Advertising Marketing Nonprofit
14 Ways to Make Video Marketing Easy
By \ January 25, 2017
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that content marketing is leaning towards video pretty heavily. It’s to the point where trend pieces might as well say “video video video video” a la Jack Nicholson’s typing in The Shining. The only reason brands are resisting this tide change is that video is hard. And Time consuming. And Expensive. Or is it?
The truth is video marketing may be far easier than you think. And not just because our tools are more accessible and our distribution channels more open, but also because your audience’s expectations have changed.
Dazzling video production quality is no longer the norm. With ubiquitous smart phone and social media use, anybody who wants to can, and routinely does, make videos and put them online for all to see. And as a result, the low-fi guerrilla style has become a standard look, if not the prefered one, even for news organizations and businesses. And marketers are taking note.
Look to content producers like PlayGround +, Now This and Refinery29 for examples. Their videos are often no more than a voiceover and a stream of applicable video or photo assets, which are often of average quality and shot on mobile phones. Though simple as these videos may be, people eat them up.
Marketers are referring to this as “hyper-realistic” content. A style that “more directly reflects our real lives—authentic, imperfect, and increasingly mobile” (PSFK).
It can be quite effective if done well. But what’s even better is that content like this is far easier to make and more affordable than a traditional commercial, with minimal risk to authority or respect for your brand.
If you’re on a budget (and we don’t know anybody who isn’t) it might be time for your businesses or organization to put together some shoestring video content. Get yourselves started with these 13 tips:
14 Video Marketing Tips:
- Use open source videos and photos from sources like:
- Use stock videos and photos from sources like:
- Shoot your own stock photos and videos.
- Rely on old videos and photos you have.
- Do your own voice overs.
- Replace voice overs with onscreen titles.
- Rely on fewer interviews (they’re tough to edit and often feel overly scripted).
- Look for stories around you.
- Repost videos on different channels.
- Reuse the same animations, intros, and outros.
- Keep videos under 60 seconds.
- Get a simple lighting kit.
- Find the right background music.
- Talk about yourself less.
The last tip is key to producing regular video content. If you focus only on your organization, its services, and its features, then you’ll either bore your audience or run out of stuff to talk about. Whichever comes first.
Instead, focus on what your target audience would be interested in that’s related to your organization. For example, a university’s business school could do a video each week about the smartest business decisions in history, as long as at the end there’s a call to action about the school.
Telling broad stories, along with the aesthetic DIY style, is what results in “hyper realistic” content. These stories should serve your targets’ lives and interests, and be less about your product. Pretty simple, right?
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