You know the saying, "a picture speaks 1000 words” well, imagine what you can do in a video! Creating a year-end campaign video to showcase your accomplishments for 2020 is a great way to get creative and recap everything you’ve done in the past year.
Year-end campaign videos can:
- Demonstrate the impact of the year’s accomplishments
- Showcase your organization’s personality
- Thank your donors and let them know how they have helped make a difference
- Show how important your cause is
- Depending on your campaigns goals, include a strong call to action to donate, volunteer or join you monthly giving program
Benefits of Using Video in Your Marketing Strategy
A recent study done by Hubspot found that
- 54% of people want to see more video content from marketers.
- 73% of surveyed consumers worldwide prefer seeing videos on social media that are "entertaining."
- In 2019 video was the #1 form of media used in content strategy, overtaking blogs and infographics.
If you haven’t tried using video in your content strategy before, your year-end appeals are a great place to start! You don’t need the help of Steven Spielberg to make stellar content, just a camera, a subject and a fun idea. Here’s how:
Tell the Story of Your Cause
We all know how busy year-end campaigns can get. Grab your supporter’s attention by telling a story that builds a bridge between them and your mission. To do so, you need to create a classic hero‘s journey with a beginning, middle and end.
Your donor plays the hero’s role, who can fight the villain (your cause). The antagonist in the story depends on what your organization stands for. It can be homelessness, hunger, cultural preservation or pets who need a loving home.
A year-end video should strive to demonstrate the progress you’ve made and where you want to go in the upcoming year. An excellent place to start is how you’ve dealt with COVID or your plans for improvement in 2021. Are there things you were not able to get to this year but hope to in the future?
Find the strongest threads from your 2020 programs, activities and projects to inspire your donors to give. Choosing a storyline is the most critical step in the video-making process, so don’t be afraid to take your time in crafting your message. There are a ton of free storytelling resources to help craft the perfect narrative for your video, like Story Telling for Nonprofits! Their free video lessons and worksheets are a great place to start crafting your message.
Try using this activity for a team-building exercise by getting your staff involved in a fun brainstorming session!
Don’t Get Hung Up on Video Quality
A high-quality camera and mic are nice, but the video’s focus is not the production value. There are a ton of free online software out there like clipchamp.com that offer free video editing online. You can also record and edit videos right off your phone using applications from the app store.
The most important parts of your video production are clarity, relevancy and creativity. You don’t need fancy equipment, but try to keep things interesting by incorporating different shots or angles. See if there are any photos or clips from previous events or activities you can incorporate into your campaign video.
You should also do some planning before pressing record. That can mean creating a storyboard, script or list of questions that you will ask when filming. You should also consider if you need to create more than one type of video for different platforms or donor segments. For example recording different messages or creating shorter style videos for social media.
Spending a few minutes planning out your idea and thinking about what the final product will look like can help save hours and result in a better product overall.
Get Different Perspectives
There are lots of people you can feature in your video, the first is your CEO, Director or Founder. Someone who is leading your organization’s success and probably already has a great relationship with your donors. They can speak on the organization’s operational aspect and what they hope to achieve in the future.
You can also feature someone your organization has helped in the year that illustrates the impact you hope to have on others in the community. For example, telling the story of a dog struggling to find a home but finally got adopted. Or someone who was suffering from homelessness who was able to make their way off the street. Let them explain why your organization is important to them and others in the community. If you can, it’s always best to have people tell their own stories with their voice.
Consider bringing a volunteer, instructor or program leader to speak, especially on how they help you persevere through the pandemic. A dedicated volunteer has hands-on experience working in the day to day of your organization. They can speak about why they choose to spend their time there and the importance of supporting your cause.
Even consider inviting a major donor, top fundraising or corporate sponsor to discuss why they help (you could even include the corporate sponsorship opportunity as a sponsorship benefit to be shared amongst their network!). Liek we mentioned above, depending on the campaign and segments you have, yu may need to create different videos to suit the needs of your audiences.
Track Your Success
Finally, you should track the success of your campaign. You put in a lot of effort to make your video special, so use your CRM and social media analytics to determine if this is something you want to invest in again. Or to see if there were areas you can improve on for future videos.
A robust CRM can track the number of replies and click rates your content receives through email. However, it can’t read your donor’s mind. So consider also sending a year-end survey asking for feedback on your campaign video.
