What’s the Point of Your Credit Union’s Web Video?

I saw Jurassic Park in the summer of 1993 and I was sold. Nearly ten years later, I was enrolled as a student in the Radio-TV-Film program at the University of Texas. And after a year of coursework, I started thinking about getting a secondary degree that would help my film pursuits. Soon afterwards, I found myself in the business school, picking up marketing as a second major. And today, this duality provides a unique perspective on areas some might consider mutually exclusive.

While there is an alliance at times, there is often a struggle between the creative and the business side of me. The irrational versus logical. The artist versus the accountant. The nebulous versus the structured.

Sometimes they can peacefully coexist. At other times, they fall on different sides of the spectrum and are at odds with one another. It’s a proper and annoying conflict that somehow balances out.

But instead of hashing out video branding techniques, or producing engaging, compelling content, I wanted to take a moment to focus squarely on the business side of video production. Pun intended.

So I locked the creative person away for a moment so I could share how I produce online videos from the business perspective by aligning people, product and process. The ideas below are just part of the process of taking on any new video project.

What’s the point? It’s a harsh, but necessary question. Ask yourself what the main goal of the video is as part of an audit and analysis. Who is the audience (people) the video will be for? What product will it promote? To drive awareness and increase loans for a particular campaign? To educate the community on the steps to buying a home and how your credit union can meet a potential buyer’s need? Or to just have fun and entertain for a bit? Before turning on the camera and calling “action,” determine the reason for this video’s existence. Be sure that it’s not another checklist item and more than just about promoting great rates and service.

Set realistic objectives. “We want it to go viral” is an aspiring goal, and my hat’s off to you if that is achieved. But outside of views, what else did this accomplish for you? Instead of creating lofting goals, try to be a bit more grounded. Maybe you want this video shared on Facebook twenty times. Or maybe you would like to see engagement for the video above 70%. Even better, maybe your video will be embedded into an email campaign that will be just what you need to generate $1,000,000 in auto loans. Putting forth tangible objectives for the video to accomplish will help you to determine how to approach the content, which can, in turn, assist the creative approach to the video.

Give yourself a budget. Sure you can look at budget as strictly a monetary issue, but time should also be considered a line item when considering a budget, especially when using your team to create an internal video. For example, you can very quickly burn through 20 hours of time when five people are participating in a four hour video shoot. Instead of having an amorphous timeline for a project, set boundaries via a defined process and adhere to them. Setting constraints can help destroy the box and really let you approach a subject with creativity.

Test, test, test. Just like any other marketing piece, you can develop and execute two different versions of the video and see how your audience responds to it. Think of one cut as a theatrical version and the other as a director’s cut. Who knows how your audience will respond. And if you don’t have the time or resources to produce two separate cuts, try modifying the thumbnail of the video and see how people interact differently.

Review the stats. Even if you can’t get around to testing two versions of your video, review your engagement stats so you can refine your videos in the future. YouTube and Vimeo provide easy-to-read graphs to help you infer what your audience is doing and how long they are engaged. There are also other video players that provide additional insight as well. With the data that is available through online video hosting platforms, you can follow the video production process and make the end product more relevant to your audience.