Video Strategy 101: The keys to success

Video has clear benefits for both retailers and customers in any situation, including in crucial decision-making processes, so it’s vital to implement it in a way that makes sense long-term. Those that can pull it off are likely to gain from improved customer engagement and higher productivity from their employees.

To help you devise a video strategy, we’ve picked out some of the most important questions to ask yourself along the way. Those answers will help you understand where to utilise video throughout the customer journey, and exactly what you need to do to make the video production process easier, quicker and more efficient.

Where and when is best to use video?

There are no hard and fast rules about where video can be used within sales or workshop processes, or how often. However, not making use of video throughout the customer experience may mean you miss out on opportunities to better meet your customers’ needs.

Having a fully mapped out customer journey is a great way to visualise that experience. In theory, every stage of the buying process can be covered with video, but a map can also help you decide what to include in each video and when to send it. As our Head of Sales, Callum Wood, explains: “Identifying at which points in the customer journey you feel a video would be beneficial, and then outlining the purpose, message and content of those, can help your teams consistently deliver top level customer service through video.”

This applies just as much to the workshop as it does to sales: information about servicing and repair bookings, videos confirming the work needed, and follow-up videos afterwards can all keep customers engaged and informed.

How should a video be structured?

There’s plenty to take into consideration when deciding on the structure and format of a video. You need to take into account which bits of information and content to include, what is displayed visually on-camera, and how long the video should be.

However, all of these decisions have to be made in the context of the objective of the video. Being mindful of exactly why the video is being created helps make sure that everything within the video is contributing towards that purpose. This could be responding to an enquiry with all the information that a customer needs, delivering aftersales care to boost customer confidence in the retailer, or detailing suggested repair work to build trust and transparency. And in all of these cases, ensuring that there is a high level of personalisation throughout the video is a must.

How can I get an entire team to use video effectively?

Some of the team will naturally feel more confident using video than others. But the true potential of video can only be realised if you’re able to get everyone up to speed and using them to good effect on a regular basis.

There are lots of actions you can take to encourage effective use of video, including:

  • Video advocates: Appoint one of the best users of video as an advocate, who can educate and inspire their colleagues to embrace video at various stages of the customer journey
  • Team incentives: Our experience has found that the most frequent video creators in dealers tend to top the sales charts. Encouraging friendly competition with prizes can drive greater video use, measured through dashboard video ratings and the number of videos produced by each staff member
  • Quality control: Hold meetings to analyse different videos, highlighting best practice and areas for improvement, so that everyone can upskill their video production together
  • Learning opportunities: Connect employees to educational resources like the CitNOW Academy or the How2CitNOW video series to develop their video skills even further
How can I implement video in the most time-efficient way?

Customers truly value the dedication of sales staff creating personalised content just for them. What’s more, every efficiency that can be found in video production makes life much easier for staff, and frees up significant amounts of time to use elsewhere.

Technology like CitNOW removes much of the time burden from the whole process. Oliver Parsons, CitNOW’s Head of Client Services, explains: “CitNOW’s solutions are full of features and integrations specifically designed to streamline the video production process and simplify everyday tasks. Utilising video purposes, for example, is a quick and efficient way to tailor video communications to your customers. On top of this, the videos themselves can actually save staff time elsewhere, as there’s no longer a need to spend so much time trying to contact customers in other ways.”

In summary

Once you’ve answered these four questions, you’ll find yourself homing in on an organised strategy, one that can be applied across the dealer group. Equipped with that strategy, you can be sure that everyone is using video to the best of their ability, is sending out more videos than ever before, and are all working together to drive greater profitability.

For further insights and helpful tips on how to get more from your Sales and Workshop videos, take a look at our How2CitNOW playlist on YouTube.