Lights, camera, action, and away we go, a tech startup shoots their first real commercial. There’s a legit cinema camera, big lights, a crew from LA running around setting up equipment, actual actors, location releases, production insurance, and it’s all taken around a month to organize. It’s a stark contrast to the run and gun, in-house, slapped together in a week style of media content creation they’d be accustomed to. This time, a creative company is involved with a contract and a budget and everything.
But how did we get to this point, and why pour so much into marketing video content now? It’s been a long winding road that I’m sure others have been down and many more will to come.
I’ve got 8 steps, laid out in this 2 part blog, on the journey of tech start-up media content. By no means is this the only path to take, and depending on your business and the kind of market you’re in, I’m sure there are many other factors affecting your content marketing strategy. My experience mostly applies to enterprise SaaS software. (Hardware is almost a different ballgame entirely.)
1. Intro Explainer Video
Sweet, you and your best buds started a company together. What does this newly formed venture aim to do? How do you convey that to people quickly? What can a video do to help OR hurt you in these early, baby bird flopping out of the nest moments?
Along with other materials like well drafted emails, one pagers, and other hand outs, video can aid in the quick understanding of who you are, what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and what your goals are. You’ve seen these voice over heavy animations or white-board explainer videos thousands times and it’s because they can work when done right. This can help you get your foot in the door with advisors, potential clients, seed round investors, and early team member recruiting.
A lot of people mistake this opportunity for the go big or go home moment of shelling out a few thousand bucks to see if their entrepreneurship idea actually has legs. Unfortunately, they usually don’t understand the tact required to execute a well timed media expense and how to squeeze the most out of it.
This piece must be crafted carefully, used correctly, and not overpaid for.
Craft this video carefully: Make sure the copy is something your founders can stand by, and use in other applications of marketing material. Don’t make the video too long (30 secs to 1:30 max). The goal is to intrigue someone into talking to you more about your company directly, not learning every single product feature idea you have. Being broad goes a long way, but don’t be too ambiguous because you really do need substance over style. If you are diligent here you can expand the videos longevity.
Use the video correctly: Actually use it, go nuts. Don’t just upload it and forget about it.
- Directly email it to people in your network, attach it to email footers explaining to whomever you’re sending networking outreach emails to that they can refer to this quick video for a summary.
- Use it in social media posts. Follow the pro-tips for when and how to post on each site; linkedin, facebook, twitter, instagram, youtube etc.
- Website, feature this on the landing page of your first website
Don’t overpay for this: If all goes well, this will have a pretty short lifespan of 4–8 months, and you’re very likely to change your tagline, logo, make small adjustments to your business plan, rebrand your color scheme, and be able to afford a higher quality video. So much can change so quickly, that it’s really likely you’re going to scrap the video or need to make a few changes to it that can cost a bit more cash. Ideally, you have a buddy from college that taught herself/himself motion graphics, can record a voice over and edit something for you in between internships and will be STOKED for $500 and to help a friend.
2. Conference quickies
Cool, things are starting to get real! You’re taking your show on the road and you’re meeting people where they’re at, which in many cases is regional and national conferences. Your first few experiences probably involve some slick badge swapping in the lobby while your team takes turns on a vender floor. Someday soon though, when you’re ready, you’ll have a slick booth all to yourselves and enough badges to rotate a team around it. It’ll cost a pretty penny, but it’ll be worth it if you’ve done your prep work. And no, conference quickie doesn’t refer to a post happy hour rendezvous. It’s the quick video you prepared months in advance!
Maybe you noticed, while dozing off in a lounge chair, one of the many TV screens all over the conference playing 15 to 20 second booth videos back to back. Maybe you also noticed the email blasts from the conference organizers with all of the venders intro’d. Guess what, some of the people you want to talk to definitely did. This is a pretty sneaky opportunity though to stand out amongst the crowd (who might be competitors) and all you have to do is be one of the teams conscientious enough to submit a video, and earn bonus points for not shooting it on your iPhone! My experience in this realm is with an ed-tech company, so this might not be the exact same in other industries.
Remember that college buddy who knows a little bit about video? Call her/him up and give him $150-$200 to shoot a quick video in your office and edit it to be able to swap in any conference’s logo, and description of your booth number at the end. It’s important that you put a face to your company, as you’ll be at the conference yourself and want people to recognize you. Have a co-founder rattle off the mission statement of your company, maybe mention one line of what you talk to your team about, and invite them to your booth. Wear something similar to what you’ll be wearing at the conference, bonus points for company swag if you have it at this point! (We used track jackets with solid button ups underneath, t-shirts under blazers, or company polos.)
3. Website Materials
The people you’ve been talking to are hitting up your website. Is it all stock photos? Is that explainer video still on there somewhere? We’ve all had to start somewhere and it usually involves some cheap or free stock images.
Original content here though can really help add the human element to your brand. Having a headshot picture day and group shot for your team, and a few original pictures of your actual users/clients really adds just a little bit of heart to a soulless website. You’re really going to want some of that content for recruiting soon anyways. Hire a photographer for a day and have them do shots of your office space, team members, a team event, and perhaps any users/clients you have as well. They don’t have to be amazing though, try to aim for around a $300 gig.
4. Training/support materials
Not all types of companies would need this but as you get bigger, the customer success and customer support teams become more strained and you’ll lean heavily on a knowledge base for your users.
You might think to yourself that you need a video production guru to whip out hours of training videos so that you have a robust plethora of resources for users to go to for training or support. What I’ve seen actually be much more effective is for that “video production guru” to provide some assets and instructions to someone on your customer success team to be able to produce the videos themselves. This might be a quick intro animation bumper, a few tracks of royalty free ambient music, and an outro bumper. The instructions would be how to operate a screen capture software (like OBS), record their voice over with a decent mic (like a yeti), and how to assemble the edits in a basic video editing software (like iMovie).
Remember that production value here must match the lifespan and audience of the video. So some things to keep in mind are to not spend too much time making them absolutely perfect and to keep them SHORT. The people watching these have already bought and/or are using your product so the pay off is really just appeasing them, and furthermore only a small portion of them that actually use the resource. Also, some workflows are liable to become obsolete quickly anyway.
Often I’ll see 15–20 minute training videos encompassing an entire user type’s training, or some kind of macro function of a product all together. Make these a quick 2–5 minutes each so that people can click on exactly the section of a workflow that they need, and you can replace or remove obsolete ones. You can create a video playlist of each video back to back if you want to really collect a bulk of content, without sacrificing the ability to make changes. Pay your college video buddy $300-$500 to hook you up with the assets and a training session with someone from your customer success team.
You may have noticed by now my continued reference to “your college buddy” to help produce these videos. That’s because in these early stages you’ll have a significant challenge with these 3 factors:
A. Opening up marketing channels to take advantage of video and media.
B. Intimately knowing your audience/clients/users
C. Being able to afford pro level production costs
Even if you can afford a couple thousand dollars to produce high quality work, it’s got to be so strategically oriented to hit factors A and B that it’s probably a poor investment until those are fleshed out.
Steps 1–4 can help you grow factors A and B. It’s important to realize that creative video is a vehicle for your brand. If you don’t have a plan for building that and you pour too much into fancy video production, it’s like bringing an F1 vehicle to a NASCAR race. For these first few videos just go fast, turn left, and learn everything you can. Steps 5–8 are for when you’re a bit more dialed in on those factors and can take advantage of a bigger media budget.
