Video marketing works. Not only does video make your website and your company more visible (fun fact: video content can greatly increase your SEO ranking), but it can be so much more compelling than copy or still images.
The downside is that video marketing takes more investment than most other methods. Camera, lighting, script, editing, graphics… it can all add up and no one wants to blow their budget on a project that may or may not connect with audiences. Sure, it can be well worth it if you do it right, but how can you mitigate the risks? We thought you’d never ask. Here are seven tips to help you get the most out of your video marketing while managing the costs.
1. One video = one goal
What’s the purpose of your video? Recruitment, case study, coverage of a live event? Whatever it is, keep your focus narrow. You wouldn’t hire a pilot to do brain surgery or a doctor to fly a plane; don’t send a recruitment video to do a case study’s job.
2. Now what?
You’ve finished production, but now what to do with it? This goes hand in hand with the first item. Consider your audience, and consider your goal again. With that goal in mind, where will you post this video? Your site? Social media? How you distribute your content is just as important as what you make. Integrate the project with your greater marketing strategy.
3. Budgeting
It’s hard to make any guesses about your budget until you’ve addressed our first two items. It’s best to talk to a potential production partner or an experienced friend to find out the technology and expenses likely to be necessary with your approach for your video project.
4. “Video” can mean a lot of things
You’d be surprised at what you can do on a shoestring budget. For example, if you don’t have access to a quality camera, you can still accomplish a lot by editing together inexpensive stock footage with still images, voice over, and music, and remember that “homemade” quality can be appropriate too. Maybe not if you’re a Fortune 500 investment firm, but imagine a start-up hoping to enlist talent. Something shot on a personal camera or phone could easily fit the tone of their culture and the job at hand. If you’re not married to the traditional notions of video production, you can accomplish a lot for a little.
5. Repurpose!
No, we’re not abandoning the one video = one goal mantra. The concept-level purpose of the video should remain unsullied, but there are lots of ways to re-use projects and parts of projects. You can repurpose webinars as blog posts. Or take snippets of interviews (maybe content that didn’t make the final cut of the original video) and post them as teasers or frame blog posts or case studies around them. Or go one step further and plan to ask a few extra questions when interviewing someone, and save that content for a separate post as something to build additional video marketing efforts around.
6. Aggregate
Just because you didn’t create the content, doesn’t mean you can’t share it. Post content that is relevant to your industry or your interests. Try a monthly roundup of content you value. This shows your audience what’s important to you, and it gives them insight into your perspective. It costs nothing but can accomplish a lot. The creators of that content usually appreciate it being shared so long as appropriate credit is given.
7. Harness the power of events
Yes, live events provide great fodder for video, but you can also create an event yourself. Sometimes showing up with a camera makes things happen. As part of their video marketing efforts, a team from Austerity Wine showed up at Citibank’s HQ to “share austerity” with the bank’s CEO. This “guerrilla marketing” didn’t need to look polished; on the contrary, too much polish would’ve seemed disingenuous. It was inexpensive, but clever and memorable. This is the perfect marriage of budgetary concerns and concept.
If we had to boil these 7 items down to one key takeaway, that’s it. With a concept and an approach that takes all factors—including budget and timelines—into account, your video marketing efforts can be effective and efficient.
Did our guest blogger, Dane Frederickson, leave out any secrets for optimizing the efficiency of your video marketing? Please share your secret in the comments, or on Twitter.
