Here are some helpful guidelines, whether you’re just getting started or trying to pivot your inbound marketing or social media strategy.
Rule #1 – Video isn’t as expensive as you think it is.
If you’re a small business, a startup, or simply an author or an expert with ideas to share, you’ll experience extreme sticker shock when exploring video. The cost of traditional video production starts at around $1,000 per finished minute! There are good reasons for this, like the cost of a camera crew and studio space, but it’s still a huge deterrent.
The traditional video production model required plenty of travel time and some pretty expensive gear. Either a film crew went to your location, or the principals had to go to a recording studio. Both added significant costs. Fortunately, the smartphone changed all that.
Cameras on mobile devices have improved exponentially For marketing teams, this means the need for a big crew is no longer paramount. Everyone has a production-capable camera in their pocket.
Managing huge video files on smartphones is indeed a pain, and that recording live streams on Zoom is problematic over Wi-Fi. However, there are great solutions for remote capture—temporarily storing high-quality footage on devices before uploading it for editing. Some even allow a director to guide the sessions remotely and turn your smartphone or tablet into a teleprompter!
With remote capture, even when you add decent lights, microphones, lenses, and other basic gear, the basic video cost-per-finished-minute has dropped by about fifty percent! That means even small businesses and startups can realistically consider video as the primary medium of a sustained, integrated, inbound marketing strategy.
Rule #2 – Always consider SEO, formatting, and platform selection.
The way we design and produce video has changed, but the rules for making videos visible to market-qualified prospects have not. Even if your video is engaging and compelling, merely posting it isn’t enough. Applying real-world SEO to video content means more than using keywords in the title and description.
The video should not be used in isolation. When video and written content are combined—and both are coordinated with your whole SEO and marketing funnel strategy—the best results will be achieved.
Even though the cost of video has dropped, it’s always a good idea to optimize it for multiple venues. That means planning ways to “recycle” existing content and knowing how to format it for different platforms and social media feeds.
Finally, there are so many video-friendly platforms to choose from that one must be careful not to get spread too thin. Pick a social media platform whose age and income demographics best fit your target market. Deliver video content as a regular part of an email drip campaign or e-newsletter. Above all, select a hosting environment that offers the best balance of search-friendliness and interactivity.
Rule #3 – Not all videos are the same!
There are lots of questions and arguments about how long a marketing video should be—given the attention spans of supposedly typical web users. These are not the right questions to ask. Of course, a video should always be engaging, and not just in the first few moments, but first, it has to be the right kind of video.
A basic need exists for an effective marketing funnel.
Every piece of content you create should provide qualified leads, a good reason, and a way to learn more about your product, commit to it, and make a choice. Video is the best platform for doing so, but only if it is created and deployed properly.
