Video marketing is not a new concept. In fact, since 2016 it has been commonly practiced, to excellent results, by some of the most forward-thinking brands out there.

Over the past seven years or so, video consumption has been rising steadily. But it’s not just in the younger generations – video marketing can impact everyone.

Not convinced video marketing is right for your brand? Check out these stats. . .

• 90% of US consumers between the age of 12 and 44 are digital viewers
• 89% of people have been convinced to buy a product and;
• 79% of people have bought software or an app because of a video they watched.

With these figures top of mind, why aren’t more marketing teams jumping on the bandwagon and creating videos galore?

Video Marketing Drives Business Value

Limited budgets, minimal resources, and being short on time are some of the most common reasons marketers fail to include video in their marketing campaigns and plans. Yet, according to Gartner, some of the top-performing brands in both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C), are “agile in their media mix . . . and continue to invest in the format.”

As marketing objectives evolve and become more revenue-focused, strategies need to be more thoughtful of audience habits, expectations, and constraints.

Does your ICP truly have time to review a 60-page document, or would a 90-second video be better suited? You need to be agile to find out!

The best part about a video marketing strategy is that it can be used across the customer lifecycle. There are infinite ways to meet your audience in the right place and at the right time, with meaningful, valuable video.

Video marketing can be truly impactful in terms of driving business goals across the customer journey – from prospect to advocate.

If you’re here – you’ve at the very least toyed with the idea of implementing video marketing into your strategy. Let’s dive into how video can be mapped to the lifecycle.

Mapping Video Marketing Across the Customer Lifecycle

The customer lifecycle refers to the journey a consumer or buyer takes before, during, and after the sales cycle.

Though not exhaustive, there are generally four stages: Pre-Sales: Awareness and Evaluation, Sales: Purchase, and Post-Sales: Retention.

Each touchpoint requires different forms of nurture and information. There is no catchall solution to speaking across the lifecycle and when it comes to video marketing, there must also be a unique approach in how the audience is spoken to at each stage.

Awareness Phase

Prospects don’t always know that they need a solution, or even that they have a problem.

You need to show that you understand their pain points and that your product can help them achieve a solution. You need to validate your prospective customers’ worries. Put them in context and ensure that they know there is a way to fix it.

It’s time to flaunt what you’ve got and make your brand memorable.

Using brand videos enables you to showcase your values and your unique position in the market. Educational webinars can support you and your product as an industry leader and convert prospects to leads.

According to Wyzowl, 95% of marketers say that video has increased brand awareness.

Evaluation Phase

When prospects understand the scope of their problem, and which other brands are experiencing something similar, they begin to review available solutions.

At this point of the customer lifecycle, it’s imperative that you establish your brand as a winner. And more importantly, with you, customers can win too.

It’s time to use video to both educate and sell.

Ideally, potential customers know your brand at this point and want to understand why they should choose you over your competition. Building feature-led videos that showcase your integrations or features can help you stand out.

The State of Video Marketing 2023 disclosed that 90% of marketers saw video generate leads.

Purchase Phase

At the bottom of the funnel (BOFU), prospects need to see how your solution beats the others. Whether that be in terms of ROI, initial cost, capabilities, or service and support there needs to be a cherry on top.

You want to cross the finish line with your customers. To do that, you must ensure they feel seen, understood, and that their success is a priority for you.

It’s time to whip out those super happy customer testimonials.

Customer satisfaction-focused videos should explain why they are happy they chose you, switched to your service or product, and directly explain your superiority. When it comes to testimonial videos, it’s best to leave humbleness at the door and be bold.

Wyzowl reported that 87% of marketers say that video has helped increase sales.

Retention

The customer lifecycle truly begins after the sale has gone through. Marketers need to ensure that they cater to customers to help in retention efforts.

Consistently offering value to your customers is key to keeping them happy: whether this value directly relates to your product or service, or is purely for your customers’ sake, you must ensure that they feel looked after.

It’s time to show your gratitude.

Providing onboarding, informational use cases, and ‘tips and tricks videos can help to support your customers as they onboard and find value in your product.

Based on the Wyzowl 2023 report, 53% of marketers said that video has reduced support queries.

Video can be an impactful medium at every touch point of the customer lifecycle helping to elevate your marketing strategy, spread brand awareness, and accomplish business objectives.

Now that you understand the need for video marketing and how it can apply across the customer cycle, it’s time to learn how to create a results-driven video marketing strategy.

Our detailed eBook The Beginners Guide to Results-Driven Video Marketing can help you build a plan your whole team can get behind.

Download the eBook for free and learn how to:

• Measure and analyze your success,
• Optimize and recycle content, and
• Stay organized to maximize ROI.

If you’re seeking a solution to securely store and effectively distribute your video assets, find out why a digital asset management (DAM) system is the most effective solution out there.

Manufacturing brands amass thousands of digital files and require a system that enables efficient, accurate content distribution across their channels. It’s crucial to have a DAM system in place to help centralize, organize, and distribute content and to ensure all stakeholders have access to the correct assets.

Manufacturing companies that focus on digital marketing are able to unlock the potential for significant growth. In fact, what companies state as their main priorities, fully rely on effective marketing including existing market expansions, unlocking new geographies and introducing new products and services.

Some examples of digital assets include photos, images, content, media, videos. For marketers in the digital age, a company’s digital assets are their new currency. These digital assets facilitate the value exchanged between a company and its customers before any sale takes place. Sales, distributors, PR, agencies and contractors require a steady flow of product-related content, creative media and visuals to grow brand awareness and revenue.

How do manufacturing organizations effectively create, manage and distribute assets across their communication channels, brand and revenue-generating teams? And what are the challenges that need to be considered? Read on to find out more.

Types of Content Used by Manufacturers

Every aspect of manufacturing marketing requires extensive visual and media production. The most effective websites use a combination of aesthetics, performance and ease of navigation. Just a few years ago, hiring a photographer and providing photos of available product, would be sufficient to showcase the brand, expand the business and grow demand. But now there are new forms of media that create more engaging experiences for customers. Organizations that provide more unique experiences, will earn more attention and engagement. Video demonstrations of the product, three-dimensional product images and even virtual reality experiences are just some examples of visual and media formats that manufacturing companies are now using to create content.

Considerations for Managing Media Content

These assets are increasingly expensive to produce and require specialized solutions and expertise to manage. Here’s what needs to be considered:

• Finding photos and videos of product collections, brand assets, marketing and safety resources (MSDS, brochures, price lists etc.)
• Building and sharing visually compelling product photo and media catalogues and collections
• Distributing and sharing with employees, distributors and agencies product photos, videos, 3D models and promotional materials
• Setting up permissions for Corporate Marketing and other divisions to view, edit and share select content and resources
• Setting up connected libraries for different divisions or brands with separate taxonomies and administrators
• Enabling all users to download and transform files into different file types and sizes

Use Cases for Managing Digital Assets

Let’s take a look at a few use case scenarios, where organizations have found solutions to common challenges around digital and media assets.

Providing multiple divisions with corporate assets

A global manufacturing conglomerate with multiple product divisions and sub-brands needs to ensure that everyone has access to on-brand corporate assets such as corporate logos, PR resources, investor information and reports. Yet, each division needs to have access to their own unique library, but also have designated administrators and permission structures established for accessing and editing assets.

A digital asset management platform with a multi-library structure was leveraged, creating several libraries under an overall corporate umbrella. Every division now has access to the corporate collateral and the IT team has oversight and administrative control for the entire corporate library. Each division and product line have their own nestled library and designated administrators, asset curators and even taxonomies specific to their division specialization. Leveraging a DAM platform provided all departments, subsidiaries and partners with secure access to approved corporate assets, streamlined collaboration, enforced brand integrity, and increased productivity across their entire organization.

One-click content access and file transformations

One of the biggest complaints from marketing and creative teams at an aerospace manufacturing corporation was the number of requests to provide the required product collateral or to alter logos and images to a specific format from everyone in the company. The Marketing team was already under pressure to produce a tremendous volume of content and visuals, but was also wasting hours searching for required resources or reformatting files. With global offices in India, Europe and North America, each location had its own on-premise storage systems, with no way to search across all available assets. The inefficiencies kept growing and required a company-wide solution.

Implementing a digital asset management system with an unlimited number of users completely eliminated this challenge. All employees, agencies, external contractors and distributors were given access to the approved section of the corporate library. Every user, even those who were resistant to new technologies, were able to find what they needed from the latest versions of the approved photos, brand assets and collateral. What’s even better is that they were able to specify the file type, size and resolution that was required, and download in that specific format and size. As a result, Marketing had a spike in productivity and users were happy to use the platform to find any visuals, media or content when they needed it.

Brand consistency for global sales and distribution network

Serving a global customer base, a global leader in bolt securing technologies with subsidiaries in Europe, the United States and Asia, and a worldwide network of authorized distributors was having issues with brand consistency across their large corporate umbrella. Due to the large global footprint of the organization, the marketing team required a solution that would enable them to quickly and reliably access and distribute assets from any country in the world. In addition, these assets required permission restrictions, to ensure that they were being accessed by the correct people. A digital asset management solution was identified and rolled out globally in less than a month. Today, their entire organization – including its extended distribution network – can quickly, easily and securely access the corporate assets they require, from any device, anywhere in the world. And the Marketing team can ensure that all sales and distribution points have the on-brand resources and tools they need to effectively drive sales growth within all markets.

To learn how digital asset management can help with other key challenges marketing or creative teams experience in the manufacturing industry or how it can help scale digital strategies, check out Digital Asset Management for Manufacturing.

MediaValet is a leader in cloud-based digital asset management that helps organizations manage, organize and share their digital assets, improving productivity and increasing ROI.

As the number of charitable organizations and causes they support continue to grow, the nonprofit sector is becoming more competitive and complex year after year. With each organization striving to increase the impact of their investments, attract new donors and recruit volunteers, outreach strategies are becoming more sophisticated and engaging—with a heavy emphasis on digital.

Moreover, as a nonprofit organization, maintaining a significant digital presence is now more crucial than ever to effectively drive funding and highlight the importance of its cause. Doing this well requires a strong toolbelt of compelling images, videos, and content to help potential donors connect with the brand. Since content is only valuable if it can be found and used, to make the most of it, it’s important to properly manage it. For this reason, many nonprofit organizations have begun looking into a digital asset management (DAM) solution.

What is a DAM?

Digital asset management (DAM) systems have emerged as a solution for nonprofit organizations, allowing them to better manage and distribute their content and establish a solid foundation for their long-term digital strategy. A DAM system not only helps nonprofit organizations manage, organize, share, and distribute their digital assets from within one central library — it improves productivity while increasing the ROI of all content produced.

Most nonprofit organizations that do not have a DAM in place struggle with these similar issues:

• Discoverability: Organizations are storing marketing material in multiple locations, making it extremely difficult to find what they need,
• Accessibility: accessing and finding assets can be cumbersome and lengthy,
• Workflow: The process of finding assets is taking up way too much time, which is slowing down projects as well as the execution of outreach campaigns, and
• Security: They don’t feel their assets are truly secure.

Benefits of DAM for Nonprofit

All the common pain points for nonprofit organizations can be solved with the right DAM in place, on top of the several additional benefits it has to offer. The top 4 benefits organizations gain from implementing a DAM include being able to:

1. Better leverage your brand,
2. Empower your affiliates and drive collaboration,
3. Increase the impact of your content, and
4. Preserve your legacy.

Let’s dive into each benefit in more detail.

1. Better Leverage Your Brand

Maintaining a strong brand and ensuring everyone is using consistent messaging can be challenging when multiple departments and affiliates are all creating marketing collateral for various campaigns. A DAM ensures that all users are equipped with marketing materials that are on-brand and up to date, drawing from one central library. This allows your organization to ensure consistent branding as all assets become visually aligned with a DAM—no more outdated logos!

2. Empower Your Affiliates and Drive Collaboration

With a DAM, users can easily find, download, and share approved work-in-progress and finalized assets. Additionally, marketing material and content will be readily available when anyone is organizing events, launching campaigns or running educational initiatives. Availability in the cloud also ensures that even users in the most remote areas, with no access to IT, can easily access those resources or upload their own materials.

3. Increase the Impact of Your Content

Whether it’s creating new marketing collateral for donor campaigns, fundraiser events or recruitment material, a DAM ensures you’re getting the most from your marketing materials and the money spent creating them. By having a library that is organized and easily accessible, your content’s lifespan gets extended and maximizes its value. Additionally, you can organize marketing content by campaign name, region, years, etc., allowing users anywhere to easily find and re-use visuals, content, and media.

4. Preserve Your Legacy

A DAM allows nonprofit organizations to maintain and preserve their growing library of fundraising collateral and historic content, enabling it to be used for future initiatives, educational events, anniversary marketing campaigns and more. These assets help preserve the memories that are important for connecting with donors and engaging volunteers.

The Jane Goodall Institute (JGI)

JGI came to MediaValet with the challenge of preserving Dr. Jane Goodall’s 60-year legacy and distributing marketing imagery to various global chapters and stakeholders. The advanced functionality allowed them to extend the use of the DAM to areas they hadn’t even dreamt of—scientific research. The Jane Goodall Institute’s top three benefits from using a DAM include:

1. Marketing Material Distribution: Storing all assets used for storytelling purposes—the photos and videos from years of JGI initiatives.
2. Scientific Research Distribution: Using the platform to facilitate scientific research and discovery—the 60 years of handwritten notes, field videos, etc., used to help researchers and scientists around the world understand great apes.
3. Organizing Precious Archival Assets: Creating a digital home for the ongoing archiving of Jane’s global outreach past and present. A place where they gather and transcribe Jane’s digital recordings from throughout the years, making them easily searchable and shareable.

Read the Jane Goodall Institute’s DAM Story, here.

Get Ahead with DAM

A DAM helps nonprofits manage their marketing collateral, preserve their brand history, and improve collaboration with both staff and affiliates. For more details on how MediaValet supports organizations in the nonprofit sector, check out DAM for Nonprofits, here.

This blog post was originally posted in February 2019 and has been updated.

MediaValet is a leader in cloud-based digital asset management that helps organizations manage, organize and share their digital assets, improving productivity and increasing ROI.