When producing your videos, don’t obsess over producing a perfect video. Just film it. Upload it. And Share it.
How to create healthcare marketing videos
On to the filming part. If you’re mainly interested in online lead generation, your healthcare marketing video doesn’t need to have the story of an art house film or the production values of a major Hollywood blockbuster. You can run the gamut between from-the-hip, documentary-style videos that feature real patients to slick, professionally acted adverts with slick, studio-quality production values. Here’s why I suggest the former:
There are two really easy ways to film a healthcare marketing video and upload it to YouTube
First, get a YouTube account – it takes minutes, and it’s free. Then…
- Take your iPhone, click your camera application, slide the option to video (bottom left of your screen), film a patient giving you a glowing testimonials (with permission, obviously), and upload it on your channel, all in a few minutes and the clicks of a few buttons. Or…
- If you have a webcam (or a Mac with an embedded webcam), sit your patient in front of your computer, go to YouTube, sign-in (assuming you’ve already created an account), and click upload. This gives you an option to “Record from webcam”
But what about editing?
I’m not advising against editing your video. Editing is a virtue. And, editing can be done on your computer – but it takes time – to learn the tricks (I learned how to use iMovie for the Mac in an afternoon) and to process the files (which tend to be huge).
But, if editing your video is what’s holding you back from sharing it – don’t let it. From the research I’ve found, regardless of whether the video is user-generated, premium (professionally-produced) or super-premium (studio-quality).
- just over 50% of videos get 500 views or less
- 25% of those views will come in the first four days and
- by and large, only the first 30 to 6o seconds will be watched
The worst thing about obsessing about production value is that it …s…l…o…w…s… you down. Videos that should have taken weeks to produce end up taking months, video channels languish from inactivity, and your audience goes to where the content is fresh and new.
In fact, there is some evidence (albeit isolated) to suggest that the presence of video on your website helps to increase online conversion rates – whether users watch the videos or not.
Why waiting on the perfect video is not a good strategy
The most viewed laser eye surgery video on YouTube was posted by a laser eye surgery patient, without any apparent commercial intent.
As of a few days ago, the above video has had 1,338,444 views (placing it in the top 0.33% of all videos with over a million views) and comes up first when you type in “laser eye surgery”. It’s had 2,487 “Likes” and 153 “Dislikes”, and boasts over 6,000 comments from other YouTube users.
In case you didn’t see it, it’s just a straight microscopic video capture of the patient’s laser eye surgery. Why is this the most popular laser eye surgery video? Maybe it’s because it’s been around for 4 years, which is a senior citizen in YouTube terms (can you believe that YouTube has only been around since February 2005?). But it’s also popular, because it’s popular.
To someone unfamiliar with laser eye surgery, the surgeon’s-eye-view is both interesting and helpful to understand how laser eye surgery works (or in this case – worked). Notice that the video is incredibly popular, despite it’s relatively low production values.
There are scores of videos like this on the site. Yet, videos about the same subject, produced by television studios like 10 Years Younger don’t hold a candle to this kind of popularity. I have yet to see any correlation between production values and video popularity. If you are in possession of this research, please let me know and set me straight using the comments below.
Often, the more views your video has, the more likely it is to be viewed.
The healthcare marketing take-away
If the expense of super high-definition quality, professional scripting, actors and groovy soundtracks is holding you back – don’t let it. These improvements mainly represent an extra expense that really doesn’t add up to much in terms of return.
Meet our Founders
Rod Solar
Founder & Scalable Business Advisor
Rod co-founded LiveseySolar and acts as a Fractional CMO and Scalable Business Advisor for our customers. He’s on a mission to help transform the lives of 10,000 people with vision correction surgery by 2024. To achieve that, he inspires his customers to make confident decisions that will help 50,000 people take the first step towards vision correction.
LiveseySolar completely transformed the way we were approaching this… We’ve gone from having just the dream of having a practice to having a practice up and running with people making inquiries and booking for procedures… It’s extremely pleasing. We feel lucky we connected with LiveseySolar.
— Dr Matthew Russell, MBChB, FRANZCO, specialist ophthalmic surgeon and founder of VSON and OKKO
Laura Livesey
Founder & CEO
Laura Livesey is the co-founder & CEO of LiveseySolar. She has developed powerful refractive surgery marketing systems that increase patient volumes and profits for doctors, clinics, and hospitals, since 1997.
Rod and Laura know as much about marketing surgery to patients as I know about performing it. They are an expert in the field of laser eye surgery marketing. They know this industry inside out. I believe that they could help many companies in a variety of areas including marketing materials, sales training and marketing support for doctors.
— Prof. Dan Reinstein, MD MA FRSC DABO, founder of the London Vision Clinic, UK
