There are a lot of platforms that offer to change the way your world works by moving everything to video. Yet while video offers vast improvements to many business processes, it can be unwieldy as a standalone platform unless very well managed.

The simplest & most cost effective way to use video, is as part of your existing systems. Minimal change & quick to test.

We’ll start by looking briefly into 5 of the most common ways that successful brands are integrating user generated video into their existing systems & processes to save time & make more informed decisions. Over the coming weeks we’ll dive deeper into each of the five, to look into just how this is done, and best practice for each.



1. Efficiently find great people to grow your business.



Whatever your industry, wherever in the world, regardless of size, the most important factor to business success are your people. Great companies successfully build teams based on cultural fit, as much as a good skills base - (Zappos built their entire business based on this principle). Many culture / people facing companies such as Canon, Ebay & Airtasker use short video interviews as a highly successful method to judge candidate personality, communication and presentation fit, alongside CVs.

In addition, video can vastly increase the efficiency of an initial screening process. Many candidates look great on paper, but as much as 1/3rd of the time, managers know if someone is not right for a position within seconds of meeting them. Video prevents this wasted time, and vice versa, ensures you don’t miss candidates, who may not have a stellar CV, but more than make up for that in enthusiasm and ability to be coached.

Rather than move to an entire “video enabled” recruitment platform, add video interviews to you existing listings on Seek, CareerOne, Monster, or your webiste using Verbate's campaign links. See how to do this here

3 quick tips to successfully use video to grow your team.

  • Extract their personality, ask about passions, hobbies, challenges.
  • Ask questions specific to your company culture, will they fit?
  • Share the videos with your team to save them time too.

N.B. This works both ways, and more and more business’s like HubSpot are using video to entice more candidates too.

2. Understand your customers motivations.



Why do people buy our products, why do they buy our competitors products? How can our brand be more effective in fulfilling our customers increasingly complex needs?

Gone are the days of broad marketing messages, and “best fit” positioning. In today's competitive markets, your customers crave, and deserve to be understood on a far more personal level.

Written surveys are good for high level research of a market, but to truly dig deeper into consumer journeys, emotive motivations, and product use, nothing beats being able to see and hear their thoughts & interactions directly. The very language we use when describing our thoughts is vastly different from that which they use to write.

Adding a little video feedback to existing research projects is simple to do, and will give you a far deeper understanding of your customers motivations & perceptions of your brand. Needless to say, greater understanding leads to greater product innovation, more targeted positioning and ultimately, staying two steps ahead of your competitors.

3 tips to successfully using video to uncover insights

  • Use a diary format. A video a day for 3-5 days exploring different themes.
  • Use open ended questions - “What gets you up in the morning?”
  • Ask people to be visual, & if possible to interact with your product / brand

3. Supercharge word of mouth marketing



Word of mouth marketing, or WOMM, dubbed as the “most important social media” by Forbes, is the process by which you inspire your community to share their advocacy of your brand or product with their communities.

WOMM videos include video testimonials, product reviews, brands challenges etc. The benefit of video over other content, is that 70% of consumers trust advocate video made by others (Nielson), and video, on average receives double the engagement (sharing & views) of any other content source. When you inspire your community to create this video, it builds passion, love, creativity, shareability, excitement & trust, all surrounding your brand. Take 2 recent WOMM campaigns, one using photos, one of using video:

a) The No-Make up Selfie campaign for Breast cancer awareness that took place earlier this year generated 10’s of 1000’s of images on Facebook, and raised $3.5m.

b) The ALS ice bucket challenge campaign, (despite only 50% of Americans being previously aware of ALS), generated 3m+ videos and a staggering $100m for the cause.

3 tips to successful to inspire user generated video content

  • Seed your video campaigns. Easiest to do in person at events & meetings.
  • Give an incentive. Competition, discounts, passionate cause or trend.
  • Capture a wide range of customers, so more new customers can relate.

The holy grail, is to include a viral mechanism. Reward shares, reward friends who also join in. The Ice Bucket Challenge’s success came from entrants nominating 3 more friends.

2 other creative ways brands are using UGV

Team video for feedback, training & to promote culture.

Many of us have teams spread across the country, or internationally, and video is a highly effective (& efficient) way to gather & share feedback from teams on new initiatives, products and Comms strategies. 56% of board members would rather watch video than read a report. Companies such as PepsiCo gather and share employee video as a means for education & engagement.

Customer service.

Realising the importance of video as a communication tool, many brands are now using video to give more personal customer service (such as Amazon’s Mayday). This works both ways, and for trouble shooting visual problems, for instance installations, the user sending through a quick video is a highly efficient way to get to the bottom of a problem.

Most important to remember, is that video is a great tool, that can be incredibly easy to test and impliment. If communication is important to your business, try the above and I guarantee you'll be loving the results. If you've used video in other creative ways, let us know your story!