How Video Marketing Led to Brand Differentiation and Revenue Growth for The Fresh Diet, Part 2
This is the second and final part of this two-part series on how diet brand The Fresh Diet has leveraged video to grow brand awareness and its bottom line. Here's a link to part one.
Taking Our Message to the Street
We needed to prove that The Fresh Diet's food was better than what its competitors were offering. We knew our food was better, but had to find a way to have our target market "get it" from their peers. So I hired a camera crew and we went to the famous beaches of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., with a "man on the street" taste-test series.
We knew going in we had a challenge on our hands. Diet brand infomercials are typically scripted, coached and in many cases portrayed by actors. We had to position this carefully lest the taste tests be seen as underwhelming. We got lots of comments like, "Yeah, this is pretty good stuff" unlike the over-the-top testimonials people are used to. We used that natural conversation to our advantage.
As I posted each video, I reminded viewers that this was a real person, not an actor. For contrast, in one video we used my wife to show the difference between a "fake" and a "real life" testimonial.
In essence, in order for the video series to be successful, I had to manage the expectations of the viewer. Here's a sample of the videos we shot (the series was successful enough that I did another round in a different location about five months later):
More Fresh Diet Blind Taste Tests
Note the over-the-top MC. She definitely added a fun element to the series as per our direction of "have fun." Cast your video carefully to fit your image.
Video contests are a powerful engagement tool. As I mentioned earlier, we also used fun contests to engage prospects and customers. What better way to show off "shiny happy clients" than with video, right?
Here's an example of a super fun video that won our video testimonial contest. I believe we gave a full month of product to the winner, but you cannot pay for advertising this powerful. It's real and comes from a customer.
The Fresh Diet Project
I could bring up more video examples, but frankly this article isn't about the diet company and certainly not about promoting it since it's no longer a client of mine. Consider the following tips as you begin to incorporate video into your marketing efforts:
1. Brand everybody. I literally walk around with a video camera (aka my iPhone) at my client's offices. Im always looking for that fun, quirky opportunity to get some good video.
2. Leverage customer testimonials. With more than a few clients I worked for, I'd get visiting clients in our offices. The ones who would rave about our products would get asked if they would do a quick video. About 75 percent of the time they readily agreed. There are SO MANY opportunities to meet, greet and videotape your customers. Find your sweet spot and shoot away.
3. Take people behind the scenes. Shoot product being made and delivered, interview people in your company — again brand everybody. Don't forget the people in your call center. Those people are the front lines of your business and deserve to be put out there (and it helps too that your clients will know them when they call).
4. Get everyone involved. Carrying a video camera and looking for video opportunities is contagious. Develop a culture where anyone can shoot a video in your organization and submit it.
True story: At one company, one of my IT guys sent me a great video that went viral. The call center was slammed one day and once a lull finally hit, the call-center reps blew off a little steam by doing some dancing (the Electric Slide I think). When I posted this video (maybe 20 seconds long, shot on an iPhone), everybody loved it. What better way to show real people helping real people, and branding our folks too.
Video has become such a powerful tool in the marketer's toolkit that the future looks bright enough that digital recruiting guru Jerry Bernhart sees the position of director of video strategy becoming a key player on the marketing department org chart. Check out this article from him on the topic.
How do you use video in your organization? I'd love to hear your thoughts. And if you like this article, please share it so it reaches your connections too.
- Places:
- Fort Lauderdale, FL
Jim Gilbert has had a storied career in direct and digital marketing resulting in a burning desire to tell stories that educate, inform, and inspire marketers to new heights of success.
After years of marketing consulting, Jim decided it was time to “put his money where his mouth was" and build his own e-commerce company, Premo Natural Products, with its flagship product, Premo Guard Bed Bug & Mite Sprays. Premo in its second year is poised to eclipse 100 percent growth.
Jim has been writing for Target Marketing Group since 2006, first on the pages of Catalog Success Magazine, then as the first blogger for its online division. Jim continues to write for Total Retail.
Along the way, Jim has led the Florida Direct Marketing Association as their Marketing Chair and then three-term President, been an Adjunct Professor of Direct and Digital marketing for Miami International University, and created a lecture series, “The 9 Immutable Laws of Social Media Marketing,” which he has presented across the country at conferences and universities.