Video Production Sales 101: How To Sell Video to Enterprises

When you’re wondering how to sell video production services to enterprise companies, the best first steps are often the simplest. Think about the problem your potential client needs to solve. Ask insightful questions that can inform your strategy. And show the value of video content in a way that’s clear and data-driven.

Let’s take a closer look at how to approach your initial meeting with a prospective client, how to refine your sales pitch, how to sell video if they’re on the fence, and finally a few tips to close the deal from an agency pro who knows his stuff.

In the First Meeting

First and foremost, to sell your video services, you need to understand the goal and the purpose of your client’s video campaign. Keep the following questions in mind when meeting with a potential client for the first time:

  • Who will the campaign be speaking to and what is the communication objective?
  • What creative materials does the client have on hand that they want incorporated?
  • What elements, specifically, will your production studio be responsible for creating?
  • What aesthetic does the company have in mind?

Beyond objectives and creative visions, it’s also important to also lay out a timeline everyone is comfortable with and get a clear understanding of the type of budget the client has in place. Will the budget not be ready until next quarter? What’s the project’s ideal turnaround once budget has been approved? Is that doable? Aligning on pricing and timeline are two big hurdles you want to address early to remove any roadblocks from them saying “yes” to your services.

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Stand out to prospective clients with the latest video marketing technology

Ask any videography or digital marketing studio that’s had to wait on client budget approval, and they’ll all likely say the same thing — not having a realistic view of how much money will be available and when that money will be made available can destroy schedules and creative plans.

Next, consider the type of video that can accomplish your client’s goals. Is it a sales video designed to convert or an explainer video design to reduce support call volume? Maybe it’s a promotional campaign to reach a new target audience or a product video to announce a big launch.

Come with solutions that show how you’ve created different kinds of marketing videos so you’re prepared with examples that speak to their specific needs. If you don’t have something ready in that first meeting, let them know you’ll follow up with a video to show them. This is just part of the sales process. Nothing sells your services like your past successful videos for other clients.

Make Video a No-Brainer for Clients

Within enterprise companies, there can be a lot of daylight between Person A who ideates a video campaign and Person B who grants resources to bring the campaign to fruition.

While working with an enterprise client frequently means larger budgets to play with, it can also mean more red tape and a longer approval process to get the campaign off the ground.

There’s really no silver bullet to speed things up on the client’s end, but being organized and supplying persuasive data can greatly help to reduce friction. Here are some stats that support the effectiveness and high ROI of video communication:

  • According to a poll of 120 U.S. ad agencies, client interest in video ads is up 89% with 72% of those same agencies saying they’ve found online video advertising as effective, if not more effective, than TV advertising. This means that the way people consume content is changing — more people are streaming TV online and watching video in their social media feeds and on YouTube — and clients are realizing that the ad content shown to these audiences needs to change as well, largely favoring online video campaigns. It’s an undeniable video marketing trend.
  • Data has shown that videos under one minute typically achieve a viewer retention rate of 80% while videos that are 2-3 minutes in length get around 60% viewer retention. Videos in the range of 5-10 minutes tend to get just over 50% retention. This shows that viewers, by and large, are watching because they’re actively engaged with the video’s message. They drop-off once they feel like they’ve gotten the gist.
  • 51% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI.
  • Social video generates 12x more shares than text and images combined.
  • Video promotion of a brand, product or service is 6x more effective than print and direct mail combined.
  • According to HubSpot, when video is present on a landing page, conversion increases by 80%.
  • Marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users.

Show Your Video Production Competitive Edge

OK, so you’ve sold your future customer on video — or at least reinforced their decision. Now it’s time to close the deal.

Closing a deal comes down to showing a potential client what value you can offer them that none of your competitors can. And it also means showing them how what you create will instantly set the client ahead of their competitors.

Have you worked on campaigns that did something no one else within their vertical had accomplished? Are you leaning into a new type of technology? Whether you’re putting together a quick reel or sharing whole campaigns, make sure what you’re showing represents your work in the best light possible. You want high-quality videos and impressive success stats.

Signal Productions, a creative agency and video production studio in the U.K., did this wonderfully when they created their video case study of a Personalized Video campaign they did for Tesco.

tesco campaign.png

The case study clearly presented the challenge, solution, and a “how we did it” wrap-up that helped potential clients understand how their video team could do the same for their marketing campaigns.

And they chose a video that not only looks good but showcases impressive technology (in this case, personalization), delivering an immediate wow-factor to viewers.

Here’s a peek at the Tesco video if you’d like to see.

Tony Jones, digital content director at Signal Productions, and his team swear by these 10 things to think about when proposing video to enterprise companies:

  1. Multiple stakeholders: The project will have many hard-to-reach senior stakeholders who will often surface just before delivery and insist on changing something that was signed off right at the beginning. The key to avoiding this happening is having a single, reliable point of contact and a well-defined brief from the outset.
  2. Technical copywriting: Never assume you can understand the nuances of an enterprise offering. We’ll often bring in a technical copywriter to bring a distinct level of expertise to the project.
  3. Insight: Gather as much insight as you can from the client, but don’t be afraid to use other social listening tools to find out what is happening in their market.
    Corporate doesn’t mean boring, especially when it comes to video. Storytelling matters.

    click to tweet

    Click to Tweet
  4. Storytelling: The rules still apply — just because the narrative is corporate, doesn’t mean the format needs to be corporate to be boring. Adding a human touch, a sense of comedy or a novel motion graphics technique can make the films more engaging.
  5. News: Where did that come from? Consider cultural hot topics. There may be news events that affect the context of the production and last-minute changes to the script. Keep an eye on the news as your client will.
  6. Platforms: How will the video be used? Website, mobile, salesware, corporate foyer videos, annual reports, conferences and exhibitions, weekly or monthly corporate communications… Ensure your video can be used across all of these if requested.
  7. Personalization: The client may not have considered this, but using Personalized Video can make the video much more engaging, useful and relevant to each recipient.
  8. Internationalization: Think multilingual. Using dynamic video can make multi-language updates and regionalization much more cost-effective. (A note from Idomoo: Here’s a video from the gaming world so you can see how the same video in multiple languages makes it even more accessible for a global audience.)
  9. Budget: Either a budget has been set aside, or you’ll need to quote realistically. Always submit a line-by-line budget so the client can see where the money is being spent.
  10. Schedule: The schedule is key to the video production process. Every stage should be clearly agreed in advance from voiceover artists to storyboards and allow enough time for all the internal stakeholders to sign off each stage.

Pretty good advice, right?

The long and short of it is that when it comes down to how to sell video production services to enterprise companies, figure out your hook — what makes your video production services “a need to have” that’s part of a successful enterprise marketing plan instead of just being a “nice to have” perk?

Then illustrate that point using data, previous campaigns, client testimonials… whatever you have in your arsenal. And put together a solid action plan that everyone can buy into.

Stand Out With the Right Tech

As a video production company or creative agency, you want to show that you’re on the bleeding edge of video technology. That means offering your clients the option for interactivity, personalization, the highest cinematic quality, and anything else they need to level up their video marketing strategy.

Learn how some of the world’s top agencies have been snagging awards right and left (like the Effie Awards, the Drum Awards, the DMA Awards for Data Storytelling and more) while wowing clients by leveraging Idomoo’s Next Generation Video Platform.

We’d love to take you on a tour of the platform and show some of the results agencies have gotten for their clients that keeps them coming back again and again.

Let’s talk.

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