Experts have long predicted that video would be the next big thing in the financial industry. In one survey, 80% of banks said they plan to begin offering video banking soon, while another survey estimated that video ad spending would increase 26% year-over-year—and all of this was pre-Covid-19. Demand for video in the financial sector is greater than ever and seems likely to continue its rapid growth.

POPi/o, a video banking provider, has reported that requests for video transactions have more than tripled since the pandemic began. If your own financial business is increasingly relying on video communication, read on to understand why this type of digital media is so helpful and learn about the numerous ways you can use video to drive results.

How Video Can Help Your Business

Considering that the majority of consumers would rather watch a video than read text—and they retain 95% of video messages compared to just 10% of written messages—it makes sense for every business to use video for communication. But video is even more important for the financial sector specifically.

Why is that? It all comes down to trust: people don’t want you handling their money in any way if they don’t trust you. Establishing trust is paramount if you want to gain more customers and retain the ones you have. In fact, Vanguard’s research found that clients who highly trust their advisors are more than twice as likely to refer them to others than those who have just modest levels of trust. So how can you build trust? According to Vanguard, the majority—or 53%—of trust is emotional. And the main way to build that emotion is through lots of in-person interactions that allow you to engage with your clients.

Of course, during a pandemic, in-person interaction isn’t exactly recommended. But one mode of communication gets you as close to that as possible, and that’s video. When you communicate by video, you can see facial expressions and body language like you would in-person, which is why video is considered the most effective and engaging form of digital communication. On top of that, video allows you to create a more personal connection with viewers, which will help you build trust with customers in the financial industry. So if you want a simple way to boost trust and personalization with your customers and employees alike, it’s time to rely more on video communication than ever before.

Different Uses of Video in the Financial Field

If you’re ready to start using more videos for your financial business, you need to figure out what kind of content you’ll be creating. To do this, think about the purpose of your video. Are you introducing a new product or service to consumers, or perhaps making an important company announcement to employees? Luckily, video allows you to do both—and more!—in order to get your message across to thousands of viewers at once.

More specifically, the following are some great uses of video in the financial field:

Customer support: Recent years have seen a demand for support via video, and the pandemic has accelerated this. One-on-one video calls allow your representatives to provide personalized assistance to customers using your products or services, whether they have questions about setting up, purchasing additional items, or troubleshooting problems.

Customer onboarding: If you want to release content that will help thousands of people at once, you can create videos that walk new customers through every step. That might include creating an account on the website, making updates to the account, using app or website features, and more.

Video testimonials: One of the easiest ways to show potential customers how happy your current customers are is to display videos that say so. Major financial companies, such as Bank of America and Sun Life Financial, proudly show off video testimonials that tell consumers how the company has helped them.

Educational videos: If you just want to educate all consumers on a financial topic, you can create videos that define complex terms, provide up-to-date statistics, and more. As an example, Saxo Bank has the Morning Call, in which experts live stream the latest information on market trends to help consumers prepare for any upcoming trading. Educational videos can get the attention of the public and keep them coming back to your website regularly, making them more likely to trust your business and eventually become a customer.

Explainer videos: If you want to introduce a new financial product or service to consumers, releasing a video is a great way to educate while creating some buzz. After all, 97% of marketers have said they noticed videos help consumers better understand products. You can post these videos on your website, YouTube, and social media channels so they can easily be shared by viewers.

Behind-the-scenes videos: One of the best ways to humanize your staff and build trust among consumers is to make videos giving viewers a tour of the office, as well as live videos of events your company is hosting. Your employees might also want to make videos where they show off their knowledge of financial topics, such as quick blurbs about the differences between two similar financial terms or their take on the latest trends. Let employees show some personality and even some humor in the videos, as content that is entertaining is likely to be shared by viewers.

Company announcements: If you’re planning a branch closure, merger, acquisition, or any other major changes, you can let your staff know via internal video. You can also create a separate video to communicate the changes to consumers, encouraging them to share the video on social media to spread the word.

These are just some of the most popular types of videos that work well in the financial industry. Once you create some of these video types and see which ones work the best, you can always get creative and branch out to make more.

Tips on Making Effective Videos in the Financial Industry

Before you get to work making videos for any purpose, check out the following tips to increase your chances of successfully reaching your viewers with video content:

  • Keep recorded videos short, anywhere from about 30 seconds to a few minutes for most video types—as shorter videos tend to be the most engaging.
  • If you’re hosting one-on-one video calls with customers, reassure them that the call is private and is not taking place where anyone else can hear or see their sensitive financial information.
  • Pay attention to video performance, such as how many viewers each video gets, how long they watch, and which geographical area they’re from. Tools like Hive Insights 2.0 make tracking metrics easy so you always know how to improve your next video for better results each time.
  • Make sure your network is ready to handle your videos so you can provide the best streaming quality every time you reach out to customers and employees via video. Hive Insights 2.0 can provide network visualizations to show how your videos affect your network.

If you’re thinking of giving video a try so you can stay in close contact with both customers and employees, you may need some help along the way. Hive can assist you when it comes to keeping track of analytics, network impact, and more. Contact us today to find out how we can help you successfully use video to benefit your business in the financial industry!