12 Ways to Use Live Video for Marketing, Sales, and in the Workplace
More than any other communications tool, live streaming video has the power to convey messages faster and more effectively throughout your entire organization. For many top enterprise companies, the use of live video for marketing and sales, in conjunction with on-demand video, is a critical business differentiator. Meanwhile, internal live streams are becoming a necessity in corporate communications, inter-team collaboration and workforce development and efficiency.
This isn’t surprising. Video has the unique ability to win the hearts and minds of viewers, and live video is even more compelling. There’s an allure that surrounds live video because the audience can experience an event as it happens. Live streaming is on the rise; in fact, live video is fast becoming the fastest growing segment of internet traffic, totalling nearly 13% of all Internet video traffic by 2021.
Want to understand how you can best utilize this trend for maximum business impact? Here’s your guide to becoming a video-first organization, inspiring and delighting both customers and employees.
How to Livestream to Employees and Internal Audiences
1. Executive Communications
Corporate communications teams must disseminate information to employees so they can build relationships. A cadence of communication trickling down to all levels can help leadership build trust and commitment and maintain a vibrant corporate culture. Additionally, this ensures everyone is briefed on new policies or crucial organizational pivots, with the same messaging. Live streaming of “all-hands meetings” enables top executives to engage in two-way communication with employees in an authentic human way.
2. Internal Meetings
Live video enables dispersed teams to collaborate and share information as if everyone was in the same room. Project updates from co-workers lead to higher engagement and a better understanding of how everyone works together to achieve the “big picture.”
3. Employee Training
Training through video, either through live streaming or on-demand, allows you to impart large amounts of data quickly to hundreds or thousands of employees, while watching the bottom line. Live training sessions with video provide an immediacy that passive forms of training cannot compete with. The nature of live video allows for real-time interactions between instructors and participants no matter where they are.
4. Investor Relations
Streaming a shareholder meeting allows more investors to participate while saving money on travel. An incredible benefit of these videos is that they can later serve as a companion to earnings reports, breaking down complex issues into an easily-understood, succinct, form.
5. Franchise Communications
Live and on-demand video bridges the geographic gap between corporate staff and franchise owners. Business video users can communicate key business messages and complex information to dispersed networks of employees to ensure all franchisees implement programs and products consistently - the key to maintaining the strong brand image.
6. Human Resources
HR teams are using live video to attract and reduce the time it takes to recruit the best candidates across the globe. Once hired, video enables enterprises to reduce new employee onboarding time.
7. Sales Enablement
Live and on-demand video provides field sales teams with immediate access to business intelligence and content that allows them to react appropriately to buyer inquiries. This in turn, allows enterprises to reduce costs, increase employee productivity, and capture lost revenue.
How to Use Live Video for More Effective Marketing, Sales, and Customer Support
8. Marketing
Live streaming video allows brands to engage with current or potential customers in a more human, accessible way. It’s ideal for behind the scenes views into your brand, product introductions and demonstrations, capturing and sharing live events or Q&As, and holding live press interviews for international media outlets.
9. Event Coverage
Brands can live stream their events, from fashion shows to factory tours, or make the most of their sponsorship or attendance at events by going live at sporting events, concerts, or awards shows. They can also stream behind-the-scenes views and host interviews with participants. Both are good ways for brands to connect with viewers who can comment real-time about what they’d like to see, what they want to learn, or who they want to hear from next.
10. Conferences
For enterprises that host their own conferences or trade shows, live streaming is an easy way to extend the keynote and panel sessions to larger audiences of prospects, customers, and partners who didn’t attend in person. Videos can be made available on-demand immediately afterward to further extend audience reach.
11. Sales
Live streaming video is a useful tool that enables sales reps to support different conversations during the buyer’s decision-making process. It allows sales reps to pull in technical experts and take conversations to the next level by easily explaining complex topics.
12. Customer Support
Brands can use live video streaming to host interactive “office hours” to answer customer and prospect questions and demonstrate how to use products. When you use video for customer support, service agents can get in front of customers for face-to-face conversations. Unlike live chats without video, conversations are real-time and there’s no delay waiting for messages to appear, or risk of mistakes due to typos. Additionally, issues can be explained more easily verbally, for both parties.
Enterprises are using live streaming in new ways to drive business results. More frequent video communications means more efficient and cost-effective interactions with both internal and external audiences. Live video works across a multitude of enterprise teams- marketing, sales, customer success, HR, PR, corporate communications and leadership- no matter where they’re located. Get creative and consider which use cases make the most sense for your business. The future is going Live. Are you and your team (camera) ready?
To learn ways some of the most notable global organizations are seeing results from live streaming, download our brief below.
