings with existing customers to suss out new cross-team initiatives. Based on what you learn, create and send relevant mini-demo videos for your customer to pass along to other teams to see how they might use your service too. And if all else fails, send a personal introduction video to their accounting department introducing yourself as their point of contact. If you can get a conversation going, find out whether they expect to renew.

The bottom line

To renew modern customers, you don’t just have to anticipate their needs and beat them to the punch: You have to break through their overcrowded inbox too. With video, you have one more powerful tool to engage those who have gone dark or are at great risk.

If you commit to more personal support, perhaps they’ll commit to you too.

The post 4 ways to renew an account that’s gone dark appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/4-ways-renew-account-thats-gone-dark/

How A Holiday Video Increased Our CTR 157%

This year Vidyard wanted to think outside the “inbox” and deliver our audience a truly memorable holiday message. We knew that inboxes were going to be bombarded with holiday messages and well wishes from vendors, so how were we going to cut through all that noise?

With personalized video of course!

 

We created a personalized video campaign to wow our audience and show them just how much they mean to us. Our goal was to spread some holiday cheer with a truly unique holiday message. We were sure our personalized video would cut through the noise, and do well, but from the moment we hit send on the email, it exceeded our own expectations.

It’s All About the Message

Our video campaign wasn’t just about metrics (even if they were really impressive) it was about sharing a holiday message with our audience and giving them a gift they could pass along. We wanted to be creative and think outside the “inbox” to reach them with our message. Clearly, our personalized video hit the right chord with our audience because we were flooded with feedback and well wishes in response to this campaign.

   

Subject: Jingle Bells, Email Smells, Video Saves The Day

Oh boy, that email! We embedded our personalized holiday video within the email and came up with a catchy email subject line. This helped us crush our open rate, which ended up being 35% higher than the industry average. Not only did our open rate kill it, but the CTR (Click Through Rate) ended up being 157% higher than the industry average. We knew that we were on to something with this campaign.

If A Picture Is Worth 1,000 Words, One Good Video Is Worth…

In a matter of days, we had amassed over 7,000 views on our holiday video, quickly climbing the list to become one of our most viewed videos. It continued exceeding our expectations as the days went on. With an average attention span of over 1 minute (meaning most viewers watched until the very end) we really captured our audience’s attention.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

One of the main components of this holiday campaign was to give our audience the gift of personalized video. We encouraged them to “regift” the video by sending a personalized version to their colleagues/clients and spread their own holiday cheer. We couldn’t believe how many people wanted to share this video. In a few short days over 2,000 people created and shared their own personalized holiday video with a friend, colleague, or client proving that there is no shame in regifting, if it’s a kick ass gift. We even had a few people email us to say ‘thank you’ as this video helped them stand out and get in touch with prospects that had recently gone dark.

Our personalized holiday video exceeded all of our expectations, and truly blew our minds. The engagement, interaction, sharing, and feedback we collected reaffirmed the power of personalized video!

If you haven’t seen our holiday video yet check it out now and hopefully it inspires your own creativity for your next marketing campaign. And don’t forget to share a copy with your colleagues or clients, it just may warm their hearts!

Happy Holidays,

The Vidyard Team!

The post How A Holiday Video Increased Our CTR 157% appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/holiday-video-increased-ctr-157/

If Your Sales Team Were Game of Thrones Characters

Even though winter is well on its way in our part of the world, it’s looking like it’s going to be many months before the release of season 8 of Game of Thrones (noooooooooooooo!).

I don’t know about you, but we here at Vidyard are in some serious GoT withdrawal. To tide us over in the meantime, we’ve imagined what it would be like if we worked alongside the characters from GoT. And, as we’ve discovered, some our favorite Game of Thrones characters have characteristics that would make them uniquely suited for roles in Sales. Here’s what we would hire each of them for if they decided to apply to work with us!

Cue music! Dun dun da da dun dun da da dun dun da da dun dun…  

(Spoilers ahead. Consider yourself warned.)

---

Cersei Lannister

Resume: Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, wine aficionado

What we’d hire her for: VP Business Development

Let’s be real—we all know that if Cersei worked in Sales, she wouldn’t settle for anything less than the top. Cunning and ambitious, this go-getter has the strategic thinking skills to position an organization for long-term success. Besides, if anything threatened to hurt her “baby” (the product), we would feel confident in knowing that she would defend it with all the ferocity of a mother lioness.

---

Ser Jorah of Mormont

Resume: Daenerys’ most loyal advisor and friend

What we’d hire him for: BDR

If there’s anything Sir Jorah understands, it’s persistence. His unparalleled dedication to his Queen compelled him to risk life and limb just to have the chance to talk to her—regardless of the number of times she banished him. We think his iron resolve and devil-may-care attitude toward rejection make him the perfect fit for a sales team. After all, if he can face up against Meereen’s fiercest warriors in the fighting pits for the chance to win over Daenerys, how hard can cold calling be?

---

Brienne of Tarth

Resume: Kingsguard to Renly Baratheon, Servant of the Stark Women

What we’d hire her for: Customer Success

Brienne’s ceaseless dedication to those she serves make her a perfect candidate for customer success. Not only is she super knowledgeable and skilled in her craft but her guidance of Podrick as he bumbled his way through being her squire shows the sort of empathy and teaching skills that would make her a kick-butt CSM.

---

Tyrion Lannister

Resume: Hand of the King and Master of Coin, Unsung Hero of Blackwater Bay, and Current Hand of the Queen

What we’d hire him for: Sales Manager

Tyrion excels in management roles. Exceptionally intelligent and witty, he is gifted with strategic, big-picture thinking skills—skills that have served him well in the two times that he has served as Hand. We think that both of these facets of his personality, his wisecracking demeanor and problem-solving skills, would make him a valuable sales leader as he mentors his team, builds relationships with customers and devises the best possible solutions his clients.

---

Curious what Game of Thrones character would be CMO or run the Demand Gen team? Check out our recent blog post “If Your Marketing Team Were Game of Thrones Characters”

Psst…we are hiring! Interested in working with our sales team? Check out our careers page.

The post If Your Sales Team Were Game of Thrones Characters appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/sales-team-game-thrones-characters/

Vidyard Cements its Commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility

Vidyard has implemented an impactful corporate social responsibility program, hopes to inspire other high-growth companies to give back

KITCHENER, Ontario – December 20, 2017 – In 2017, Vidyard, the leading video platform for business, further cemented its commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR) by implementing programs through employee giving and volunteerism activities, corporate philanthropy, and community engagement initiatives.

“Tech talent in SaaS business today is different, and next-generation employees, myself included, are not all about material gain. This year, Vidyard grew from just over 100 to nearly 200 employees, so top talent retention has become an especially important priority,” says Michael Litt, co-founder, and CEO of Vidyard. “I care deeply about the engagement of our employees. We’re all mission oriented, so we’ve built social impact programs right into our company culture that make a big difference.”

In the past year, Vidyard has participated in many company-supported, corporate social responsibility events and programs, lead by:

• Employees: Vidyard staff have participated in a number of giving back and volunteerism programs, including daily catered food donation, annual holiday food drives, and team bike-building activities that benefit for local charities.
• Corporate: Vidyard joined the Pledge 1% program, which encourages and challenges individuals and companies to Pledge 1% of equity, profit, product, and/or employee time for their communities.
• Community: Vidyard united more than 700 young professionals during Plugin events, a series that organizes charitable events to unite the area’s tech workers.

“Expectations of the workplace are changing due in part to the composition of the workforce,” says Lisa Brown, VP of Talent at Vidyard. “By 2025, millennials will comprise 75% of the workforce and they no longer believe that there’s a choice between purpose and profit. I’m proud that Vidyard is a workplace that provides both. Every employee is encouraged to find their sense of meaning and purpose through volunteerism and their role at Vidyard.”

Employees: Corporate Giving and Volunteerism

Vidyard enables and encourages its employees to take on volunteerism programs they’re interested in. Each day, for example, Vidyard offers free catered lunches to staff and has set up a program where volunteers like Brendan O’Driscoll, Vidyard’s technical writer, packs up the leftovers for delivery to the local men’s shelter. Outside of the daily food donations, two groups of Vidyard employees also volunteer their time twice a week at the shelter.

Each month, more and more Vidyard employees join #changeyard, an internal collaboration group that shares new community initiatives and volunteer opportunities. Staff volunteer, Alex Paz-Barreiras, one of Vidyard’s business development representatives, says that she loves volunteering because it gives her an opportunity to develop her leadership and management skills.

In May, Vidyard employees participated in a half-day, cross-functional team building event to assemble and distribute bikes and the accessories to regional charities like House of Friendship for children, Ray of Hope for refugees, Big Brothers Big Sisters for children, and the Working Centre for adults, plus all of the tools for their bike repair program. Vidyard employees then welcomed children from Big Brothers Big Sisters in the office and hand-delivered the bikes. For many employees, this was truly a touching moment to see a simple, small task that they participated in bring so much joy to children in their community.

Corporate: Pledge 1%

In 2017, Vidyard joined the Pledge 1% program which partners leading organizations that are committed to encouraging the early stage companies they work with to make giving back a priority. In support of the pledge, Michael Litt joined fellow technology leaders on a Dreamforce panel where they discussed Winning The Talent Wars Through Integrated, Strategic Philanthropy, focused on how companies with a clear sense of purpose and social impact are increasingly attractive to today’s workforce. Those that effectively integrate corporate citizenship into their businesses also enjoy better employee engagement, productivity, and retention. Michael also wrote a blog post for Giving Tuesday on ‘Why You Should Bake Community Betterment into your Business Model’ to help inspire other companies to get involved.

Community: Plugin Local Charity Events

When Vidyard’s leadership team explored additional ways they could give back, they felt a responsibility to the immediate community around them. Gentrification had reshaped the region, and older, brick and beam buildings were being torn down and converted into high-tech offices. As a result, rent costs were going up, and public services felt the impacts of that change. This is when Vidyard founded Plugin, a not-for-profit, Vidyard-sponsored organization that host events to bring young professionals together in fun and unconventional ways to connect, build and maintain the community in the downtown Kitchener, Ontario ‘Innovation District.’ Once a quarter, community events raise money toward public services and fundraising initiatives.

Throughout 2017, Plugin held four events where tickets were sold and proceeds were given to local, charitable organizations. Leading up to the event, internal video producers at Vidyard volunteered their time to work with charity teams to help create short videos for each charity, which were then shown again at the event and given to the charity for future use. Events included, (1) Pints & Pianos: A Plugin Happening, in support of Ray of Hope which had 350 attendees, (2) Jazz Series: 5 Jazz-inspired events held in support of shelters/affordable housing in Waterloo Region, (3) Canada: A Plugin Happening, in support of the Child Witness Centre which had 300 attendees, and (4) Fatal Friday: A Plugin Happening, in support of Extend a Family of Waterloo Region which had 400 attendees.

In 2018 Plugin will be hosting another four events with the next one set for February.

More Information:

• Vidyard Careers: https://www.vidyard.com/careers/
• Pledge 1%: http://pledge1percent.org/
• PlugIn KW: http://pluginkw.com/

One of the bike recipients from Ray of Hope, Welcome Home refugee program, that was built as part of our company kick off.

 

Vidyard employees preparing dinner at the Feed Five.

About Vidyard
Vidyard is the video platform for business that helps organizations drive more revenue through the use of online video. Going beyond video hosting and management, Vidyard helps businesses drive greater engagement in their video content, track the viewing activities of each individual viewer, and turn those views into action. Global leaders such as Honeywell, McKesson, Lenovo, LinkedIn, Citibank and Sharp rely on Vidyard to power their video content strategies and turn viewers into customers.

Media Contact:
Sandy Pell, Senior Manager, Corporate Communications, Vidyard
press@vidyard.com

The post Vidyard Cements its Commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/press-releases/vidyard-cements-its-commitment-to-corporate-social-responsibility/

Can’t Find a Mentor? Then Read a Book

Finding the right mentor is easier said than done. To connect with someone who can provide you with direction, encourage you when you’re down, or push you when you need to be challenged is difficult.

Or is it?

You actually don’t have to look far (or hard) to find the best mentors. You can learn from the most successful people throughout history without even knowing them personally.

How?

By reading their books.

I understand reading isn’t the same as having a face-to-face conversation with someone you want to learn from, but hear me out.

For any book, a great author will spend hours researching their topic, clarifying their thoughts, and writing his or her ideas on a page. Their writing will be reviewed by peers and placed through a grueling editing process, which will further enhance their arguments. By the time their book is published, it will contain some of the best advice they have to offer. So, if you need to solve a problem, answer a question, or learn a new skill, there’s a good chance you can find what you’re looking for in a book.

To absorb the lessons you are learning into your bloodstream; then you need to treat the book you are reading like you are having a conversation with the author. When this happens, the author becomes the mentor, and you become the mentee. But this just doesn’t happen by accident.

When it comes to reading, you can choose to glance through a book, scribble down a few notes, or read the cliff notes, but this passivity will not yield the results you’re looking for.

To really get everything out of the book you are reading; you need to treat like having a one-on-one conversation with the author. Think about it this way.

If you were meeting with someone you are interested in learning from, then you wouldn’t rush your conversation. You would take your time. You would ask questions. And you would listen to what they have to say. So why would you treat their book than anything less than an opportunity to hear their best advice?

In this post, I want to share with you the 4-steps you need to take to have a conversation with an author, their book and to digest the lessons they have to offer. This is a process that should be done entirety and in the order below to grasp the material you are reading.

Read the entire article on Observer.

The post Can’t Find a Mentor? Then Read a Book appeared first on The Copybot.

source http://thecopybot.com/find-mentor/

Create Your B2B Video Marketing Strategy in 4 Easy Steps

Video is becoming a preferred B2B buyer content type, with short videos and webinars ranking among the top 5 preferred forms of content. With this desire and drive for video many B2B marketers feel overwhelmed, and underprepared.

Despite video being in such high demand, and customers wanting more video, few B2B marketers feel they use video effectively. They feel intimidated by video production, are unsure how to use videos they’ve already created, struggle to make engaging content that captures their viewer’s attention, and aren’t sure how to measure the success of their videos.

“Millennials Show A Strong Preference For Short Videos, Compared With Other Generations Of Workers” – A Blueprint For Successful B2B Video Marketing -Forrester

So to help, Forrester pulled together four steps you can take to embrace video as a strategic part of your B2B video marketing and demand gen strategy;

Step One → Surface the Hidden

Most of us have more video available then we think. By being resourceful and repurposing videos we’ve already created, you’ll be able to fill your video library quickly. Key videos that don’t take much time to produce, and can easily be repurposed are;

1. Host more on-demand webinars
   • Repurposing webinar content is an easy way to increase engagement and drive demand. You can add on-demand webinars to your website, repurpose them as blog posts, add them to nurture campaigns, sales enablement emails, and more.
2. Produce event videos
   • Use events that you attended or host as prime video territory for you to capture/create great videos. Reach out to key customers/thought leaders beforehand to set up interviews with attendees, or simply recap the events of the conference for your audience.
3. Record product videos and embed them into larger content campaigns
   • You can easily record key features in your product with free video apps, like Vidyard GoVideo, and then embed those videos into a more in-depth blog post. This can help you breathe new life into older content by adding an engaging video element.

Step 2 → Humanize Your Content by Making it Personal!

“There’s no place to hide with video; it forces your messaging process to be compelling and to the point.” – A Blueprint For Successful B2B Video Marketing -Forrester

Personalization is a hot topic in the worlds of marketing and sales. How do we personalize the content journey? How do we deliver the right message at the right time to the right individual?

Personalized Video cuts through the clutter of all the other marketing content audiences are bombarded with. They are attracted when they see their name, and they stay engaged because they feel like they’re a part of the story you’re telling.

By coupling video and personalization, you build one-on-one relationships with your audience that make them feel good about themselves–and by extension your product or idea–ultimately creating a highly memorable content experience.

Step 3→ Apply Video Across Your Lifecycle

“Video is the best way to tell a brand’s story.” – A Blueprint For Successful B2B Video Marketing -Forrester

B2B marketers should use the customer life cycle to help determine the type of video content that will most effectively engage buyers at each stage. Throughout the purchase lifecycle, the interest and needs of your buyers are going to change.Here are the key types of videos you should be sharing at each stage of the life cycle;

Remember to keep evaluating these videos and adjusting them accordingly. Look for ways to adjust video length, style, and production quality based on customers’ changing information needs and content consumption preferences over time.

Step 4 → Use a Video Platform

“We want to know if the video is adding value to the sales process. With Vidyard we’re able to do multi-touch attribution and can see which videos were watched and able to attribute revenue influence to specific content assets.” – Amanda Maksymiw, title, Fuze

Video Marketing Platforms help you maximize the impact and returns on the video assets they are producing. Powering internal and external video collaboration across organizations, while ensuring you drive real business value with your videos.

With detailed reporting and analytics found within Video Marketing Platforms, marketers can finally understand who is watching specific content, and how long each piece held their attention for. While video analytics and dashboard reporting are great, marketers also have to be able to act upon data for it to be of real value.

When it comes down to it, a Video Marketing Platform is way more than just a means to host, distribute, and manage your video content (as you’ll find other platforms are limited to). Instead, it’s about:

• Better understanding your prospects and customers
• Improving lead scoring and lead qualification
• Amplifying the effectiveness of your video content
• Maximizing the returns on your video assets
• Increasing the ROI of your video content and stimulating the sales cycle

If you’re a B2B demand gen marketer looking to learn what steps you need to take to embrace video as a strategic part of your B2B marketing and demand gen strategy then “A Blueprint for Successful B2B Video Marketing” is the video for you!

The post Create Your B2B Video Marketing Strategy in 4 Easy Steps appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/b2b-video-marketing-strategy/

How B2B Marketers Can Generate More Sales-Ready Leads With Video

Marketers know all too well about the pressure to drive higher engagement, demand, and leads, but lately more leads are simply not enough. Marketers are tasked with getting higher quality leads, higher conversion rates throughout the entire funnel, and driving greater demand.

Doing all of this is much easier said than done. Today’s B2B marketers are battling for attention in overpopulated landscapes, trying to refresh and reuse content that is decreasing in effectiveness, and dealing with the ever growing expectations and buyer demands.

So how can we create better nurture campaigns that cut through all the noise and deliver on more leads!?

Well, your leads want more video!

It’s great that leads want more video but how can you use your videos in the most strategic way possible? Well, video can help breathe new life into a variety of your channels and campaigns which will increase leads and drive demand.

Your Website

There are numerous opportunities for video content on your website. By embedding a video, you can effectively reduce bounce rates and increase conversions on crucial landing pages like homepages, products, solutions, customers, demo or trial requests, campaign pages, etc.

Over 72 percent of businesses who use video, say it has increased website conversion rates. – Hootsuite

On-Demand Webinars

Live webinars continue to be a reliable lead source for many B2B marketing teams. But once your webinar ends that doesn’t mean you’re done with it. Repurposing webinar content is an easy way to increase engagement and drive demand. You can add on-demand webinars to your website, repurpose them as blog posts, add them to nurture campaigns, sales enablement emails, and more.

Marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users. (Aberdeen, 2015) – Hubspot

Drive Demand on Social

Leverage existing video content on social media to reach new audiences and drive people towards a specific CTA! Short, promotional videos on social help to drive engagement in other campaigns, programs, and assets.

“People look 5x longer at video than at static content on Facebook and Instagram.” – Facebook

Video Content Campaigns

Video-based content campaigns help to tell a better story. They are fun, entertaining videos that enhance and drive home the messaging of the campaign. Maybe they are inspirational stories (perhaps of real customers), educational video series to build an audience, thought leadership interviews or whiteboard videos (like Chalk Talks). Whatever style you choose, using video to promote or complement other content campaigns will drive higher engagement.

51.9% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI. (Adobe, 2015)- Hubspot

 

If you’re a B2B demand gen marketer looking for some practical ways to beat the most common challenges you face; more leads, higher quality leads, higher conversion rates throughout the funnel, and higher ROI then “Video in Demand: Using Video for More Effective Lead Gen and Nurturing” is the video for you! In this video session we take a deep dive into the ways that you can use video to enhance and improve your account-based marketing (ABM), emails, sales campaigns, and more.  Jump on in and watch it today! And you can check out the slides over on our SlideShare page

The post How B2B Marketers Can Generate More Sales-Ready Leads With Video appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/video-lead-generation-demand/

4 industries where video is surging

Nobody sees more variety on the sales floor than a solutions consultant (SC). They’re the person to whom all new and exciting edge-cases flock—where salespeople bring the the deals that are unusual, fascinating, and sometimes, prophetic.

You see, because we aren’t direct sellers, we have a fundamentally different relationship with customers and we touch so many deals that we get a great pulse on what’s happening across the market. Lately, in four particular industries, I’m watching video surge so much that it’s worth writing about. But before I say which, let me explain why.

Video is personal and powerful

We’re coming out of a communication dark age. You can see it in the faces of marketers and sellers—they feel battered by the increase in channels and interactions but decline in engagement. They seek out video as a way to break through people’s inboxes, at which it excels, but what’s really driving its adoption is that video is personal. I see this for myself on a daily basis.

I visited a customer’s office recently and the first thing they told me was, “We feel like we already know you because we’ve watched your videos.” I get that reaction a lot. At trade shows, events, and on demos, our reputation precedes our team via the micro-demos we send. We’re instant acquaintances with everyone.

“We feel like we already know you because we’ve watched your videos.”

Video is also powerful. It goes far deeper than clicks to track individuals by what they watched and rewatched, on what devices and where. It analyzes each video player by channel, trends, traffic, and multi-touch ROI. With this data, marketers and salespeople can see and automate practically everything.

To be an instant acquaintance and able to automate and optimize your outreach is a remarkable advantage. And nowhere is that more true than in these four industries.

4 industries where video is surging

1. Health

Personal health requires a personal approach. The megatrend of self-care and the increased awareness around individual diets and exercise have forced health and wellness companies to get to know their consumers intimately. Yet most of their mailings are still hampered by non- personalized 20th-century outreach methods. On demos, I’m seeing these marketers unable to contain themselves about the idea of mass-individualized videos. Corporate fitness providers and health management firms can use these to easily talk to both employers and consumers about precisely the right routines and dietary restrictions.

2. Real estate

Video hits home in real estate too (pun intended) because it’s also deeply personal. Whether it’s commercial or residential, property is often the biggest purchase most people ever make and there are a lot of emotions involved. People feel exposed by having to shine a light on their finances and choose between their budget and their dream space.

Over 85% of buyers/sellers want an agent who uses video marketing. – Inman

With video, real estate agents can build an early relationship the same way my Vidyard account executives and I do before trade shows. They can easily personalize video walk-throughs where they talk about features of interest and then, as an organization, measure the effectiveness of each approach. Agents can get real-time alerts when buyers watch the video and can help buyers feel comfortable picturing themselves in the new home. (And if it’s powerful now, just imagine when 360-degree house tours are a widespread thing.)

3. Financial services

The financial services industry is up against a generational cliff. The average age of a financial advisor is 51, and only five percent are under 30. As a whole, advisors and younger generations struggle to relate to each other, and this is especially problematic because the whole operation is based on trust and relationships. Video helps with this and firms are now encouraging advisors to use it to build more transparent relationships and explain complex financial products simply.

4. Education

To compete for students, institutions of higher education must keep up with what students want to see. Video is that channel, at least for now, and I’m seeing even smaller universities coming up with libraries of hundreds of personalized videos on culture, alumni, and non-academic interests that really strike an emotional chord. Just take a look at this one by the University of Waterloo:

Unversity videos attract views, engagement, and data which university recruitment teams can analyze to test and improve their messaging.

And that’s not even the half of it

Where else is video surging? Really, anywhere that marketers and salespeople are besieged by too many channels and whose prospects have a need to create a personal and powerful connection.

Want to try video yourself? Get GoVideo for free and start recording in one-click.

The post 4 industries where video is surging appeared first on Vidyard.

source http://www.vidyard.com/blog/4-industries-video-surging/