As we approach 2016 – wasn’t this truly considered “the future” in more than a few science fiction films of the past decade or so? – perhaps it’s time you start considering what a corporate video, specifically spokesperson videos, can do to enhance your company branding.

While many corporate entities choose to produce a video for business, or a series of videos for their websites or YouTube channels – and that’s a good thing – an astonishingly effective tactic involves using a spokesperson. To begin with, you will need to decide how you want your brand to be represented and thus perceived by website visitors. What is it exactly that you want your viewing audience to know and feel? As you proceed forward with choosing a spokesperson, this must stay in the forefront.

Before we get into what Green Screen Talent Now believes are the top three reasons businesses should in invest in the creation of a spokesperson video for the company, let’s cover some fundamentals regarding corporate video production tactics…

 

Who Should be Your Spokesperson? Here are Some Options:

As your spokesperson/representative, you can use:

• The CEO or president of the company.
• Yourself, if your company is small or mid-sized.
• A product expert, who may be the ideal candidate to represent your products or services.
• A recognized expert in your area of business, providing your products or services credibility.
• A professional actor or actress, as offered by a corporate video production expert such as Green Screen Talent Now.

 

But just because someone thinks they have a great on-camera personality doesn’t make him or her a spokesperson – indeed, being a spokesperson isn’t for everyone. He or she must be able to:

• Speak in a friendly, articulate and credible way
• Look into the camera and exude confidence
• Be likable and relatable
• Boast charisma
• Get people to see things from their perspective

Always keep in mind that the ultimate goal here is to get people to buy your products and support your brand; think very carefully about the individual you are considering as a spokesperson, even more so if that individual is yourself. Don’t be afraid to take a long, hard look and be honest: Does the criteria we outlined above fit? If not, he or she can negatively impact your brand identity, so it’s best to begin looking elsewhere.

Still, even if the spokesperson you’re considering does meet the aforementioned criteria, there’s more to this equation…they must also be comfortable in front of the camera, because if not, the discomfort will come right through and show, ultimately impacting the branding message your video is attempting to deliver.

 

An Ideal Choice: Hiring a Professional Actor or Actress as a Corporate Video Spokesperson

If you decide to go the – ideal, in our opinion – professional video spokesperson route, it is important to select an agency which allows you to choose between several actors and actresses. What’s always vital to remember is that this individual – whether male or female, younger or older – will quickly become the face of your company or brand, and his or her personality will, by default, become your company’s persona.

Considering your target market and what appeals to this demographic is also a factor when selecting an actor or actress for a corporate video. We understand the importance of professionally polished, experience-rich video spokespeople and offer an impressive range at affordable rates.

 

The Reasons to Invest in a Spokesperson Video

We have found, in all of years of doing what we do best, that far too many businesses come off as being “faceless” – there’s no personality to the brand, product or services and as such their offerings just don’t feel “real.” With this comes a loss of conversions, leads and prospects…something no business owner wants to experience. When properly implemented, a website spokesperson serves as a proverbial magnet, pulling visitors into a website and keeping them engaged.

Since we brought up “magnet,” let’s talk about this factor for a moment. Web-based commerce requires a magnetic draw, wherein website visitors are being pulled in rather than experiencing a message that’s “pushed out” to the masses (a tactic known as the bullhorn approach). By use of a virtual spokesperson, visitors can be gently drawn deeper into a site. When we say “gently,” we’re referring to the opposite of those website videos that feature a video spokesperson who immediately launches into a sales pitch…in order to implement a “soft sales” strategy and generate sales leads, a spokesperson should also follow a soft sales strategy.

With all this in mind, let’s take a closer look at the three major reasons why smart business owners should invest in the creation of a spokesperson video.

 

1. Spokesperson Videos Build Brand Trust

As you should have garnered by now, a spokesperson provides your company or organization with a human face and voice, and is also the one individual who can connect with your audience quickly to get them to support your brand. In so doing, he or she constructs trust and credibility for your company while providing a complete audial and visual experience. The most talented of spokespeople for online videos can help brand your company identity, simultaneously achieving the right balance of interest and information which is sure to get your message across – while grabbing attention.

 

2. Spokesperson Videos Create Shareable Content

Though there’s no real magic formula to guarantee you that your video will go viral, there are several things that all powerful online videos often have in common…and boasting a charismatic personality is definitely one of them. Think of any ad campaign that consistently makes use of a “spokesperson,” such as the lovable Geico Gecko (described as “cute and witty”) or Ashton Kutcher in those Nikon ads (considered “super sexy” by the female demographics catching the campaign)…you can’t help but associate these personalities with their brands. Then, of course, there’s the viral Old Spice guy – ridiculously over-the-top yet manly at the same time, he helped the brand reinvent itself as a fun, younger guy’s product.

Getting the picture here? Memorable, personable spokespeople will get your brand etched into the cognitive memories of the people your company is targeting, and creating sharable videos can result in dramatically increased recognition for your business. In a day and age of data-in-a-second advertising and everything-in-a-visual sense marketing, viral videos have launched businesses from complete obscurity into nearly overnight successes; considering that videos will represent 55-percent of all Internet traffic by 2016, creating effective videos for your business can be a long-term solution for obtaining leads and maintaining relevance.

 

Most video success stories share the following characteristics:

• They’re concise.
• They’ve made parody songs out of popular music, substituting the original lyrics for those relevant to the company.
• They’ve “crowd-sourced” positive publicity for the business through approaches such as video contests.
• They boast charismatic personalities.
• They’re created by experienced video content experts.
• They’ve been considered with tactful promotion.

 

3. Spokesperson Videos Lower Website Bounce-Rates

It’s a verifiable fact now that people prefer to watch a website video rather than read long-form text on a webpage, and so the next step becomes getting visitors to your site and keeping them from “bouncing.” The term bounce-rate refers to the percentage of single-page visits – or the visits that resulted in the individual leaving a site from the entrance page – and we believe that the bounce-rate is indeed a measure of visit quality. In other words, a visitor that lands on your site and stays – while visiting multiple pages on the site – would not be considered a “bouncer.”

But how do spokesperson videos lower website bounce-rates, exactly? All our cumulative experience has demonstrated that video on a website will keep visitors at the site longer, so long as the content of the video is relevant. Some analytics reports are showing visitors staying on sites that include video approximately three times longer than on similar sites that don’t boast video; thus the bounce-rate at these sites is 50-percent lower than similar ones. In turn, the pages viewed per visitor can also be considered excellent, with five pages viewed per visitor. The bottom line is that people are ENGAGED by the walk-on video spokesperson, and are listening to what he or she has to say.

 

The way we see it here at Green Screen Talent Now, the measure of a great website is not how many visitors arrive, but how many of those visitors become a new prospect for a company’s sales team. If your website does not feature a video spokesperson, you may be missing an opportunity…or two.