Video is the most powerful medium right now. Every social platform has their algorithm tuned to show video after video. On YouTube’s platform, 70 percent of videos are set to autoplay by its recommendation algorithm. Every day, there are more than four billion video views on Facebook. Videos on LinkedIn get five times more engagement than other content, and Instagram videos receive 38 percent more engagement than posts with images. With United States residents now spending an average of five hours and 38 minutes each week on mobile devices alone, mobile video consumption has skyrocketed.
Even with all of the value that video content drives for brands, many marketers still don’t use it. The most common reasons seem to be a lack of time, not knowing where to start, and not understanding the ROI of video.
I’m the chief marketing officer at Rubica, a cybersecurity startup. For us, video has increased engagement threefold and is part of how we humanize cybersecurity.
You see, most (90 percent) of cybersecurity companies service large enterprise companies or the government. They have a very serious, stoic tone. They are militaristic, masculine, and, for most of us, intimidating.
At Rubica, we serve people and businesses. One of our main differentiators is that, if you have a cybersecurity question, you can call us and talk to real humans. We care deeply about the digital rights of people. We created the company to prevent hackers from stealing your precious data, digital identity, and money.
Our job is to help real human beings, and in order to get that messaging across, we need to humanize cybersecurity in our marketing content.
How Rubica Humanizes Cybersecurity With Video
Our CEO, Frances Dewing, is a woman — one of the only female CEOs in our industry. Frances is incredibly knowledgeable about the technical intricacies of cybersecurity and is deeply passionate about social justice. For us, she is the perfect spokeswoman for Rubica.
Frances had already built the muscle of regularly posting on LinkedIn — she was used to sharing a combination of leadership advice, cybersecurity tips, and expertise about diversity, equity and inclusion. Our goal was to translate her wisdom into accessible video content.
You Don’t Need a Big Budget, Loads of Time, or a Ton of Experience to Make Your First Video
In January, our marketing team started filming her. If I’m being honest, she didn’t love being filmed at first. To make it less awkward, we started by having conversations on camera in a series of interviews. We’d identify relevant topics, select hashtags, and format the accompanying text in her LinkedIn posts. With an iPhone X, basic editing, transitions, and graphics, our videos provided exclusive access to the CEO of a cybersecurity company.
These video posts saw, on average, three times more engagement than her text-based posts—and all by leveraging free tools and a few hours of production time.
In addition to posting via her personal LinkedIn platform, my team leveraged her videos on the company organic social channels. Across the board — LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram — video views, likes, and engagement dwarfed our text-based or visual organic posts.
Frances got more and more comfortable behind the camera. We continued to build momentum.
When work-from-home policies were implemented, Fran shifted to filming selfie videos. She talked about current events like the Zoom vulnerabilities and risk when applying for government loans.
Why We Hired a Marketing Coordinator With Video Experience
As our video marketing goals grew beyond our elementary editing skills, we realized we needed someone who could take our video content to the next level. We hired a marketing coordinator with video editing experience who was able to visually improve our videos of Fran and create sizzle reels for campaigns, video ads, and other video projects requiring a more seasoned skill set.
With the ability to quickly produce higher-quality videos for more engagement, he created our pillar video asset for our Feeding America campaign, which donated proceeds from new subscriptions to fight the food shortage in our community.
Why Organic Video Is Essential to Rubica’s Marketing
Cybersecurity requires establishing trust. In our experience, organic video has been essential to telling our story, educating the viewer, and building trust. We’ve had a lot of success speaking at virtual conferences, hosting webinars, and using 15- to 60-second videos to promote those activities.
Organic video works for us. It gives us more room to get our messaging across within a tight budget on all social channels, and in a way that resonates with our audience. And while our near-term roadmap includes experimenting with LinkedIn Live and paid ads, we’ll continue to use organic video as a key part of our marketing strategy.
What Type of Video Is Right for Your Marketing Mix?
Creating videos for organic or paid media doesn’t have to be super time consuming or costly. At Rubica, we’ve created basic video ads using accessible and free tools. We’ve also invested in resources on Fiverr and hired a marketing coordinator to help us create rich media and product promo videos. Our weekly video assets now include selfie videos from our CEO, Frances, and our customer success lead, Josh.
What works for a cybersecurity company might not meet the same marketing needs of a different industry. Depending on your available resources, budget, and marketing goals, you may choose to start with organic video or invest in paid ads.
Although more costly, paid video ads can be effective for the right brand or industry. As our Google Ads rep told us in the fall, if you’re not using video ads, don’t bother using ads at all. Video ads are also tricky — you only have a few milliseconds to catch the viewer’s attention. So the first imagery and message is critical for captivating the audience enough to watch the full video. This might be a great fit for a product or message that doesn’t carry much nuance or need a detailed explanation.
I highly recommend getting started with video to build your company or personal brand. Whether your goals are to create buzz around a product launch, build brand equity, or humanize a highly technical and intimidating industry, if you’re not already using video as part of your marketing strategy, then you’re missing a huge opportunity.
