Free Guide to Short-Form Video Strategy

Hey there, founder.

The number one reason that most SaaS founders don’t get traction with their video strategies is because they are focused on generating views, when the real focus should be on generating leads.

We want to guide you through the four steps to building a short-form video strategy that enhances lead generation, rather than trying to go viral. Whether you’re looking for an improvement on an existing strategy or want to build one from scratch, you’re in the right place.

This strategy is evergreen. Keep using it for video after video, and soon you’ll have a resource bank of targeted content ideal for connecting with prospects and investors.

Take half an hour to read through this guide, and implement the steps as you go. It’s time to fill your pipeline.

If you’re not into courses or email, we can just meet up and cut to the chase.

J. Ryan offers regular slots for advisory/office hours and you can book here.

Founders who know the power of their stories and how to communicate them build the SaaS brands of their dreams. At ANTEATER, we’ve seen firsthand that the founders who are best at telling their stories are also the best at filling their pipeline.

To join those ranks, you don’t need to be an influencer, a social media expert, or a Hollywood-level video producer.

Here’s what you do need:

Deep, inherent knowledge of what your stack brings to the table.
A quick, sharp method of communicating it to the people who care (a.k.a. your prospects).

That’s where your analogy comes in.

We all know the best start-up pitch decks are the ones that use an analogy to explain what they do. Uber for laundry, AirBnB for dogs, DoorDash for boats. These analogies are what help us to explain what we do to boards of investors (or families at Thanksgiving dinner).

Analogies are also the way that we can make sense of the market we’re in, and highlight the solution you offer to a prospect in a quick, sharp, impactful way. By finding what yours is, you’ll take the first step to building a crystal clear voice that lets prospects know, “Oh, I’m in the right place. This person can solve my problem”.

The ingredients of a great analogy.

Per her byline, Cleo Abram is a video journalist making optimistic tech explainers. In just three seconds, you know exactly who she is (a video journalist), what her unique point of view is (optimistic tech), and how she delivers her information (explainers).

With a clear, soothing voice, an enthusiastic tone, and science-backed claims every step of the way, Cleo is a beacon for viewers. She’s the place they go when they want optimistic scientific news in a world packed full of, well, bad news.

With just two years under her belt, she’s posted 223 videos using the following sign-off:

“If you like optimistic science and tech, follow for more.”

The power of this story lies in that sign-off.

Cleo has a crystal clear image of her analogy, and uses it to communicate her value to incoming viewers. People who care about optimistic science and tech will keep watching, and possibly even subscribe. Everyone else will move on.

In the same way, creating your analogy lets you communicate:

What problem you solve
Who you solve it for
How they can connect with you

Your analogy is the ultimate prospect filter, and well worth taking a couple of minutes to figure out before you film. So, let’s do that.

Step one: Let’s find your analogy.

As a founder, you’re already great at pitching your product. As a person, you already have a unique, distinctive voice that makes people want to listen. You wouldn’t be where you are if you didn’t have these two things already.

To find your analogy and video voice, all you need to do is commit to some research to hone that existing knowledge.

Action point one: Investigate Your Content

Take half an hour and scroll through your favorite YouTube Shorts, Instagram reels, or LinkedIn video content. We’re going to go out and find content you really feel like you connect to.

Now, here’s the important part: define the style of the video you enjoy. Some SaaS-appropriate video styles you might find on your journey are:

Explainer videos – deep dives on particular topics that aim to educate the viewer.
Listicles – shallower list-style videos that give viewers a ‘top ten’ in a niche.

While you’re watching, take deliberate notes about what appeals to you about each video style. Maybe it’s the simplicity and clarity of a listicle style, or the calm yet enthusiastic tone of a particular creator. These are aspirational building blocks we’ll use to create your analogy.

Action point two: Define Your Analogy

Once you’ve defined the style of video you’re excited about, let’s put together your content analogy. We’ll do this like a puzzle.

First, who are you?

Cleo Abrams markets herself as a video journalist. In your niche, what do you do? For you, words like ‘data expert’, ‘distribution leader’, or ‘scrum SaaS founder’ might work.

Next, what problem do you solve?

Cleo noticed a lack of optimistic tech and science news, so she solved the problem. Try to make your value offer as sharp and short as possible, using the format “I _______________”.

Finally, what kind of videos do you make?

This one’s easy. Just drop in the video-style you chose back in action point one.

By the end, you should have something like this:

“Cybersecurity founder helping businesses keep their data safe with simple explainer videos.”

Here’s a hot take: it’s better to have 5 really interested prospects view your video than 1 million uninterested prospects. Going ‘viral’ is an algorithmic fluke, and it’s really hard to turn those views into consistent sales.

If you’re doing this to get famous, it’s a hard road ahead. Most ‘famous’ creators have been doing this for 10 to 15 years. Even the ‘overnight successes’ have generally been at it for just as long, but more quietly.

But if you’re doing this because you want to 10x your software sales with efficiency? Now we’re getting somewhere. You don’t have to go viral to build consistent incoming revenue.

Instead, consider the content you’re going to create as a filter. It catches the right prospects – the ones who care about the problem you solve – and lets the wrong prospects slip past so they won’t clog up your pipeline.

The goal is to bring people to your content at the right time, in the right way, and give them an opportunity to trust you. Phew, that takes some of the pressure off, right?

Trust and your objective go hand-in-hand.

By creating video and building your brand, you’re doing more than posting online. You’re constructing a resource, so that when the right type of person finds your channel, they have a way to:

Get to know you as a founder
Understand your brand
Find trust in your offer
Buy

The number one way to build that trust? Show up authentically. Trying to tailor yourself into someone or something else will show through, especially in an age where people’s radars are fine-tuned to pick out what’s false.

This doesn’t mean you have to take a head-first deep dive into vulnerability, or put your whole life online.

However, it does mean you need to clarify why you’re creating content, and pick topics that suit that objective.

Step two: translate ‘why’ into ‘buy’.

Why are you building a short-form video strategy for your SaaS brand?

Are you a new company wanting to generate awareness in a particular niche? Are you experimenting with an MVP and need beta testers? Are you an established brand looking to scale your sales with a new arm to your marketing strategy?

The sharper and clearer you can be about this objective, the more it’s going to serve you. This isn’t just about tapping into great ideas, it’s about knowing which ones align with your goal and which ones are best left in the archives.

To translate that ‘why’ into ‘buy’, you need to think about your customer’s buy-out journey. Are you trying to educate them about your brand, encourage them to consider a need, or driving a purchase decision? To create the most impact, we want you to use this

When we talk about the ‘time’ you’re dropping video, we’re not talking about the time of day. Your ideal prospects need to see your video when they’re in-market, aware of their problem, and ready to buy a solution. Your videos need to be targeted to a particular stage of your funnel to create the most impact.

The reason you’re making these videos helps you get clear on what content works and what content doesn’t. You’re probably an ideas machine, so narrowing the field ensures you’re only putting energy into content that will genuinely help to scale your sales.

If we want customers to be aware of a new problem we’re solving, then we’re creating ‘awareness’ content to hit the top of the funnel.

Awareness content is focused on building a relationship with your viewer, not encouraging them to purchase. Goodwill content, informative videos, and explainers all sit within this tier.

If we want customers considering a purchase, we create content targeted at highlighting success stories that align with their own needs.

Consideration content tells the story of how your product solves their problem, but indirectly. Focus on sharing client success stories, analyzing industry problems your product can solve, or showcasing newly-developed features.

If we want customers closing the deal and getting in touch, we create CTA content that highlights the benefits of your SaaS and how to get started.

Conversion content is aimed at one thing: driving a conversion. Think of your highest-level conversion. As a SaaS founder, that might be an enterprise client contacting your sales team for a demo, or an individual signing up for a free trial. Your video doesn’t need to ‘close the sale’, it just needs to get your ideal prospects in the door. We’ve found that simple videos with a clear CTA work best here. While there are several stages, pick a starting point as a seed for your 10x strategy.

Action point one: Establish the reason you’re creating a short-form video strategy. Why are you doing this?

Action point two: Draw out your customer buy-out journey and select the stage you’re aiming for with your content. This should align with the objective you chose in action point one.

The real magic comes when we blend your content analogy and founder voice (which you found yesterday) with this objective clarity.

Every founder reading this guide will be at a different stage in their short-form content journey. You might be brand-new and just now considering putting yourself out there as a way to scale your brand’s reach. You might already have an entire marketing arm dedicated to generating short-form video.

Either way, this advice is the best way to 10x your return on video.

Go. All. Out.

Here’s why.

The #1 procrastination trap you need to dodge.

J. Ryan (our CEO and founder) is what they call a ‘gear guy’. When he’s thinking about starting a new project, he’ll buy new headphones, a new microphone, the shiniest new smartphone with 10 pixels more camera quality… he’ll justify all the expenses, tools, and everything else before actually starting to do what I’m intending at all.

Dale (our senior writer) will just plan, and plan, and plan some more (because nothing ever really feels planned out enough, right?).

And we’re not alone. We’ve seen it happen to founders who want to pivot or kick-off their video journeys again and again. But if these strategies don’t actually get them moving, why do people do this?

In short, it feels GREAT. It feels like momentum, even if you’re not actually taking any actionable steps to create progress.

You might be a gear guy, or a plan-crastinator who needs every single beat laid out before they start doing anything, or a ‘what abouter’ who turns themselves in circles trying to account for every single thing before ever hitting ‘Record’.

Luckily, it’s the same prescription for every single procrastination trap you might fall into:

Go all-out.

You have plenty of practice doubling down when things get tough.

We’re not completely sure why it's easy to launch an MVP when you’re building software, but tougher to do it when building content. But, it is!

Nevertheless, there is some good news.

You already know how to do this. You might be new to video (or to approaching it in this way), but kicking off new journeys is what you live and breathe on. You’re a founder.

And you’ve got a certain module built into your brain that will let you go all-out, see returns, and shift your strategy according to what works…

Doing more with the ‘MVP’ mindset.

Instead of leaning into over-planning or procrastinating out of fear, we’re going to get you moving with an MVP mindset.

How to do more with the MVP mindset?

Accept that ‘perfect’ content isn’t required to generate leads for your product. The more time you spend worrying about creating perfect content, the more leads disappear into competitor’s pipelines because they hit ‘Publish’. You can’t sell what people don’t know you have.
Ask ‘what can I get done with what I have?’. Investing in a ton of new gear, talent, and resources can be useful to scale a strategy, but you need to have your foundations clear first. As a founder, you are your product’s brand. Commit to putting yourself and your voice out there as a way to bridge prospects into conversions.
Anticipate that you won’t go viral, and focus on what holds real value for your business. So many founders get caught in the virality trap. They see low views and think their strategy isn’t successful. But it’s not the number of views that counts, it’s the number of leads coming in from said views. Track the right metric (leads generated) to calibrate your strategy for success.

The best thing you can throw at your strategy is time. The best time to start was a year ago. The second best time is right now.

That was true when you started coding, when you started in sales, or when you started building sites. Whatever you do, you started as a beginner. Fact of life.

Having some practice is going to let you get to the ‘synthesis’ level, where you can understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and get really good.

But none of that can happen unless you go all out.

Step three: Film your first 10x-ed short.

Yeah, it’s time! You might be thinking right now: Okay guys, but what video do I actually go and make?

This is where a great video recipe comes in. You might have heard the word ‘format’ in reference to these before, but we like to think of them as recipes here. Using video recipes allows you to assess which content styles truly impact your ideal prospects at the right stage.

They are recyclable and reliable, easy to produce as someone with plenty of expertise in a given field, and great for building authority.

Below are three excellent video recipes for you to choose from. Think of them like more granular versions of the video style you selected when building your analogy.

Action point one: Select your recipe. All three of these recipes are the perfect building blocks of a consistent lead-generating content strategy. For your first 10x-ed short, select just one to film.

1. Recipe One: Most people think…..

a. Start your thesis with ‘most people think’, then turn it around with a ‘but actually’ and make your argument. Finally, close it off with a ‘therefore you should’ and let them know what to go and do next. What do most people get wrong about your industry or your tech? Talk about that and set the record straight.

2. Recipe Two: Top five things…

a. A listicle-style video of things your ideal prospects need to know. E.g. The top five things people don’t know about data parsing. You might already have something like this sitting on your website!

3. Recipe Three: Before and After

a. Take a point in time and explain what was happening before a particular change in your industry, then explain what’s happening now. It could be a specific law. A new invention. An important update. Make sure your topic is niched down to serve your industry, not just for pure entertainment value. If it’s super interesting to you, that’s a great sign that it will be interesting to your ideal prospects, too.

Action point two: Go all-out. You’ve found your content analogy, you understand the stage at which you’re talking to your prospects, and you have everything you need. Yourself, a camera, and years of expertise in your field backing you.

We’ve given you a roadmap here, so whether you’re just beginning your content journey or you’re looking to improve on what’s already there, this is your permission to swing for the fences.

All you need to walk away with is a clean, 45-second video you feel comfortable posting. Once you do, you’ll get data as input that you can interpret to sharpen your strategy.

The most powerful thing you can do for your brand right now is to show up as yourself and let people know you’re solving a real problem.

Now, the question you might be asking yourself is: where do I put this to maximize my efforts?

We talk about video distribution a lot here at ANTEATER, because getting your video into the right hands is just as important as making it in the first place.

It’s all about meeting your customers where they are. B2B customers are rarely found on Instagram, while lifestyle bloggers are rarely found and converted on LinkedIn. So, it’s vital to consider where your target prospects live online, and go find them there.

For example, Amy Volas is a specialty recruiter targeting startups and founders who need to hire executive leadership for their team. Because this is her niche, she knows that LinkedIn is the place her audience (executives, founders, and other recruiters) spend most of their time online. Therefore, she concentrates her voice on LinkedIn.

On the other hand, Laura Higgins is a business coach for solo creative entrepreneurs. She knows that most of her audience’s time is spent on Instagram, because they’re smaller freelancers and business owners who aren’t as well-served by LinkedIn. Therefore, she concentrates her voice and content on Instagram.

Your platform matters. It’s where you’ll find the people who care about the problem you (and your product) solve. So, it’s worth taking the time to find the right platform to focus on.

Amp up your video’s distribution.

Good news! Treating one platform as your primary content focus doesn’t mean you have to discount the others. You can have a primary platform that you serve without icing out potential prospects on other platforms. In fact, there are a few ways to amp up the distribution of your new video content if you have the time and energy.

One of our clients, Chris, works with us to create long-form and short-form content. While his long-form videos live on YouTube, he can serve it to his prospects in other ways to broaden its potential zone of impact.

This is what that looks like:

The long-form video starts life online, where it can reach SMB distributors who are primed to want long-form content. Platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn would be the wrong place to serve this length of a video, because people aren’t ready for a deep-dive when they’re searching for small bites.

Then, he cross-posts to LinkedIn where the largest portion of his audience lives:

*Source: Chris Van Ittersum on LinkedIn*

Finally, he loads it to the SupplyMover site with a comprehensive breakdown of the video’s content, plus an expansion on the lesson from the video for added value. The post includes a CTA at the bottom (in this case, a call to contact) to drive home the ‘why’ – leads!

Some of our suggestions for amping up your short’s reach include:

Cross-posting: re-post your video on your different platforms. Make sure to create a new post each time, rather than re-sharing, as re-sharing posts doesn’t do as well as original content.
Writing supplemental content: Create a blog post or article to sit on-site along with your new embedded video. Not only does this allow you to tease out broader points, but it also puts your prospects on-site, where it’s easy for them to book time with you. Note: this only really works with a long-form video.
Newsletter updates: Let your email list know that you’ve begun posting videos, and encourage them to follow you on your various social platforms if they’re interested in the type of content you plan on creating (make sure to share your crafted analogy here).

Remember: don’t get overwhelmed. These are suggestions you can take on when you’re ready. Right now, your first and only goal is to get that short you’ve filmed live.

Step four: Choose your platform.

So, there’s only one thing left to do: choose where you’re going to post your first 10x-ed short!

Consider your audience. If you’re a SaaS founder, you’re most likely operating with a B2B marketing strategy aimed at generating long-term subscriptions to your stack. Business owners who want to build their revenue and increase efficiency are generally looking for that kind of help in two places: YouTube and LinkedIn.

Therefore, we generally recommend YouTube and LinkedIn as the primary platforms for our incoming SaaS founders. If you’re posting to LinkedIn, we particularly recommend taking a second to think about what your ‘hook’ is going to be. This is the opening line of your post, and the one that makes your prospects sit up and pay attention. Communicate the thesis of your short in a quick, sharp, and impactful way.

Get your post to 59 seconds or under, whip it online, and you’ve done it! The goal isn’t to go viral, the goal is to reach the right people, in the right place, at the right time.

This is your permission to try something new.

By finding out your analogy, figuring out your objective, and creating for the right channel, you’ll get your voice into the hands of prospects who are most likely to convert into leads in your pipeline.

If you haven’t already, we encourage you to step into the arena and upload your very first 10x-ed short to your chosen platform.

Remember: there’s no pressure on you to go viral. It’s better to reach 5 interested prospects in the right way than to reach 1 million uninterested people. Go all-in, commit to the MVP mindset, and eventually you’ll have a pipeline-feeding content strategy running in the background.

Thanks for sticking with us! If you want more free info like this straight to your inbox, subscribe for industry-tested tips you can incorporate into your strategy.

You’ve got this.

J. Ryan & Dale

Free Guide: How to build a short-form video strategy as a SaaS founder.