Why I wish I’d started using video marketing earlier – Vincent Fletcher, CartonCloud

Gold Coast Innovation Hub: Innovators’ Insights Blog Series

Before you reach for another book, listen to another podcast or watch the latest interview with a world famous entrepreneur from Silicon Valley for advice on how to start a global business, read this series! The Innovators’ Insights Blog Series explores the things that successful Gold Coast innovators wish they had known when they started. In our first Innovators Insights post, read candid insights from Vincent Fletcher from CartonCloud.

“Why I wish I’d started using video marketing earlier”

Our software had been in development for nearly 4 years, and available for purchase for about a year when I first heard “our story” told out-loud by our (then) only sales person, Rob.

“… They were a 3pl transport and warehousing company who became a software company ….. The founder understands the industry and the clients businesses inside and out! ….. They were exactly the same as you! …. that’s why the product is so good!”

It seems obvious now, but until I heard Rob telling the story to a client over the phone, I’d never occurred to me to tell others about it.
From my perspective, as the founder, our story was really a story of failing to do proper due diligence. Two guys in their 20s borrow money, make a huge mistake and then try to dig their way out of it again by building software, I had never thought this would resonate with our audiences of small to medium logistics businesses.

Once Rob realised “The Story” was the best opener to a sales qualification call, he got me to write the story on our website. Amazingly, we started to find that sometimes people we called already knew our story. In some cases they had very little knowledge of what our software actually did, yet had read our story front to back and that was the only thing they could really remember.

Fast forward 18 months and we and the “Our Story” page is the second highest viewed page on our website (behind our homepage). Not only are our sales people referencing it in every qualification call, but in 40% of cases the prospective leads comment on how much they enjoyed watching the video on our website, our Story Video.

Having the story told in video form has really leveraged our background. We incorporate some old video footage that I was lucky enough to have had my dad film one day when he came over to visit from New Zealand. It’s quite sad that in the whole 3 years we worked within that company the only photos and videos we have to show for it are a handful he took over two days when he stayed.

The story in video has allowed us to promote our business through Social Media like never before. It’s also used not just for sales purposes, but also for recruitment. In interviews, I always begin by asking: “So.. what do you know about CartonCloud?” more often than not, the candidates themselves completely nail the whole story from start to finish – yet can sometimes be a little unclear about what we actually do with the software.

Today, we’ve taken stories a step further. Rather than just tell our own story, we head all over the country with Andre from BizVideo, telling our clients stories. I love going to meet with them, spending time with them, hearing about why their business exists, and then filming this (along with use of our product of course!) and providing it back to them as a great little video. And this isn’t just so they have a momento, metrics-wise, our conversion rates on landing pages increased by 140% once we stuck a customer story video in as the first thing people see when the page loads.

More recently, I used a cut-down version of both “Our Story” and “Porta I Bicci – The Iannace Story” within a 20 minute investment pitch. I found it really helped the various Venture Capitalists to get a fast, clear understanding of who we are, what we do, and who our clients are. It must have worked because we got the funding!

So, get out there and write your story on your website. Then, turn that story into a video, and, now that you’ve overcome your fear of cameras, go and film your customer stories too!

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