Wistia is a Cambridge, MA-based company with a video marketing platform whose overarching purpose is to help marketers make better videos. The company’s mission — to “make business more human” — is achieved through a range of software tools that simplify the process of making effective videos and giving marketers more control over them than is currently provided by YouTube and other video-sharing platforms.
I caught up with Taylor Corrado, Wistia’s Director of Brand, to get her POV on what Wistia does, how video marketing is evolving, and how businesses can make better use of video. It’s an exciting time for the company, which recently added a live webinar feature to its software toolkit. Taylor and I discuss the fact that video production — once prohibitively expensive — has become affordable, even for small businesses, due to the advent of high-quality mobile phones and radically revised audience expectations about production quality. We discuss how the pandemic made “hybrid” events (virtual events with an in-person component) more prevalent, and how marketers should design these events.
We also touch upon how marketers who may be new to video marketing should decide which type of video to deploy first. As Taylor observes, this process should begin with audience research: “when you think about format and flavor of videos, you also have to think about what your audience is looking for. Have you asked them what they want to hear from you about? Have you asked them what channels they’re consuming content on? Are they on social media? They probably are but they might not want to consume business content in those channels. So figuring out where your audience is and what they’re looking for from you as a brand is really important.”
Taylor and I chat about the fact that many business people may be a bit gun-shy about appearing before the cameras for the first time, and the kinds of training that Wistia provides that can help them. I also wanted to know a bit about the kinds of businesses currently using Wistia and how the platform provides granular control over video sharing — a concern for businesses whose audience is mainly internal.
We also talk about mistakes that marketers make when planning or deploying video content. “I think the biggest one is not talking with your audience before you create content,” notes Taylor. “Not knowing what your audience wants from you is the biggest mistake you can make before you invest in video because, even though video has become more accessible, there are probably videos that you’re going to make that are going to be expensive, or at least bigger-budget items that you need to factor in, so make sure the message is the right one.”
Taylor also thinks that too many businesses are embracing video too slowly. “I’ve seen a lot of businesses not get started because they’re worried about the first video they make. They want it to be the most polished, the most perfect video they’ve ever seen, and we tell our customers — and internally as well — ‘the first video you make is going to be bad. It’s probably not the one you want to put on your home page, but just getting your feet wet with recording and editing and even outsourcing the resources to create the video — just understanding the process of it — is the thing you should gain from those first few videos that you’re creating.”
Taylor and I also discuss the value of repurposing video assets, the critical importance of high-quality audio in video production, how content creators can create engaging videos — even in “boring industries,” her company’s experience using video influencers, and what Taylor foresees as the future of business video in 2023 and beyond.
