Client communications can take up a lot of your team’s time. They can result in excessive Zoom calls, stress, and eventual burnout. Even worse - they can be very unproductive.
Enter video!
Video can help free up your team’s bandwidth while making customers happier and improving agency results. In this post, we explain how with 7 ways agencies can use video for client communications.
1. To prospect and sell
The best time to start using video is before someone’s a client.
Why?
Because a video lets you show prospects what you can do for them. It makes them a lot more likely to turn into leads and, eventually, customers. 2 common strategies are to…
- Explain what you can do using past examples as proof.
- Show you see a problem or pain point - e.g. low site speed or poor UX design - and can recommend a solution
Both of these come across really well. They also add a personal touch to your pre-sale process, which prospects like.
The smart thing to do is suggest a video in your first e-mail - e.g. “I noticed your website is slow, want a video of me explaining why?”. This saves your sales team time wasted on pitching disinterested prospects.
Here’s an example of someone pitching me this way. (Spoiler alert: it turned me into a warm lead.)
Video prospecting example
Email 1
Email 2
And here's the video that went along with it!
To see more video prospecting examples and best practices, check out this article.
2. To welcome customers
Pre-recorded videos are a personable way to welcome customers to your agency. They’re a sign that you care enough to make a one-to-one video - and a chance to show your warmth and excitement about the client.
A basic welcome video should…
- Thank the customer for their business
- Lay out any upcoming next steps, i.e. onboarding calls
- Feel a little personal - e.g. make callbacks to past conversations, show your excitement
If making individual videos is impractical, e.g. you work in mass retail, canned videos are a good alternative. If possible, individualize these - e.g. by making separate videos for each popular product type.
3. To onboard
Help agency customers make the most of your product or service. Either…
- Give them one or several longform walkthrough videos
- Drip out pre-recorded videos via email
- Create a self-serve knowledge base they can use at any time
Note: a self-serve knowledge base doesn’t have to be hard to create. A notion file with links to Sendspark videos (which are free to make and upload) is more than enough.
In your onboarding materials…
- Pre-empt customer support questions by addressing FAQs right off the bat
- Tell customers how they can ask for customer support when they need it
- Send out canned onboarding messages tailored to your audience, e.g. tips on making the most of SEO content for lawyers or UX improvements for SaaS companies
4. To teach and troubleshoot
Even experienced agency clients will need to learn your processes. Help customers get there faster with educational and problem response videos.
At first, you can create these videos to respond to problems as they arise. Over time, once you identify common sticking points, you can create canned materials and merge them into your knowledge library.
The cool thing about these videos is that they help you respond to client challenges asynchronously. This frees agency employees up from having to respond to issues live and makes everyone’s lives easier.
5. Upselling
Video isn’t just good for prospecting; it’s a powerful way to upsell to current agency clients. With video, you can…
- Show customers how you can add more value to their business by showing off new tech, new services, and new capabilities.
- Create persuasive case studies that show customers how you can replicate others’ results for them.
- Highlight recent results on video when renewing contracts, asking to increase spend, etc.
- Upsell partners’ services and products.
All these methods help increase sales without forcing you to find new leads. And since video is better for sales than pure text - it’s more personable and persuasive - it’s a better way to upsell.
6. Async client comms
Messengers like Slack are powerful for sure. But as we all found out during the pandemic, keeping up with internal and external teams using just Slack and Zoom is tough. Having to be always-on burns teams out fast.
The solution?
Asynchronous client communications.
Use a messenger like Slack… But instead of live calls and always being on, respond with videos whenever convenient.
This way, you can synchronize your own team and your clients’ work teams seamlessly… While never being online at the same time and avoiding live calls.
This reduces the need for team meetings, frees team members up for deep work, and makes your agency a lot easier to work with.
It’s also easier to create and watch reports, presentations, etc. when they’re in video form!
7. Ask for video testimonials and feedback
Since video testimonials make you look good and drum up new business, you really want these. And Sendspark’s video request feature makes it easy to ask for testimonials in seconds.
You can also use Sendspark to ask for feedback during the work process. For example, a client has a bug they’re reporting - but you can’t recreate it?
Ask them to record their screen with Sendspark so you can see exactly what they’re seeing and fix it.
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Why communicate with customers through video?
The three main reasons to move client comms to video as an agency are…
1. Save time
Recording a video is faster than typing out an email. Videos can be viewed asynchronously, reducing the need for Zoom meetings and live calls. Lots of time saved for teams and individuals.
2. Videos are easier and more fun to watch
People, especially key decision makers, are overwhelmed with text content. Videos are easier and more fun to watch; they’re also more memorable. These all contribute to video emails being opened 2x as often as text ones (Source: Sendspark).
To make sure your messages are easy and fun for clients to watch, use video!
3. They’re more information-dense
The old proverb tells us a video is worth a thousand words. We can’t attest to that - but you can get important points across a lot faster with a screen share video than lots of words and a few screenshots.
In summary…
Videos can help prospect, sell, and upsell. They can help welcome, onboard, and teach customers. And they’re handy for asynchronous client communications, which are a lot less stressful for team members.
Want to add videos to your agency’s client (and internal) comms today? Get a free Sendspark account to start in seconds.
