Increasing Impact of Videos through Lessons from Marketing

Increasing Impact of Videos through Lessons from Marketing

What can learning and development professionals learn from marketing experts? That’s the question we tackle in this episode of The Visual Lounge featuring Danielle Wallace, Chief Learning Strategist from Beyond the Sky.

Danielle specializes in coming up with innovative ways to infuse marketing into training to create learning content that sticks. Believe it or not, we can learn so much from marketing teams, especially when it comes to identifying learner (or consumer) personas, defining the content’s objectives, and creating materials and resources that our target audience wants and needs.

So, where should we begin when it comes to bridging the gap between marketing and training?

Tune in to this amazing episode of The Visual Lounge to find out and get ready to take your training to a new level.

You can watch the video on this topic at the top of this post, to listen to the podcast episode, hit play below, or read on for more…

What makes good content?

When you’re creating learning and development videos, you need to think about what makes good content. What makes learners engage with videos? And how can you make sure that what you’re teaching actually sticks?

Danielle shared what she learned about making good content from her experience working with everyone’s favorite snack – Doritos!

Since she had to create the strategy for Doritos, Danielle had to think about things from a higher level. This involved combining everything from the content strategy to customer research and making sure that everything worked together.

Some aspects of her experience working with this client parallel with learning and development.

Danielle advises L&D professionals to consider the learning strategy and develop a solid understanding of your learner persona. From there, you can develop content that actually creates behavioral change.

Focus on learner behavior

One of Danielle’s top tips to create more impactful L&D videos is to keep them focused on behavior. She suggests that L&D professionals should consider…

“…what is that crystal clear articulation of the behavior to change, and doing away with all the excess fluff, either from the marketing world, or from the learning development world.”

You must be clear on what the key behavior needs to be and then execute your video accordingly. This helps to keep your content focused from a learning standpoint.

Another useful tip from Danielle is to focus on one clear objective. Don’t mix lots of different objectives together in one video. You’ll only confuse and maybe even bore the viewer, which means any information they take in is unlikely to stick.

Instead, keep your video content focused on one objective.

How to overcome common L&D challenges

If you’re a learning and development professional who creates videos, you might notice that it’s easy to let the video run longer than you intended. This usually happens when you drift away from the core objective of your video.

To overcome this common hurdle, Danielle advises that you try to be more disciplined. Even if you create longer videos, it’s okay as long as the learner can articulate the key objective. Having discipline and focus in your message is something that sets the best marketing pieces apart.

Using a multi-sensory experience to create better videos

How can you create more engaging videos for your audience?

Danielle advises that you focus on creating a multi-sensory experience. When you’re watching a video, multiple senses are engaged, and you can see, hear, and even feel emotions. As a video creator, you need to take full advantage of this and try to create an immersive experience for your viewers.

Stay away from creating videos that lack personality and depth. Don’t sit and look at the screen while reading from a script. And, if you do use a script (which is completely fine), make sure that you don’t make it too obvious.

Always aim to create a multi-sensory experience that draws on emotions rather than creating something static and uninteresting that makes people switch off.

Create drama in your videos

Drama is part of the emotion, action and focus of a video that draws you in.

Danielle also talked about the importance of creating drama, which is part of the emotion, action, and focus of a video. It could also be the story, or it could be impactful visuals that grab your audience’s attention.

“Think back to anything you’ve seen on TV, the great commercials you’ve seen online, in theatres, or even great e-learning that has stuck with you. Often you will recall something where there is drama, something that either pulls at your heart or shocks you because all the action is focused there, or just really brings to life those key messages because that’s where the focus is.”

Here are some of Danielle’s top tips to help you create drama in your videos and increase the overall impact your videos have on your audience:

  • Always start with a clear, focused objective
  • Use a creative brainstorming session to think about how you can bring your objective to life
  • Exclude anything that clouds the message (get rid of the fluff!)
  • Identify your learner or consumer persona before you create your videos

Bonus tips from marketing!

Learning and development professionals should draw insights from data and use them to make informed decisions.

One of the most important lessons L&D professionals can take away from marketing is drawing insights from data and using those insights to make informed decisions. Top marketing professionals spend most of their time drawing insights from data, and it’s something that the L&D community can learn to use as well.

Danielle also shared a great tip to help give your videos more impact from the start and that is to make the ‘drama’ part of your video the main learning point.

Take TechSmith, for example, we create lots of videos that are quite technical in nature. Before we get into the meat of the video, we introduce the main topic that gives our videos a clear focus and objective. We then focus on that same objective throughout the video while sharing the information in a way that is easy for our viewers to understand.

For more tips on instructional design and video creation, check out TechSmith Academy.

Matt Pierce

Matt Pierce is a Learning & Video Ambassador at TechSmith. In this role speaks and teaches about video creation and visual communication. A graduate of Indiana University he has ten years of experience working in learning and development with a focus on visual instruction. He has directly managed the training, user assistance, video, and other teams for TechSmith. Teach him something @piercemr

Subscribe to TechSmith’s Newsletter

Join over 200,000 people who get actionable tips and expert advice every month in the TechSmith Newsletter.

Subscribe