David: This is episode three. My name is David. You are listening to Nonprofit Video Comms. video marketing tips to help your organization be seen, get funding and help more people.
So you're in charge or you're tasked with making a video, whether it's by yourself or with your team or you're in charge of hiring freelancer or studio to make this video. Now, imagine after making that video that you can report to your boss or your team or your funder that your video achieved something and that something was an actual function. And I'm not talking about views or likes, but that the video actually led a viewer to an actual action. Someone took an action attributed to that video and you know it it's observable. You can measure it and you can compile that information and report it. Now, isn't that the kind of video... the kind of result you would want from any of your digital content? And in this case, video? So what are some examples of those videos? I'll tell you what it's not.
It tends not to be those big, grand projects where you do a brand story or introduction for your organization. Those are great. Those are necessary. Those are helpful. But I'm talking about something a little more useful and observable that looks like a few examples. I'll give you three examples.
The first one is a recruiting video, a management consulting company for nonprofits that I know in Peterborough, Ontario. They're called Laridae, and they made a horrifically, dry and boring video to the general audience. It's a recruiting video. And this video was incredibly interesting to job applicants. You can bet that the top applicants watched the entire thing. What happened in this video? The staff just had a conversation over Zoom about what it was like to work there, and they recorded it and posted it on the job description page. Simple. What they found was that job applicants who showed up and applied was that it was the strongest applicants showed or demonstrated that they watched the video, that they learned something about the organization. They also learned that during interviews, the strongest applicants tended to quote the videos and comment on whether they saw themselves working there. So they observed a bit of a self qualification or a self sort of assessment for fit. And they also out of empathy knew that if you're a job applicant who wouldn't want to know what it's like to work there, who's going to work there, what they're like, what does the office look like? So the return on this video was that applicants showed up with a better idea of what they were getting into and reciprocally. It allowed applicants who did not see a fit to save time.
Another example of a video that performs a function right now, I think we're seeing a lot of digital volunteerism with nonprofits, and a typical scenario would be that you would volunteer coordinator or volunteer manager would spend maybe once a week with a small group of volunteers, maybe more frequently to go through things like where to find digital materials, online data management stuff, maybe going through some pages and links about programs and locations. Now, at the same time that you're doing that you could screen record that whole thing absolutely non flashy, unpolished, not cinematic. And for the next group of volunteers to onboard, you would simply send out that video and give it a try, see what happens, see if you can get in the groove of having people watch a pre recorded training. So that next time when you meet, instead of spending time training, you can spend time answering deeper questions. Now, if that's an hour a week that you save at the end of the month, that's four and a half hours at the end of the year, that is four and a half times 52. Whatever. That is the time saving. That's the kind of return on a video that you could report to a funder or your boss.
Another example, our third example would be customer service. I admit, I don't know what to call this in the nonprofit world, I just call it customer service, and that is program managers, front desk, whoever it is that answering inquiries for the general public, it never fails. I know this. Having been a former employee, there is at least at the very least a handful of the most repetitive inquiries, the stuff that maybe you do 10 to 20 times a day. If you're not copying and pasting something or using a template, you're retyping it out or on the phone that could look like five to ten minutes on the phone per inquiry, repeating the same information. I'm not implying that there's any problem with giving direct customer service. I think that's great, but imagine you're in a position where you're maybe feeling behind on customer service. Not quite getting to those voicemails fast enough a backlog of email, and you're a small enough nonprofit that you can't keep up customer service. Videos are videos that are short explainer videos that answer frequent questions. You could have a small library of these videos, host them anywhere. Youtube your website doesn't matter, but you would answer these emails quickly by pasting in a link and saying, “Please see if the answers you need are on this video,” or if you have an autoresponder, offer them a link to this library of videos. you might find If you're brave enough to test this, a drop in time spent on customer service, but not because you don't want to do customer service, but because you just need an extra hand, you need to multiply yourself.
So to wrap things up, we looked at three types of videos that perform a function that actually move something forward, whether it's multiplying your own efforts, giving you an extra hand or helping others understand you better, just like in that recruiting video. So these videos are the furthest thing from marketing fluff. These are actual assets that do work for you.
And if you think, “well, we want to make videos that actually raise awareness and do some marketing.” Look at it this way: A functional video is already taking care of at least a portion of your marketing. This video asset when it goes out there to do the work for you is a clone of one of your staff out there doing the work instead of the volunteer manager training ten people per session, you could train 50 people overnight in your sleep. And this volunteer manager was a brand ambassador through 50 people without ever having to show up for that one session. I'd call that effective marketing. And remember, the definition of marketing is any activities that are relevant to bringing your service to market. So I hope you consider the utility and the function and the simultaneous marketing power of a functional video that does a job.
Thanks for listening. That was episode three. My name is David Phu. last name P-H-U.
I would love for you to follow me on LinkedIn and connect there, and until next time. Bye.
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