Using videos to promote your FinTech business

Videos are fast becoming a preferred means of marketing, even within FinTech and B2B businesses. People today have shorter and shorter attention spans, less time to gather information and want information quickly. The reasons for using video have been well publicized. Videos are:

• preferred over reading
• a more effective way to promote your business
• kept and passed along more often than newspapers or magazines
• a more effective way of describing complex products and services
• provide better information retention than information obtained from reading
• yield more effective response rates than printed materials

Some friendly reminders concerning your next, or first, video project:  keep your video short and sweet (two to three minutes, tops). Start fast, with a bang, and make sure your key messages are up front. Content is king; make sure you have a great script to guide you. Engage and entertain while you tell your story.

There are many opportunities for using videos within your marketing mix. While providing video on your website is a common use, we also see videos being deployed as a part of tradeshows, direct marketing, customer events and customer support. Our top 10 list of marketing topics for video:

1. Company overview
2. Product overviews
3. Product demonstrations
4. Customer testimonials
5. Case studies
6. Executive presentations
7. A tour of your company’s operations
8. Tradeshow content
9. Direct marketing
10. Events

While you might think that videos are only being widely used by big dogs in the industry, we see FinTech companies of all sizes using video within their marketing:

• Open Solutions customer testimonial (http://www.opensolutions.com/)
• BlingNation product demo http://www.blingnation.com/financial-institutions/how-bling-works,
• NetSecure Technologies demonstration http://www.netsecuretechnologies.com/

If you need help with producing a video, please call Jerry Goldstein at 678-781-7214 or e-mail jerry@williammills.com
 

My Time on Screen       
By Scott Mills

Recently, we made an investment in video in order to provide a little excitement to our Web site. There are a few reasons why I believe video will be a major growth area for companies in the financial industry: 1) video can help make something complex easier to understand, 2) it is more engaging than text and finally, 3) the cost is coming down.

For executives who will be featured, shooting can be intimidating. Our session included my brother and I in front of a “green screen” and reading from a teleprompter -- a first for me. Our producer gave me direction on cadence and what words should be emphasized. I’ll admit, it took a few times to do my small part.

Writing the script was a collaborative process. After practicing my lines, we made some changes based on how I’d say something. My last contribution was helping with the selection of music.  I chose Affix Music in Atlanta, which specializes in pre-licensed urban music because I did not want our video to sound too much like a lot of corporate videos that use canned soundtracks.

See you in the movies.

• Kerry Curry is now editor of REO Insider.  She came from the Dallas Business Journal
   
• Tony Garritano is no longer at SourceMedia (Mortgage Technology Magazine, etc.)
   
• And with a heavy heart, we share that Karen Krebsbach, former Executive Editor at U.S. Banker, passed away July 19, 2010 after a battle with breast cancer. 

Social Media Corner

In the world of social media, advances are made, rules change and new platforms are introduced on a nearly daily basis. To keep you updated on the latest happenings, we will feature a social media piece in each newsletter, introducing you to new platforms, as well as changes to the ones we already use.

BlogPulse

Each day, millions of people sit in front of a computer and put their thoughts on the Web regarding current events, personal experiences and, increasingly, business. BlogPulse, developed by Nielsen, is a customizable search engine for the ever-expanding world of blogs, complete with daily analysis and reports on activity in the “blogosphere.”

The platform provides a number of features that make finding what you are looking for in blog content as easy as point and click. Using the Blog Search Engine capability, users are able to look up specific terms, such as “financial technology” or “RESPA regulations” and find posts pertaining to those topics. If there is a particular post of interest, users can click the “Track Conversation” button to follow any comments by readers and replies from the blogger. With the Trend Search tool, users can compare the daily “buzz” on up to three topics specific to their interests.

BlogPulse also provides real-time statistics on the broad topics being blogged about the most, such as people, news, events and specific bloggers. Daily Blog Stats are also available showing the number of blogs in existence, new ones developed and number of posts.

To learn more about BlogPulse and start searching for content, visit http://www.blogpulse.com/.