Soapbox by Wistia: How You Can Use it in Your Marketing

Every marketer today knows that video content is a must, but unfortunately, for many, it gets throw to the wayside when they stop to think about the time commitment to filming and editing.

Good news: Those days are long gone.

Earlier this month, Wistia released Soapbox - a free Chrome extension that allows you to record yourself and screen right from your browser. (and can I just be real for a second… it’s awesome!!)

Soapbox isn’t just your average screen-recorder. After you’re done recording, you are able to immediately fine tune  the video, determining when the video displays  your screen, face, or a split-screen of both with a simple, user-friendly editor.

When you’re done, you can then customize your thumbnail, trim the start and end of the video, and share it right away  - no waiting for it to export or render.

With this new easy-to-use tool, the barriers are lowered and the possibilities are just about endless for businesses wanting to leverage video in their marketing. 

With that in mind, here are a few ways you can use Soapbox in the marketing and sales efforts of businesses of all shapes and sizes:

Soapbox for Marketing

If you’ve been keeping up with digital marketing trends over the last year, you already know that video is the current name-of-the-game. In fact, including a video on a landing page can increase conversions by as much as 80%, so it's not something to ignore. 

As mentioned earlier, Soapbox makes  it quicker and easier than ever to incorporate video into your inbound marketing strategy. Consider using it to create the following:

Tutorials / How-To Videos

Educating prospects is an integral part of the Awareness Stage of the Buyer’s Journey, and tutorials or how-to videos are a great way to do just that.

If there was a model use case for Soapbox, it would certainly be video tutorials for the web and other tools.

Creating and publishing things likes software demos used to take a significant amount of time, effort. and resources to put together. Now, anyone with knowledge of your tool can create these videos with little-to-no production skill. .

Not sure where to start with tutorial or how-to videos? Consider creating a list of the most frequently asked questions about your product or service and start creating a single video that answer each question!

Webinars

It’s no secret that webinars have been a successful lead-generating tool for many businesses over the years.

While Wistia currently doesn’t do a live webinar hosting service, Soapbox is a great tool for creating pre-recorded video podcasts or webinars that you can use as gated content on your website.

Creating on-demand webinars could simply be you and a coworker sitting down, writing a simple script or outline, and recording a 30-minute video going through a slide deck  - switching between views of  you, the slides (or examples), and a split screen when appropriate.

The big takeaway here isn’t that Soapbox necessarily changes the nature of video marketing, it’s just making it significantly easier for the everyday marketer to make these videos happen!

Reflection Videos

Many industry influencers have begun using video to record their reflections on various topics, events. and more. These videos are typically fairly short in length (1-10 minutes) and their genuinely human feel make prime for going viral.

Gary Vaynerchuk  is the king of these kind of videos.

Reflection videos may be inspirational, or they may just be a simple review and takeaways of an event like INBOUND 2016.

Whatever you choose to reflect on, Soapbox allows you to quickly record yourself while  aiding your message with  other on-screen collateral.

And again, the simple editor and not needing to render or export your video will make these videos faster and easier to create than ever.

Podcasts

Wanting to start a video podcast but not sure how? Don’t have the budget to buy video equipment or software to produce one? Soapbox is great for that too! (Are you seeing a theme here?)

While Soapbox certainly has limitations in this area (i.e. you won’t be able to have guests in multiple locations, multiple camera angles, etc.), it will provide a great place to get started, and make the barrier to entry for creating video podcasts much lower.

Your production value may not be as high as other podcasts, but what you lack in style  you’ll likely make up for in speed and ease of use!

Soapbox for Sales and Beyond

Soapbox will certainly be an incredible tool for marketers to produce great videos, but the practical implications of this tool extend far beyond marketing as well.

Being able to quickly produce screen-sharing videos will also be an incredible asset to sales organizations and human resources.

Presentations / Briefs

During most sales processes, there are usually multiple presentations and proposal meetings. There are many ways sales teams could use Soapbox to make this process better and more personal.

For example, if a prospect is having a hard time getting all of the necessary stakeholders together for a proposal meeting, your sales team could utilize Soapbox to record a presentation or proposal that a prospect can share with the decision-makers of their company at a later time.

Another similar use case would be to record video snippets of your sales presentation that you do every time, and send them out beforehand so you save time in the presentation itself.

One way we’ve already started using Soapbox at IMPACT is for client briefs in the sales-to-service handoff process.

When a new project comes in to the team, a member of the sales team will use Soapbox to record a client brief explaining what the project will entail and showing the necessary assets on their screen.

With this, everyone on the team knows exactly what’s going on with the new project without having to schedule a meeting with everyone all at the same time.

We at IMPACT are excited to see how Soapbox will continue to make our internal processes smoother!

Training / Onboarding

Employee training is an important part of any company. Being able to train employees efficiently and consistently across the company can save human resources a staggering amount of money, not to mention the time of personally sitting down with each person.

At IMPACT, we’ve started recording video trainings for  when we onboard new employees. Thanks to these videos  individuals can spend less time doing the same training over and over again with each new person that joins the team and those being trained can go back or revisit the video at their own pace.

This is especially useful for standard processes you have across your company. Start with trainings that you have to give every single employee that onboards, no matter what their position is.

Some of these video trainings might include how to setup your email account, how to view your pay stubs, how to submit a report, etc.

For Personal Use

Soapbox might end up being useful beyond the business world, too.

Last week, Wistia put out an article with 5 ways to use Soapbox for everyday life, and I couldn’t help but share! From teaching music lessons remotely to recording vacation recaps to send to relatives, the possibilities are seemingly endless!

Key Takeaway

With the almost barrier-free entry to video marketing Wistia’s Soapbox extension provides, it’s easy to see how organizations can benefit right away.

From marketing to sales to human resources and beyond, Soapbox is opening the doors for more widespread production of video, and ultimately for more organizations to start taking advantage of the incredible opportunity for connection video provides.

What ways are you thinking about using Soapbox for your organization? Let us know in the comments below!