According to Gartner analyst Hank Barnes, most technology marketers know they need to emphasize differentiators—so they make a list of them. But it’s hard to remember lists. Give prospects one thing to remember you by is Hank’s prescription. Spotlight your differentiator by comparing it to something the prospect knows. Why not use video for differentiation? It’s good at emphasizing one thing and it’s good at comparisons.
A new way to develop your video content strategy
Of course, there’s no “differentiator video” in the vocabulary of most marketers or the portfolios of video producers. But let’s ignore the usual categories and concentrate on the things video is good at. Certainly one of them is commanding short attention spans long enough to put across one thing and video is good at is making comparisons.
Differentiator video comparing two styles of
source code maintenance for mainframe applications.
Explainer videos can be differentiator videos. Compuware, for example, has made numerous webinar-style videos comparing their source code manager to the competition’s. The explainer video here summarizes them in two minutes.
You could build a large content library stocked with much shorter differentiator videos. Especially for social media sharing, they would need a catchy title in the first frame (and poster frame). But beyond that, if your make your one point of comparison memorable, you win.
Why differentiator videos work
The big advantage of this “one thing” approach is that it’s pretty easy to do. It’s not like producing a product-oriented video, where there are always tough decisions to make on what gets included and what gets left out. The more features and benefits you enumerate, the less likely they will be remembered.
But what if you are communicating just one thing that you know prospects can recognize as a differentiator? If you’re right about the differentiator, you can hardly go wrong on the video. You’ve eliminated the what-do-we-talk-about decisions. You can focus on creative decisions. How do we frame the comparison for the viewer? What memorable words and visuals should we use?
And because your video is short and narrowly focused, you can deploy it to different target audiences in different campaigns and channels. Differentiator videos could make a big difference in your content marketing strategy.
