Video Brochures for Fun and Profit

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Bring your sales and marketing into the modern age with a Video Brochure, a stylish way to get your audiences to go “Aha!”.

Video Brochures offer an exciting and innovative way to present videos using a format most people haven’t seen. When the Video Brochure is opened your brand or product video will be displayed in high definition with superb sound quality. Featuring a wide variety of customization options and designed in-house with your brand in mind, Video Brochures excite the viewer while promoting and enriching your message.

If your usual techniques just aren’t getting the job done anymore then Video Brochures can be just what you need to ensure that you are engaging with your audience in the best way possible. Clients like NVIDIA, Adobe, Autodesk and more have used for field marketing, sales, events and product launches.

For more information and pricing, visit:

https://spark.adobe.com/page/rAeynoUmmTU5b/

Make A Human Connection

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Greetings Fellow Video Marketers!

When it comes down to it, if we like someone, we become engaged and we are more likely to listen to what they have to say. An old sales executive friend of mine always said “People buy from people they like.” I believe this to be true.

When Viewstream was preparing to shoot a video to show off Cray Supercomputer’s manufacturing facilities, we were working from a script. We were planning on conducting a couple of interviews to provide clips to support a voice over artist in the final video. However, as soon as I spoke to the factory staff I knew we had to have them tell the story. They pour their heart and soul into their work. I think you’ll agree, they tell the story better than anyone, and you can tell they really care about their work.

If you are interested in seeing how to market to beings and not bots – send me an email! I would love to discuss what Viewstream can do for you.

How to Get Better Marketing Results with Video Testimonials

What matters to most potential customers is not what you say about your business, but what your existing customers have to say.

Video Testimonials are an effective marketing solution that communicates your value by demonstrating your offer in the real world. With strong Video Testimonials you can secure credibility, invigorate your sales cycle and span across multiple communications channels, all while you tell the success stories of your most valuable asset—your customer.

If you would like to know more about how Video Testimonials can help you drive home your marketing message, visit our Video Testimonials Resource Center linked below, which features eight example videos and case studies.

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Watch-Ability

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Greetings Fellow Video Marketers!

You wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t realize the effectiveness of video in your campaigns and sales numbers, but what makes a good marketing video? We’re all constantly bombarded with requests to watch a product demo, pitch or overview, sometimes it can be overwhelming to know what type of video would be effective for your own particular needs. At Viewstream, while we see and deliver the benefits of marketing automation, we also realize you are selling to beings, not bots. Bots just do math, which can be interesting to a nerd such as myself, but human beings need more than numbers to make an intelligent purchase decision.

Really there are only a few essential considerations, the most important of which, I believe, is watch-ability. Obviously, your video cannot be effective if no one watches it, or “tunes out” even if your metrics show the video was played from beginning to end.

The biggest mistake you can make is to believe that someone will watch your video just because you made it, or worse, paid a lot for it. With so many ways for our potential customers to distract themselves these days we need people to WANT to watch our video, or even leave them wanting to see more similar videos.

Sure, a potential customer may need to decide on a product or service to complete their project, but that doesn’t mean when you show your product features it has to be in a boring sales guy webex, or worse, an edited on demand webex. Check out what we did for a Microsoft / Toshiba joint project. You’ll get to see the features our clients wanted to share with potential customers, and the videos high level of watch-ability might keep you watching all five of the series:

The original series of five was so successful, they inspired Microsoft and Toshiba to bring back Kyle for another series!

If you are interested in seeing how to market to beings and not bots – send me an email! I would love to discuss what Viewstream can do for you.

Studies have shown that consumers are visually drawn to human faces, but does this maxim hold true for a digital advertising campaign for high-tech software? After conducting a thorough A/B test, we were surprised by what the results showed.

Viewstream Marketing: Do Images with People Get More Clicks?

Were you surprised that the results showed that online advertising with people can negatively impact the success of digital campaigns across multiple channels including Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and retargeted ads?

Here at Viewstream, we believe marketing is built on the fusion of story and data. Accordingly, we follow the code of “Keep Testing!” and utilize A/B and multi-variate tests to determine most successful digital trends for your story.

The Magic Bullet is Not Magic

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8no1ANo matter how great your product is, if you are marketing to the wrong person and/or industry, you will have challenges. Identifying the right target audience is the most important thing you can do for your business and marketing. This market/customer fit, and the continual process to discover and rediscover the fit as times change, is the eternal task of business.

Some businesses have tight fits that make marketing relatively easy. For other businesses, we need to perform more trial and error between offers, content and targets, using various media, like 3rd party publishers, 1st party data, social media, email lists and others.

Don’t assume the marketplace cares about you (they don’t). Put in the time and effort to identify the right targets, reach them with creative, put them through a funnel and then sell.

The only thing you can count on is that the magic bullet is not magic. The latest algorithm, creative trick or marketing automation tech won’t solve your marketing problems. You need a human touch.

radlers_feat“Change before you have to.”
Jack Welch

What Jack Welch means by that is that all business revenue lines eventually lead to zero. Think about the graveyards of businesses: Blockbuster. Kodak. Borders. Myspace.

We can never rest on a single revenue line.

But how? What is the right market? What business ought we be in? What products and services will define the future?

Here’s a quick and easy way to get some instant feedback on what’s next.

Using a SEM/SEO keyword tool like Google Keyword Planner or Sem Rush, look at search keywords to identify future market trends. What’s interesting are the long tail keywords, down the list in the twenty-five spot or the fifty-spot depending on keyword volume. That’s where things get interesting and opportunities are identified.

Let’s look an example: beer.

Say we want to innovate in the beer market. The keyword “Beer” gets over 1.3M searches a year. Let’s look at some of the long tail keywords that are insightful in identifying new markets.

Root Beer: 27K per month
Root Beer is trending up strongly. Diversify up market with a craft, non alcoholic play?

Nonalcoholic beer: 18K per month
A lot of interest in nonalcoholic beers – could be another way to diversify up market.

Beer cheese dip: 18K per month
License your beer brand and recipie to a company making cheese products? Yum.

Sapporo Beer: 15K per month
Sapporo is a rice beer, so perhaps this is a health trend showing demand for beers that avoid gluten? A gluten free beer?

Beer Belly: 15K per month
Could be a marketing stunt of some kind?

Hard root beer: 12K per month
Even better than regular root beer – add some alcohol.

Grapefruit Beer 12K
Grapefruit beer is a German type that further fits into the health trend. It’s 2% alcohol and even has vitamin C.

If you are in the beer business, those are some great ideas. I developed those ideas in a few minutes, so a bit more time and testing could yield significant dividends. And if you do happen to end up in the dustbin of history, have a beer and get back to the Keyword Drawing Board!

If you want some help identifying new markets, let Viewstream know. We would love to help.

One other thing: once you have a new product identified, use this handy tool to define your market position.

Marketing Can Make or Break Your Business

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Marketing Can Make or Break Your Business

We were recently asked to do a marketing audit by an investor of a troubled startup.

We.Software*, a young company offering software design services to healthcare companies, set forth to conquer the world. They had set aside a marketing budget of 100K per year over three years. Three years went by, but they didn’t get the traction.

When going back and analyzing the marketing spend by their marketing agency (a boutique agency based in Seattle), we noted that a full forty percent of the budget went to pure design related assets, like logo, website design and document assets.

STOP.

If your agency wants to spend forty percent of a budget on design related assets, please find a new agency.

At the start of a company, lean and agile approaches means spending very little on design assets and more on customer research and product marketing (things that actually grow your business).

  • For a logo, use a crowdsourced asset for an inexpensive logo.
  • For a website, use a WordPress template.

As your company matures, there will be a place for more significant spend on design and brand assets.

In the meantime, here are things that maybe wise to spend your budget on:

  • Explainer Videos:
    • Helps to communicate who you are and why you are different to prospects and employees.
  • Customer Research:
    • Spend budget on research that delivers tangible information about your customer – this is invaluable and ought to be an ongoing process.
  • Media Spend:
    • Despite popular wisdom, it is never too early to put your name out there.

Viewstream can help with any of these items, and we won’t ask you to spend a ton of money on design.

By the way, We.Software went out of business.

*Not the real name!

Viewstream AEC VR Demo

Traditional methods of presenting new projects, whether it is a design for a new hospital, or the construction phases of a new office building, usually involve printed images and documents, videos with 3d animated flyarounds, or physical maquettes (miniatures) of the building.

Project leaders from firms rely on these methods to present everything from designs and analysis, to scheduling and cost to their clients and investors. Even though these methods work in terms of getting the information across, the overall engagement with the content being shown will always be limited by the quality of the material and the technology being used to present it.

AEC firms are just beginning to leverage VR for not only their internal practices, but for client-facing material as well. The value that VR brings is greater engagement through immersiveness. By allowing a viewer to see content as if it was actually there, walk around it and interact with it, presentations can be brought to a whole new level.

Viewstream AEC VR Demo       Viewstream AEC VR Demo

Using the right creative, strategy, and technology can make content more engaging. What we have done with the new Viewstream AEC VR Demo, is design and build an experience around a specific product, in this case a new construction presentation. We took what is a traditional method of presenting information, and reestablished how it is presented.

In the Viewstream virtual presentation, we showcase a variety of information that is both important and essential to this type of product, and we do it a way that is engaging for the viewer. Cost and scheduling, lighting and energy analysis, general neighborhood data, as well as full views of the new construction are some of the elements we find important to this industry. By creating a realistic, immersive, virtual experience around this concept of an architectural/construction presentation, we can engage the viewer and in turn deliver greater value.

Would you like to learn more about Viewstream and our VR services for the AEC industry, including checking out a demo? Email info@viewstream.com and a team member will get right back to you. Or complete our contact form.