How Equity Trust Company scales video production with HeyGen

Equity Trust Company is a financial services leader specializing in self-directed IRAs. Video is a key medium for customer engagement and education in the industry. Jesse Briley, Equity Trust’s Senior Manager of Marketing Engagement, oversees a team dedicated to producing compelling content across a range of channels to effectively engage their audience.

Recognizing the growing influence of video, Jesse set ambitious goals to expand their video production efforts. To increase video production, the company sought innovative solutions to enhance efficiency and scale content creation. HeyGen provided a transformative solution, enabling Equity Trust to streamline its workflow and optimize resources.

Overcoming resource constraints and efficiency issues

One significant hurdle was resource constraints, making it difficult to produce video content at the volume and quality they envisioned. Moreover, creating professional-grade videos required substantial time and effort, particularly involving the company’s Director of Education. As a highly sought-after subject matter expert, the director had limited availability for video shoots.

“The volume of content teams are putting out seems to be growing every year to remain relevant and competitive,” said Jesse. “Scalability is important and content teams need a growing set of tools that allow for automation and efficiency, which includes the use of AI more and more.”

The team also had to meet the high expectations of their audience, who demanded professional and authentic content. Videos needed to reflect Equity Trust’s commitment to quality without appearing “AI-generated,” as maintaining trust and credibility with viewers was paramount. These challenges underscored the need for a more scalable, efficient solution to support the team’s video production goals and maintain the trust of their audience.

Leveraging HeyGen for scalable, authentic video content

Equity Trust discovered HeyGen during an online search and decided to test its innovative AI video capabilities. For Jesse and his team, the experiment aimed to determine if AI-generated videos could meet their goals of producing high-quality, scalable content, reducing production time and resource dependency, and maintaining authenticity to preserve audience trust.

In just one hour, the team created a digital avatar of their Director of Education, capturing his voice and visual presence. This allowed Equity Trust to produce professional-grade educational videos for social media, internal training, and customer engagement without requiring the director’s direct involvement and time. By reducing bottlenecks and ensuring consistent quality, the innovative approach opened new avenues for scalable, authentic content creation.

“With HeyGen, we could create short, snappy videos that maintained a professional quality. It was especially effective for social media,” said Jesse. “The scalability it provided was a game-changer for our team.”

Transforming video production with AI-driven solutions

After initial trials and some refinement, Equity Trust successfully integrated HeyGen into its content creation process. The results were significant:

• Time Savings: Before HeyGen, producing a single video required over five hours of work. With HeyGen, the same output was achieved in minutes, dramatically improving productivity.
• Content Volume: The team created 12 videos within a short period of time, a feat previously unattainable given resource limitations.
• Versatility: The AI-powered videos were used across multiple channels, including TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels. While primarily customer-facing, the videos also found applications in internal training.

“HeyGen is the future of scalable content creation,” said Jesse. “For small teams or even individual creators, AI tools like HeyGen are irreplaceable.”

By leveraging HeyGen’s AI capabilities, Equity Trust could tailor content to specific audience segments, experimenting with different avatars to match diverse demographics. The platform’s ability to scale video production efficiently without straining internal resources aligns with the team’s long-term goals, ensuring they can meet growing demand. 

As AI technology advances, Equity Trust’s experience demonstrates the transformative potential of tools like HeyGen for modern marketing teams.

‍