March 19, 2021
In a world without in-person meetings, you’ve likely already been told how important it is to incorporate video into your sales and marketing strategies. And while it’s true that video is key to setting the stage for building relationships with allocators and due diligence analysts, all video is not created equal, especially when it comes to investment firms.
At the end of the day, the videos you create are only useful if they are being used by your sales team to share information about your firm with analysts. However, in our experience, this is not often the case. Typically video is being created and then left untouched, despite the firm making a significant investment in its production.
We get it. You know you need to be shooting video and incorporating it into your strategy, and so, like many firms, you find a videographer and do just that. This often results in beautifully shot videos of your building, lobby, and team... without very much substance to work with.
This is because — understandably — most videographers don’t know the questions investment allocators want answered, and you’re left with videos that are nicely made but of little use to your sales team.
To help remedy this, we’re going to break down three key tips for successful videos for your investment firms. We know exactly what due diligence analysts want to know, and we want to help set you up for success.
At Dakota, we started shooting videos of the managers we raise money for in 2017 to solve one key problem: to provide our sales team with another way to get due diligence analysts to connect with our Portfolio Managers. We use a simple video link in an email. It’s been incredibly successful and our team uses these video links in emails all the time to introduce our investment strategies to analysts.
We believe so much in the power of video that we created Dakota Studios to help us and others shoot professional videos that investment sales teams will use.
By the end of this article, you’ll know exactly what should be included in a video about your firm, allowing you to create digital assets that your sales team will use to better connect with allocators.
Your videos aren’t being used because they aren’t answering the right questions. To fix this, you need to define what those questions are, and outline the answers to them. This will help you collect your thoughts, and plan what to say before the camera starts rolling.
Each video should have a purpose, whether that’s to introduce your firm, give an overview of your strategy, or explain your portfolio construction process. Having a clear plan for each video keeps you focused, organized, and ensures that you’re covering the exact topics a due diligence analyst wants answered.
Think of it as being in a pitch meeting — without the meeting.
These templates can also be used to practice what will be said in each video, and can be done interview-style so that when you do start filming, you’re at ease and as prepared as possible when the camera starts rolling.
This simple pre-production tip may feel insignificant, but we’ve found that it can make all the difference to the viewer to know exactly what question you are answering. It’s critical that you’re speaking clearly throughout the video, and stating the question being answered at the beginning of each video.
This allows the viewer to know the question being answered, and will help keep things organized, especially if you’re sending due diligence analysts a series of videos. This is a subtle nuance that can be extremely important in getting your point across correctly.
Once it’s time for post-production, you’ll want to insert images and data that illustrate your points. However, don’t let these speak for themselves.
To get the maximum impact from your viewers, have someone on your team do voice overs as needed, explaining what is being presented and answered. While it may seem that these pre- and post-production elements are extremely nuanced and small, it gets them engaged and allows them to come away with the correct takeaways.
Creating videos about your investment firm can feel like a daunting task, and an expensive one at that. But, after helping our salespeople successfully incorporate video into their sales strategy, we can say with confidence that using video will make a difference.
So, how do you get started shooting video for your investment team when we’ve already told you that most videographers get it wrong?
Start by defining the questions due diligence analysts want answered. What areas do your salespeople spend the most time explaining? Start with the questions and answers, because, at the end of the day, no one knows your firm and your strategy better than the people in it.
Determine your budget. On average, video production can run anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000.
The question becomes: are the resulting videos going to be of use to your sales team? Over the last five years, we’ve learned that it’s incredibly easy to make mistakes that render your videos useless, leaving you out a significant amount of money, with videos salespeople won’t use.
However, we think the above tips will help prevent any of that, and will result in videos your sales team will be excited to use to prospect for new meetings with analysts. Why? Because they answer the questions allocators want answered.
If you want to start shooting video and aren’t sure where to get started, our team is here to help. With years of experience shooting video for investment firms of varying sizes, we’ve recently launched Dakota Studios, a world-class space designed to help investment sales teams create digital assets that they will use to get due diligence analysts to better connect with your firm and your Portfolio Managers.
We wanted to be able to easily shoot videos on a more consistent basis so we created an ESPN-like studio in downtown Philadelphia to do just that. It’s now very easy for us to shoot all kinds of videos and we’ve opened it up to other investment firms to have their videos shot for their salespeople to use.
If you want to learn more about exactly what should be included in videos for your sales team, you can check out this article that outlines exactly that.
If you’re ready to start shooting impactful video for your team, we’d love to set up a video consultation and schedule a time to shoot your videos in our studio, where we’ll not only edit and produce your videos, but coach you through each question with a member of our investment sales team.
Gui Costin is the Founder and CEO of Dakota.
