You don’t need to hire a professional or a digital marketing agency to create videos for digital marketing.
Using the technology on your smartphone and a few handy tools on a laptop, you can accomplish a lot.
Crafting a video. Editing a video. Publishing a video. Promoting a video. You can do it all.
A smart video marketing campaign keeps you competitive and taps into a growing audience of users who prefer video content in contrast to reading a blog you’ve written or a social media infographics.
A video is a call-to-attention. A user has to click on it. It’s a stop-and-watch. There’s a lot on the line with a video. They’re more time-consuming to produce than a blog. While you are asking more from your audience, when done right, video marketing rewards are everything you want them to be and more.
Why Use Video Marketing in Your Digital Presence
Why we use video marketing is because more and more users prefer to watch videos than consuming content through other methods.
Users are more likely to comment on and share a video through social media than a blog or general post.
Like other forms of content marketing, video helps improve your SEO, social media numbers, engagement, and overall website metrics.
In fact, video conversion rates are almost always higher – and significantly so – than other marketing types.
There is also plenty you can do with a video that you can’t do with any other form of content. Video allows your customers to get to know your brand through visual cues. They get to see personality, your voice, and your creativity. Video brings your brand to life! It makes you real!
How Much Does It Cost to Make Videos for Marketing My Business?
You can create videos at a surprisingly affordable cost with more or less what you already have.
Let’s look at YouTube personalities as an example. They’re amateur filmmakers who use smartphones as a starting point to make their videos. If you go this route, there’s very little you need.
- A camera, such as the one on your smartphone.
- A software program to edit your video, such as iMovie.
These two things are all you need. If you want to take things to the next step, upgrading your camera to a digital single-lens reflex camera, aka a DSLR, will improve overall video quality and provide more options in terms of what you can film.
How to Make A Video that Looks Professional – Tips and Tricks to Remember!
There are a half-dozen tricks that can add a lot of quality to a video, professional or not.
- Clear out your background. Ensure there’s a solid-colored wall there or not anything distracting.
- Ensure your professional video marketing has lots of light. Natural light. Artificial light. Strategic lighting aimed at a subject. All of our favourite movies and series have professional people lighting the scene. Do your best to light yours.
- No handheld video. Mount your camera on a tripod or a stable surface. Stabilizing a camera avoids sudden shivers or moves that will trick the user into thinking you’re employing a better camera than what you actually have.
- Use a separate microphone or film at close-range. Audio quality matters. Using a microphone is one approach that can minimize background noise and capture more of what you’re shooting. If you don’t have access to a microphone, try filming closer to a subject.
- To that last point, ensure where your shooting is quiet. You don’t want smartphones buzzing, construction noise, or AC units turning on and off in the background.
What You Need in Video Marketing Software
So you’ve shot your footage. What’s next – you got it. Put it into your video editing software.
There are lots of free video editing tools out there as well as more advanced paid software.
Marketing videos don’t really need a lot done to them. They don’t have to be fancy. All you require is a way to cut video, assemble video clips, and save them into a single video with degradation of quality.
Have A Clear Idea, Theme, or Focus for Your Video Marketing
Something else that should be shared is, even if you get everything right from a technical standpoint, if your video is not about anything important to your target audience you won’t receive their click.
Before you start filming, have a clear theme or focus for your video. Define your message.
How you communicate the value of your video to the customer matters. Write a script or at minimum, have an outline of what you’re doing to do or say.
Do not ramble. Get to the point. Be engaging. Be yourself. Make every second of your video count.
How Do I Know My Video Marketing Campaign is Working?
The best video marketing campaigns are successful according to how they measure across the following metrics.
- How many people are watching your video. This is captured as ‘total views’.
The higher the views, the more successful your video appears to others which can lead to more users clicking and consuming. This metric relies on promotion via social media, email, and additional marketing channels.
- How long a user watches your video for. This shows whether your video is interesting.
Platforms usually give this out as ‘engagement rate’. If you notice people aren’t watching your video for very long, it could be for any number of reasons. Evaluate how you’re presenting and whether it’s accurate to the content contained in the video.
- How many page visitors clicked on your video. This is given as ‘play rate’. It is also sometimes given as click-through rate.
This metric indicates whether the presentation of a video was interesting enough to click on, if you’re using appropriate keywords, or if people are ignoring your video.
Different Types of Video Marketing
There are specific standards and expectations for each kind of video a brand produces. Something that’s posted on Instagram, for example, isn’t going to have the same tone or engagement as a long-form video on YouTube.
- Long-form how-to guides and education-based videos. This type of video marketing is lengthy, informative, and isn’t as slick as other types.
- Ephemeral content are videos that are only meant to be consumed for a temporary period. This type of video doesn’t have to be flashy and can be filmed on a simple smartphone. Snapchat, Instagram, and other platforms provide ephemeral video opportunities.
- Product videos are key to a lot of brands. Product videos can introduce how to use a product, the benefits of a product, and how it affects the lives of those who have purchased said product.
- Marketing videos are those which market a company culture, products, or services. Promotional-based and usually incorporating elements of animation or graphic design, this is one of the more professional types of video marketing you can produce.
These are the main 4 types of video marketing to base a campaign around. Any of these potentially could be better than the others for your brand.
Consulting with a digital marketing agency may shine a light on what approach is best to pursue.
Subcategories of video types also include vlogs, behind-the-scenes, interviews, webinars, presentations, events, tutorials, product reviews, customer testimonials, live streaming, contests and giveaways, and the publishing and/or sharing of user-generated content.
Connect with audience. Realize your business goals. Tap into a whole new way of driving clicks and gaining revenues. Video marketing that reaches through a smartphone screen and emotionally resonates with a user can drive sales unlike any other form of marketing. Find a marketing strategy that works with video. You don’t need a big budget to do it, either. Do it with the experts at Unlimited Exposure. The decision is yours.
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