7 Hacks For Creating Video Marketing Without the Headache

The broad scope of video marketing means that treating it as just one aspect of a content marketing campaign is a mistake.

Rather, marketers should try to integrate it into all elements of the customer journey.

As VidQ Head of Marketing Mark Robertson has said: “online video is the Swiss army knife of internet marketing. It really can be used all over the customer lifecycle, whether it’s customer service, marketing, or even recruitment.”

If we start at the beginning of the customer journey, video’s stimulation of both visual and auditory senses makes it a powerful way of capturing the buyer’s attention.

To use the Swiss army knife analogy again, videos cut through to the buyer much quicker than written content.

We process visuals much quicker than we do text, meaning we understand and retain a video’s message much better. In fact, according to Forbes, the average viewer remembers 95% of a watched message, compared to just 10% for its written equivalent, helping marketers explain complex concepts much easier. They also spend 88% more time on a page with video.

A higher understanding and retention rate makes it much more likely that a viewer clicks that precious ‘buy’ button, either in that moment or the next time they’re shopping.

They’ll probably also share the content with a friend if it’s funny or memorable, helping to boost brand exposure without the company needing to do any extra work.

Then the process repeats all over again, leaving the company with a repetitive sales cycle generated for the cost of a single marketing campaign.

Often, overcomplicating the process stems from not having the project’s core principles in mind.

A chief marketing officer who takes the time to sit down with their video production team and strip the next video down to its main objectives is putting the foundation blocks in place for more elaborate results later on.

Such an opening meeting should revolve around simple questions along these lines when companies start video marketing.

What does the company want to achieve with this video?

Building as detailed a buyer psychographic as possible, complete with comments about needs and pain points, is very useful here.

Analyzing and bettering competitor’s video-based efforts should be high on the agenda.

Add to success and learn from failure.

The marketing world is built on core principles, such as Neil Bordern’s famous ‘4Ps’ in the 1950s. Building a framework for a video marketing project through simple inquiries among your team provides fertile grounding for it to grow.

Effective management ensures that each team member knows exactly what they need to do. This is where mapping out clear, concise marketing strategies come in, acting as visual go-to points that unites the project’s working parts.

Project management tools like Trello and Asana are incredibly useful at marshaling a project team from start to finish, allowing managers to set out a trajectory, assign tasks, and keep track of progress.

Plans should also take into account the buyer persona mapped out earlier, along with market behavior stats that will influence how the video and script will look and sound.

This is where we delve into more detail about things like brand voice and if it resonates with the target audience, the style of the video, which graphics we use, and how long it will be.

Put simply, a storyboard is a graphic representation, often cartoon-style, of the most critical scenes in the marketing video we’re about to make.

One benefit is that it provides a visual overview of the video, where team members can quickly identify and weed out unnecessary elements and sharpen its focus.

Each storyboard frame can fit in a lot of information, including:

• Key characters or props, and when they appear
• Scripted speech
• The setting or backdrop
• Special text or infographics
• The order of sequences

Once these are figured out, it doesn’t take a deep well of artistic creativity to bring it together, either.

Stick figures and basic sketching are enough to get the point across, although there is storyboard software that can help with this.

Visual props don’t have to end with the storyboard, either.

Illustrated cues could work better for the speaker who might get a headache from squinting at uniform black-and-white type; they’re also great when looking to spice things up with an improvised script.

Every good marketing agency knows that time is money.

While this should never mean skimping on quality, producing quality, engaging videos as quickly as possible keeps costs at a minimum and frees up more time to concentrate on other content.

There’s no reason why a top-class animated video can’t be done within two weeks, if we’re talking numbers. Certain video-related ‘cheat tools’ make time-consuming tasks much faster.

Wave.video is one example. Users can choose from over 200 million stock video clips which they can drag and drop into their own video. Once in, they can adjust its length, edit its text overlay and make it fit seamlessly with the rest of the frames.

Wave also lets creators adapt videos online into different dimensions for different social networks, from TikTok to YouTube, perfect for the cross-platform campaign that every online business should be aiming for

Tools that tap into the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are also helping to speed things up.

Magisto provides automated video editing and production that does much of the heavy lifting. All the user needs to do is choose various elements of the video, including photos, clips, duration and background music, and AI does the rest.

While an expert human overview is still necessary, and will be for some time, gadgets like this are helping businesses meet stringent time and cost limits, without budging on quality.

Marketers puzzled over why viewer numbers drop off a cliff a few seconds into their video may be missing one invaluable trick: captions.

A survey by Verizon Media found that 69% of US consumers watch video content with the sound off in public places, so if they can’t track what’s going on then they’ll just skip to the next thing on their Facebook or YouTube feed.

Put another way, eight out of 10 people are more likely to watch a video with captions.

Again, handy tools come to the rescue. AutoCap and Clips both automatically transcribe video’s audio, meaning you don’t have to type it all up, but you can enter it manually or create captions by talking into a recording device.

Other apps, like Rev, transcribe the audio for you if you send them a separate file. In Rev’s case, it costs just $1.50 a minute.

Handily placed calls-to-action (CTAs) also fit in nicely with captions. Viewers who see them, with sound on or off, and can click on them, are much more likely to take action: KissMetrics found that those placed within the video get almost four times as many clicks as those located in a sidebar.

Today’s video marketing content needs to be as flexible and adaptable as possible to get the best returns.

Making several versions of the same video — perhaps some shorter than others, or with the CTAs in different places — and floating them on different social media to find which ones perform the best is a great way of discovering the sweet spot for your campaign. Something that flops on YouTube may be a success on Instagram, for example.

Also, transcribing the video content into written form appeals to customers who prefer to read over watching videos online.

A blog post can even feature the video embedded within it, which will help keep the reader on the page longer. Well-written blog posts and articles help the business exude authority and build trust within its customer base.

Finally, it may not be a popular topic, but paid ads are sometimes the boost a marketing campaign needs.

According to WordLead, Pay-Per-Click advertising generates 50% more conversions than organic ads, making it a handy option to have.

However, rather than risk money for nothing, it might be a smart idea to wait until a video starts getting an organic response before boosting it with paid ads. That way we avoid pushing content that has failed to drive engagement.

“If information is the oil of the 21st century”, said business leader Peter Sondegaard, “then analytics is the combustion engine”.

If we can’t make sense of all the data and comments we get from our video content, then we risk a breakdown in our next piece of content.

The 50,000 views we get on Facebook may look very nice, but if they’re only lasting a few seconds then are they really making people buy?

Are viewers skipping over important sections of the video through boredom?

On the flip side, is there a particularly fun part that people rewatched?

Analytics tools provide the answers to questions like these so that marketers can improve their performance. Often video-hosting solutions like Wistia and Dacast offer in-built options, such as heat maps and viewer data, so that users can pinpoint the areas that worked or failed, and make the necessary adjustments.

Well-oiled video content that is constantly checked, tweaked and upgraded is one of the best vehicles we have for driving the clicks and conversions that are the lifeblood of online businesses.