Video content has an impactful role to play within presentations, pitches, and proposals. These three areas are at the core of the majority of businesses day to day activities. Whether it be to win new business, communicate effectively internally or persuade investors of your new ideas. Pitches, presentations and proposals have long been crucial when it comes to moving a business forward.
But don’t you think the standard set of slides that get rolled out over and over again can become rather tired? Yes, we have fantastic pieces of software now that can create lovely visuals to make these slides more stimulating, but more often than not, a set of slides falls short of capturing its audience’s imagination.
When either one of these things is produced, the purpose of its existence is to communicate a message. If this message does not land well with the intended audience merely because the content isn’t engaging enough, huge business developments can be missed out on because a very minor detail wasn’t paid attention to.
With the sheer amount of time that gets spent on such documents, surely making sure the message is communicated in an engaging way is a no-brainer? This is where video content makes so much sense. Across various mediums, the abilities video content has to communicate messages in engaging, concise and visually stimulating ways goes hand in hand with pitches, presentations and proposals.
Through this article, I’m going to layout to you how video content can be utilised within pitches, presentations and proposals. I’m also going to explain the key benefits and how it can make your message stand out that much more and resonate with its intended audience.
How To Use Video Content In Presentations, Pitches, and Proposals
- Embed Into A Presentation
Use video content to add extra life to your presentation. Even though presentations can be animated in all sorts of ways to make them visually stimulating, at the end of the day you are still showing your audience an abundance of text and images. Embedding video content within the presentation is a very practical way of offering more perspectives on the ideas you are sharing.
This may be a video clip acting as a reference point to an argument you are making. Or, it may be a clip that explains your argument in a different way, thus adding that extra bit of oomph to it. Whatever your reason is, embedding the video into the presentation will give you more opportunities to present your message in different ways whilst giving the audience a little bit of respite from the droning sound of your voice.
- Use A Video As A Trailer
Many pitches, presentations and proposals come with very little context. The opening minute of reading or listening should be of high impact. However, we’re often figuring out what’s going on and why we’re taking in this information.
Instead, picture your presentation or document as the main feature-length film. Everyone will love it when they see it, but they want a little bit of information about it before they commit to the whole thing. So give them this in the form of a trailer. Producing a video that summarises your message and key information in an engaging way will help you in clearly getting your point across whilst convincing your audience what you have to tell them is worth taking in.
This can be effective in so many ways. Send it out before you deliver a presentation, publish it alongside a longer document or even show it right before you are delivering a set of slides. In all instances, it will add clarity to your messages and make what you actually end up delivering much clearer.
- The Video Is The Presentation
If at this point you’re thinking that actually, you want to do away with the laborious long documents, then go for it! Video can absolutely act as the pitch or presentation itself. Within a piece of video content, you have the ability to highlight key pieces of text, reference other videos and visuals and even drive home your branding at the same time. If you’re not much of a presenter yourself, you can employ a slick voiceover artist or a tip-top motion graphic designer to deliver your message in a much more engaging way.
This way you don’t have to mess about producing vast amounts of text-based documents. You can include all the information and content you need AND it’s much easier to construct a story around your message. Let’s face it, who wouldn’t prefer to hear a story than a lecture?
Benefits Of Using Video Content In Presentations, Pitches, and Proposals
- Provide A Succinct Overview
Presentations have the habit of going on for a long time. The pitch and proposal documents that back them up don’t provide much respite. Yes, a lot of the information included is essential. Businesses need to be clear with the information they are sharing. But we’re all human and our attention spans are known to fade very quickly. A video that provides a succinct overview of the information is the perfect way to capture everything that needs to be said.
More often than not a vast set of slides or proposal document is the lead piece of content. This should be so much different, something that dense should act as a reference point rather than an enticing summary. Using a video to communicate the key ideas and most important information will capture the interest of your audience and then lead them to the relevant sections of the wider document.
Video here acts as a way of ensuring your all-important message isn’t diluted in a sea of text. Entice them in and make it clear what you are communicating. THEN, back it up with your well-researched presentation.
- Be More Captivating And Persuasive
Film and video have long been a medium that has the ability to stir an audience’s emotion. Delivering a presentation is no different. You want your audience to react to your message on an emotional level. If they do, you highly increase the chances of your message being persuasive and therefore achieving what you aim to do.
Utilising the communication powers of video therefore makes total sense. Injecting energy through music or instilling raw emotion via touching footage are all viable options when pitching to your chosen audience. These filmmaking techniques don’t just reside in Hollywood, they are available to you and it’d be daft not to use them.
Big brands and organisations do this outwardly all the time to persuade their customers to work with them. Make sure you take this approach and apply it to your internal communications. The techniques work just as powerfully. It doesn’t matter if you’re flogging trainers or convincing your sales team that your new brand idea is the best they’ve ever seen.
- Double Up As Marketing Material
Video marketing has quickly become one of the leading tools in digital marketing strategies. Its shareability, flexibility of use across digital platforms and damn right quality makes it an ideal external communication tool. Now, not everything you produce for internal use is going to be relevant for wider marketing use. However, there is often more life in a video than there is a lengthy document.
Firstly, the obvious marketing uses. If you create a video presentation to convince a potential client you are the right company for them, there is a very high chance this message will also resonate with your wider audience. If it does, throw it out on social media, bang it into people’s inbox and sit it on your website. This will have a much longer life span than a lengthy document and will be relevant to wider audiences.
If the information isn’t relevant for marketing use, don’t fear. Consider how other departments and individuals in your company can use it. Did you create a video to convince the sales team that your brand ideas are amazing? Did it work? Well if it did, that very sales team might want to use the same killer persuasive content you used on them when they go out there selling. See where I’m going with this? Content repurposing isn’t just for your digital marketing campaigns.
To Conclude
So there we have it, a comprehensive guide to how you can use video content as part of your pitches, presentations and proposals and the lovely benefits that come with it. This should have given you a fresh insight into the options you have when it comes to communicating externally and internally.
Let loose. Welcome video content into your life and the way you persuade your colleagues and clients will never be the same again.
Of course, if you need a helping hand in putting some top video content together, the Glacé Media team are always on hand. Just head over to our website and drop us a message to let us know just what sort of video you are looking to produce.