Explain using video … with a side of marketing
Pop quiz: What starts with a “D,” ends with an “X” and owes its fantastically lucrative existence to its ability to explain using video?
Anyone? Anyone?
That’s right: The answer is Dropbox, the company that makes file sharing and storage so easy anyone in the world can do it. Unfortunately, nobody in the world would pay attention to Dropbox until they introduced their services in 2009.
Silence and yawns–that’s what Dropbox heard, and it was deafening.
Then, Dropbox made the decision to explain using video–and a multi-hundred-million (or maybe even billion) dollar company was embraced by the world.
It’s a real explainer video success story. But there’s a secret plot twist that not too many people know about, and that twist is this: Dropbox didn’t just develop an explainer video, plop it on the company website and wait for the clicks and conversions to start rolling in. No, the company didn’t do that. They were hungry; they wanted to feed at the trough of success.
Complementing great content with video marketing
So once they served up their explainer video, they ordered a side of marketing.
“Wait,” you’re thinking, “isn’t the decision to explain using video, in and of itself, marketing?”
Yes. But sometimes you have to market the marketing to bring a product to market. Get it? No? Okay. Check this out:
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to witness it, does it make a noise? Who knows? What is known is this: If a company makes a video that allows them to explain using video and nobody sees it, it might make a noise but it’s not marketing–at least not effective marketing.
So to make sure people see your video, you sometimes have to market it–just like Dropbox did.
You have to share it everywhere you can–on Facebook, through Twitter and on Instagram. You have to email it to everyone–friends, family, countrymen, customers, prospective customers, media types. And you have to ask them to play it and share it and like it and the next thing you know, you’ve made a video and the world has seen it and you’re another Dropbox-like success story.
See how it all works together? If you’re hungry, don’t forget to order up a side of video marketing.
