Does this SaaS Video Marketing guide work for big and small SaaS companies? Yes.
How about for large SaaS companies? They have a strategy in place already. Large SaaS companies can invest in making a few fantastic brand films, docuseries, to make their brand stronger.
Base assumption: You have already made a fantastic product and all that’s now required is to scale up, accelerate inbounds and retain existing paying customers.
Founder/CEO Videos
This is the best way out there, in fact, it is a shortcut to cut through the noise. The best person is the CEO/Founder, he/she should assume this role with a lot of enthusiasm and make a fantastic narrative video, make it personal. Share your story and your product’s story and how it can help your target audience. Also, your reason for making this product would be a fantastic addition. Along with it, share how simply your user can reach you/your team, should there be a requirement.
The purpose of this introductory video is to establish a personal connection with your customers. To make the first-time user comfortable with your product that there is a person who takes responsibility and can be trusted so that the user can just go ahead and make the purchase.
Something similar here which are noteworthy. The list of founders and executives who send a mail when a particular event happens on their website:
- Thomas Griffin sends a mail when you make a purchase on OptinMonster.
- Jeff Sauer sends a mail from Data-Driven.
- Joshua Hardwick – Head of content from Ahrefs sends a mail to follow up on your purchase and ensures you have a smooth experience with their product.
- Ervin from Publer sends a good, simple mail on a purchase.
By sending a personal mail on a particular event, the user instantly gets to trust the brand. They start to recognise the product as a brand, earlier it was a mere product which was only expected to do a certain task in hand for your user. By making it personal the user starts to see the same product as a brand.
All of these personal emails are not composed by them. They’re all automated emails and have the immense power to build a strong brand.
Product Videos
Broadly, there are 2 types of people who will use your product. Type A – Those who have a problem and uses your product to solve it. Type B – People who want to know your product’s complete features so that they will use it the way they wanted to. These types of people will recommend your product everywhere if they are happy using your product.
A. Make videos on different use cases, where and all your product can solve your user’s problems
B. Make videos on what your product can do, explain all the features of your product
Make as many videos as possible to address both types of audiences. Ideally, it should cover many use cases your product can solve and the complete features, shortcuts your product comes with.
If your product is an evolving one like many, release videos along with the release of a new feature. Yeah, make video publishing a part of the update release.
The Intersection
Address the areas where your product and your user can meet. This is the trickiest part and depends on your product as well. If you crack it, nothing like it. Brainstorm, go on, amplify it. Try to give a continuous flow to the content, like episodes, series.
Example: Whiteboard Friday video series by RandFishkin
If you could crack something like Whiteboard Friday, nothing like it and it is highly possible in SaaS. Your product is evolving, your content should too. If some videos are outdated, you can still replace them.
Types of videos
A human face in your videos is the most powerful part you can think of. There are other methods too, 2D animated videos to explain a concept. You can use screen recording and voice over to explain features.
Consider adding a face for both types of videos, it has got a tremendous effect. Anyone who is good at presenting in front of the camera from your team is ideally a good choice.
Maintain high quality in your videos. Your quality of videos has a direct connection to your brand value.
How to produce those videos?
You can either set up a studio in your office where your team can make the videos, or you can outsource it completely.
{We have 2 models. One, the ‘You Shoot – We deliver’ model where all your shot footage gets through a makeover and come out as a final, ready to publish video. The second is, you can outsource it completely – we will plan, shoot, edit & publish}.
You can skip the 36s quick video explaining “You Shoot – We Deliver” model below,
Hosting
All your videos made shall be hosted in 2 platforms.
One, at a place where the videos are publicly available to access when your user searches for your brand and wants to learn at one go. Ex: YouTube. Think of it as a set of playlists stored in one place and is publicly searchable.
The other place where it should get published is on the respective web page with the right video embedded with respect to the blog post/web page’s goal.
To market effectively, you should create as many web pages as necessary about the problems your product can address/solve, and each page should have a video talking about that particular solution.
For each blog post, you create, make one video blog of the same, add more relevant videos you have created, and embed it. Even your blog post ends up having 3-4 videos, it is perfectly alright.
And, the videos which you are embedding on the webpage and blog posts should not be from YouTube. The videos published on YouTube has a different objective. To make the best out of your blog and video content take care of the user experience on your site. Use paid video hosting services like Wistia or Vimeo. They have great branding options and go seamlessly on your webpage so that your user experience is cohesive and intact.
A bridge can be made by adding your YouTube channel’s URL in between the post by adding a note saying, “Access all of our video tutorials on our YouTube channel” and add the link. There are many ways though.
Repurposing & Distribution
Now that we have created a lot of videos, those all need to be repurposed and make the best use of it. Ideally, a video can be considered as pillar content and it can be converted into a Blogpost, Infographics, a slideshow, a short video and take them to your YouTube channel or to your Website.
Distribution is where the content world stumbles upon. What is the point in making great videos & other good content and not distributing it?
Distribute your YouTube videos on your social media platforms, your mail lists, do the same thing for your blog posts as well.
The video version of this blog can be watched in the below. (Hosted on WISTIA)
Below are few companies which build their brand and sales machine using saas video marketing.
When you address all the above part, essentially you build an unstoppable inbound sales machine.
