No More Event Recap Videos | See Marketing as an Investment, Not a Gamble
Don’t waste your money on an event hype video!
I’m serious. Just don’t do it.
Why?
They’re a terrible marketing investment.
Today, I’m sharing how to stop losing your marketing dollars on event recap videos. Instead, you can turn that spend into an investment to build up your brand value and create long-lasting content.
Marketing Is an Investment | Stop Gambling
It's my belief that marketing should be seen an investment, not an expense. It’s about using every piece of marketing content as an investment to build up your brand over time. When you invest money, it may seem like you’re putting in just a few dollars at a time, but the value compounds exponentially over time. You end up with millions. Same concept applies to your marketing.
Investing in brand value allows you to raise your pricing value over time. You already know people buy from the organizations they know, like and trust. But which ones do they spend the most with? The ones where they feel the strongest bond and draw. The ones with the highest brand value.
This isn't about getting as much money from the customers as possible. It’s about establishing your true value in the marketplace and continuing to provide genuine value to your customer base.
While working in a marketing department, I often heard: “What’s the ROI?” It was spoken in a way to correct perceived inefficiencies in marketing. The irony is that question wasn’t really about ROI. It wasn’t about getting the most return on an investment. It was about getting an immediate return on the spend. Big difference.
Return on investment (ROI) is actually an investment. You're thinking long-term and leveraging what you're doing to add significant value over time. Immediate return on investment (IROS) is looking at marketing as a gamble. If it doesn't turn up an immediate response, then it's not a good investment, right?
Answer these questions:
What’s your end goal?
Are you willing to invest in your organization and brand to establish longevity? To create a true, meaningful relationship between your organization and the end user? To keep adding value over time and use your marketing to reinforce the value to our customers?
Or do you need to see immediate results?
While I think most brands will benefit from both brand-building and direct response efforts, expecting to see an immediate return on every piece of marketing content could land you in a bad spot. And just cranking out content without looking at the long-term picture, could land you in an even worse spot.
Which brings me back to the event recap video. Just making these to check off the box of “hey we made our event recap video” is silly. There’s a better way of doing it. You can still get your recap video, but also create significant long-term value for your organization at the same time. All you need to do is take some time to plan ahead and think about what kind of value this could really become.
Event Recap Video Defined | “The Thing We Did Last Week Was Awesome”…?
The event recap video itself is an expression of an inability to be thoughtful, clearly plan out your goals and properly leverage an event. It’s a knee-jerk reaction.
It goes something like this:
“Hey, we are having an event!”
“Cool, let’s film it!”
“Why?”
“Because that’s just what we do.”
These videos recap your event. You see lots of really cool documentary style footage and some lifestyle footage. People writing things down. High-fiving. Saying things like: Yeahhhh this was awesome! You watch speakers step onto stage. See wide shots of the audience. You take all the footage, throw it together, then select an amped up hype track for the whole video.
Yep, that’s your event recap video. It basically says: “We were here. And it happened. And it was great. It was awesome.”
The whole point is to get people hyped about an event….that happened a couple of days ago. Hmmm. Does that make good sense?
Value of the Event Recap Video | What Are You Really Paying for Here?
What's the value of these videos? At worst, the event recap video basically does what I just said: “Hey, this really fun, cool event happened, but it happened like two days ago and we all had fun there. Don't you wish you were there?” The intent is to continue the fun past the event and generate some sense of FOMO for the people who weren't actually there. This would be the case if you didn’t have a plan for the event video. You just made it. Posted it. End of story.
At best, event promo videos can actually be used effectively inside a sales funnel for presales for the next year. After your event closes, you could run presales for next year at a discounted rate. You’re leveraging both scarcity and timeframe. People will see your event recap video and wish they could have been there...but now that can sign up to do just that the next year. That leverages FOMO. That’s a good use of an event recap video.
Still, it doesn’t have a long shelf life. The video is good for no more than one year. After that year passes, it’s irrelevant. In reality, you’ll probably only use it for one to two months at most. And if all you’re doing is using it for a recap video — it’s relevant for only a week.
Yikes. Was it really worth spending money on that recap video if it’s only useful for such a short span?
That’s what I want you to think about. How much did it cost you to have someone come out to film your event? Was it worth the investment?
Are Hype Videos Binge-worthy? | The Answer is No
The final product is a video that has one goal: hype. There’s no story. There’s no change in emotions. It’s just hype, hype, HYPE. The video has to get you excited and keep you excited. Recap videos are “firework content.” They make a blast...then they’re gone. A video can only sustain that excitement for a short amount of time. No more than 30 to 60 seconds. After that, things get boring...very fast...because all you have is one emotion.
When all you see is one emotion, emotional atrophy starts to set in. You recognize the pattern. It doesn’t change. It becomes the new normal. You’re no longer excited. You’re waiting for the twist or turn that never comes. Oh wait, you’re actually bored now.
Hype videos are most effective in the first 30 seconds. Then the audience catches on to what’s going on and checks out.
There's only so many really cool shots and trendy transitions you can throw at people to keep them engaged when the emotional state is consistent throughout the entire time.
If there's no tension, there's no attention.
Here’s another problem with event hype videos: People request you film everything. It’s a fear-based perspective. Instead of thinking through what you really need to create a video, people prefer to just film it all.
Let’s do some math. Say you have a four day event with 8 hour days. That’s 32 hours of the event. And you want it all recorded. Your videographers will be recording around 40% of the time so that lands you with somewhere between 12 to 16 hours of footage.
And all you need is a 30 second promo from 12-16 hours of footage.
And that promo is only good for a couple months.
Does this sound like a good investment? Does it make sense to pay someone to grab all that footage for a 30 second video?
Should you film everything when all you need are a couple sweeping crowd shots, footage of some of the speakers (not all), and some close-ups of the audience enjoying the event?
This fear of “oh but we might miss something,” drives people to keep filming everything even though it doesn’t make sense. And now what you're doing is basically paying for corporate home videos - dad's there with the camera, capturing everything for no purpose. The vast majority of the shots will never make it into a video. They’re just sitting lifeless on a drive somewhere. Doing nothing.
True ROI Mindset | How Can We Maximize the Value of This Event?
The better way to approach filming your event is to think about how to get the most longevity out of the content. That doesn’t mean you stop filming events, but rather abandon the checkbox mentality of thinking “we have to film this event because that’s what we do.” Instead, start thinking about how you could extract more value from the engagement. Ask these questions:
Value-based questions for Event Videos:
What's going to be happening at this event?
Who's going to be there?
What footage can we get?
How can we leverage this event?
Think about how to maximize value for your organization. What could you do with this footage besides a 30 second promo video that won’t be relevant after a week?
One way to approach this is to make a story about the event. You’d still capture your footage for the promo, but also add on a few interviews. It’s just a little more effort, but the benefit is significant. Now you’re getting a story with shelf life beyond a single year. You have something meaningful and engaging. Your audience can share what impacted them and why they want to be here every year. Your team can share how they picked the theme and what made the event truly special. Now you've got something with actual value ingrained into the narrative. It’s teaching the viewer something. People want to listen.
If you interview customers, you can transcribe those interviews. Now you have customer language which improves your copy and helps you keep an outward perspective on your organization.
If you have a famous speaker at your event, you can get a more in-depth on-camera interview. Now that becomes a more lasting piece of content for you social media channels.
Just some ideas to consider.
With the amount of footage you recorded for the story, you can still get your promo AND story video. You get both. That’s the great thing about thinking proactively: you can still have your cake and eat it too.
Start thinking about marketing as an investment. Think beyond the checkbox. The next time someone says “hey we need an event recap video” resist the urge to just check that off your to-do list and move on to the next thing. Think about how to maximize the value of each engagement. That way you’re ensuring the longevity of your organization. You’re deepening the relationship with your audience and increasing the value they're gaining from your product or service.
All it requires is anticipation. Think about every engagement as a potential investment instead of every engagement as a checkbox. How can you create the most value from your content?