MarTech Interview with Agustin Esperon, Co-Founder at Wideo

Tell us about your role and journey into Technology. What inspired you to start at Wideo?

I’m one of the Co-Founders and Head of UX/Design. As a Graphic Designer and professional motion grapher, I’ve always been around technology. There is always a new tool or plug-in out there that you can use to get better results. Starting a few years ago, with the emergence of new technology startups and companies creating new products, I became interested in the human experience field: user experience and user interfaces.

The real inspiration for Wideo came from my Co-Founder, Agu De Marco, who felt the pain we solve in his own business. He needed to create a promotional video for a landing page, but the options were very expensive or time consuming. Back in 2012 (before Wideo’s launch), this was a gap in the market to be filled. There wasn’t any tool or solution to attack this need. So he contacted me because of my experience creating explainer videos, and told me, “We have to create a very easy-to-use and affordable tool for video creation needs.”

What is Wideo and how does it fit into a modern Video Marketing Technology stack?

Wideo is an online platform that lets anyone without any previous video or animation knowledge to create video content and presentations easily and quickly. Users can create videos from nothing or edit more than 100 ready-made templates; it’s as easy as editing a Prezi or a PowerPoint document.

Video content has changed the way that companies communicate and promote their products and services. Every social network has become much more video-friendly. This means that most Marketing Managers and Internal Communication Managers have had to start thinking about their strategies of promotion and communication through video. This change is happening because consumers prefer video as a format to consume information. Nobody has time, or wants to spend a lot of time, reading everything brands have to say or promote in a plain text. The most effective way to capture a consumer’s attention today is now video. This is because, among other reasons, our brain loves motion and multisensorial messages.

Wideo allows small businesses and agencies that have low budgets to jump into this new communication paradigm without having to spend tons of money or time.

Which businesses are fastest to adoption of Video platforms? How does it impact Branding and Marketing operations?

Clearly those businesses with a strong online presence are those that are quickest to adapt to change, such as the surge in video marketing. In more traditional businesses it may take a bit more time; although, for example the real estate market, which is a traditional industry, is strongly adapting video as promotional content.

Apart from Content and Social media branding, how can Companies better leverage Wideo for business?

There are multiple applications companies find relevant to use Wideos in their daily activities. One is Internal Communications. With Wideo, companies can create more engaging content for their employees, such as weekly news or onboarding videos. They can create learning demo videos for internal and external end users. Wideo can also be used to create beautiful and eye-catching screen presentations to enrich courses, use at events, pitch investors, and much more.

In terms of external communications, companies use Wideo mainly to explain their products or services on their landing pages, create promotional videos, and make demo videos to explain how their product works.

Tell us more about your product roadmap for Video Marketing? Do you offer Live Streaming solutions?

This year we prepared for our biggest challenge we had to face, which is the end of Flash, the technology on which we had based our first video editor.

Having already overcome this challenge, we are now focusing on the incorporation of filmed video footage, which is a highly requested feature from our users. We will make it possible to add filmed videos into the video creation process and manipulate the footage as any other object. This will bring many more creative possibilities to our users, such as the ability to make an app screencast appear within the frame of a mobile device to show how the app works while the mobile device is animated. Many other tools let users import filmed videos without the ability to manipulate their sizes or animations. We hope to launch this feature by the end of June 2019.

We will also start working on a unique, personalized video alternative by taking advantage of our experience in the industry. We are not currently offering live streaming solutions. Our users can share their videos from their Wideo profiles with our own video player or embed or download the videos to upload to any other website or social media network.

What is the relation between Influencing and Brand Loyalty using Video?

Our brain loves stories. Humans are emotional beings, and brand loyalty implies that your brand is recognized as the best or one of the best options for a certain need. As a brand, you should make that happen, influence your target audience, and get into their minds. Video is a great option for influence, because with audiovisual content, you’ll attract customer attention (brand awareness), stick out in customers mind (brand recall), and positively influence their perception of the brand’s quality and trustworthiness (brand association).

Which brands have managed to successfully transform their brand influencer campaigns using your videos?

Many brands have trusted Wideo to generate video content, such as Staples, Sprint, YPF, and OLX.

Could you tell about your most outstanding digital campaigns?

We are constantly doing ad tests with images versus ads with videos. We always achieve CTRs 4x better average with video than with just images. But, I must emphasize a campaign of retargeting that we did with video offering a special discount for those users who had tried to download their video but had not advanced (in order to download your videos you must subscribe to a plan). With this campaign we achieved a CTR 8x higher than the average of our ads.

Which Marketing and Sales Automation tools and technologies do you currently use?

We use Intercom to interact with our users through onboarding and nurturing campaigns. We also send special offers and announce new features with this tool. We use Unbounce to create Marketing or Product landing pages and also some of our lead generation landing pages and pop ups. We use Zendesk for customer support and to prospect and send special Sales opportunities to our Sales pipeline in HubSpot.

What are your predictions on the most impactful disruptions in Video Creation technology for 2019-2020?

I believe that video will continue to be the main communication format for marketers in any industry throughout 2019. Something that has been gaining strength in the world of video is using interactivity and personalized videos. These two trends will likely grow this year.

What startups in the technology industry are you watching keenly right now?

I’m currently advising Vegunit, a young startup that is creating a consciousness businesses map and a cryptocurrency to be used in a holistic circular economy (yoga and meditation lessons, healthy food and activities, and more). They are creating the MVP and have already received some investment.

How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a Business Leader?

Currently, we use tools that include AI. Mainly, we use them in our lead qualification system for both Email Marketing campaigns and running ads on social networks or to improve the onboarding process for users. Every automated process in a SaaS company implies, to some degree, the use of AI. The new technology based on AI is very useful for the optimization of Sales and Marketing processes. We hope to contribute to this process of technological innovation with a powerful tool for automatic and personalized creation of videos. While we still have a long way to go in this field, I believe that the video together with AI will be powerful.

How do you inspire your people to work with technology?

We don’t really need to inspire our team members too much since they’re already technology fans and love to work on these kinds of products. Most of our team is made up of engineers who have been working in the technology space for many years. We all enjoy using, discovering, and creating tech solutions.

One word that best describes how you work.

Motivation

What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?

Google Mail, Drive, Docs, Insight Timer (for meditation), Waze, Kindle, Spotify, and Wideo, of course.

What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?

I’ve learned to follow this statement from the book “THE ONE THING”: “What’s the ONE Thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

What are you currently reading?

I’m reading two or three books at a time (very slowly when my kids and work give me some time) and exclusively in digital formats using Kindle. I think we shouldn’t waste trees on making paper anymore. Besides, this digital format gives me the opportunity to do a lot of meta-activities, looking up the meaning of words or finding more information about something I’m reading, highlighting, sharing quotes, etc.

Right now I’m reading “The Science of Meditation” by Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson; “Elon Musk” biography by Ashlee Vance and “Mala leche” by Soledad Barruti

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Be with and aware of your present moment, that’s the only real thing that exists.

Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?

I try not to lose the “kid’s astonishment” or curiosity spirit that allows me to keep learning with humility. I recently read the book, “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” which encourages you to always think like a beginner instead of a master. That puts you in the best seat, which is the learner. When you’re a master, there is nothing left to learn, and for me, that would be the end.

Also, I think I’m successful not because of a particular business achievement, but because I (and my entire team) have managed to be the owner of my time, which is the most valuable thing we have from my point of view.

Tag the one person (or more) in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read:

Elon Musk, Jason Fried, Hernan Botbol, and Agu De Marco.

Thank you, Agustin! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.