Every business (start-up or established) has a story to tell. Those stories often start out small, but have huge ambitions — driven to expand by the will of their founders.
For one of Funnel’s founders, Pelle Made, that story didn’t start in a garage or in a university think tank. It started decades ago on the slopes of Tärnaby, Sweden. It’s a remote mountain town near the Norwegian border that is more famous for producing world-class skiers than tech visionaries.
It’s a story that the Funnel marketing team knew it needed to record. So, we set out to create a sort of mini-documentary. And while it’s nice to produce a glossy piece about your company’s founders, these videos can have a distinct value for building up the business, too.
Storytelling powers content marketing
Especially in a business like Funnel’s, human-based stories (like that of a founder) can provide a unique and authentic perspective that your competitors can’t copy. In the tech space, it provides a bit of reprieve from the usual topics that are covered.
Founder stories also play a role in building trust and credibility. After all, we live in an era of high consumer skepticism. By putting the real human journey of our co-founder front and center, customers can begin to see the values and backstory that support how our brand operates.
Plus, videos like this are great for a content marketing team. This sort of content already tends to be highly engaging — thereby drawing customers into our brand sphere of influence. A longer-form video also provides the opportunity to create spinoff content that can be distributed across shared channels. This provides further low-cost outreach opportunities.
Quite simply, it’s a great way to get the brand in front of customers and even future employees.
Strengthening employer branding
Founder stories are critical to shaping a company’s brand as an employer. Tech companies, in particular, face steep competition in attracting top talent. But a well-produced video featuring a tech company’s value can attract that talent through that same human connection.
This applies to both future and current employees. These videos draw in applicants who share the values and vision expressed in the founder story — reducing hiring time and cost in the long term. It can similarly instill a sense of pride in current employees, thereby reducing turnover.
Connecting the story to revenue
Founder story videos don’t just build a company’s brand. They have a direct impact on revenue generation. By creating an emotional connection with customers, these videos encourage brand loyalty, which reduces churn in the long run. You could even make the case that any increase in brand affinity also increases the likelihood of upsells and referral business.
The trust and credibility these videos provide can also be connected to revenue. Many businesses place a high importance on leadership vision when choosing vendors or partners. Seeing a clear, articulate founder with a deep understanding of the industry can reassure potential clients about the long-term stability and reliability of the company, making it easier to close deals.
What metrics matter here?
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you knew the data section was coming sooner or later. Founder videos, as beautiful as they may be, should still be monitored against some kind of metrics in order to evaluate how successful and valuable the effort was. So what do we look at?
The first metric is important, albeit qualitative: satisfaction. First and foremost, we need to ensure that the founders we are featuring are happy and proud with how we portray them. Additionally, we need to ensure that our teams around the world feel inspired after watching the piece. This is collected anecdotally during watch parties and through Slack conversations.
We also will evaluate this piece against some of our typical YouTube metrics including views and average watch time. This allows us to get a sense of how many people are finding and consuming the content.
The role of in-house teams
Many marketers might think that it takes high-end external agencies to produce glossy founder videos. And while that may sometimes be the case, in-house marketing teams can also have a unique perspective that helps them produce equally powerful content.
Just think, those in-house marketers are more likely to have direct relationships with founders and leadership teams than external agencies. Coupled with an intimate knowledge of their business and its customers, in-house teams can rival their external counterparts.
It just takes a bit of time, space and creative freedom for these in-house teams to produce top-tier work. For instance, our own team shot onsite in Tärnaby to collect unique footage and ensured that the editing process wasn’t completely derailed in favor of other projects.
The result is a piece that inspires.
The takeaway
In the end, founder videos are great ways to build your brand long term in an effort to create stronger affinity (less churn), increase awareness (shorten sales cycles) and attract / retain talent.
They are also a great excuse for a public relations push while showcasing your leadership and earning your team lots of kudos. That sounds like an all-around win to us.