Tips for Incorporating Video Into Your Marketing Strategy

Every issue we share articles with AAM readers that explore our monthly topic. This month’s articles relate to video. Many marketers can feel overwhelmed when they think about incorporating video into their marketing strategy. These articles take the movie magic out of video production and address your biggest concerns when it comes to making videos for your firm. You’ll wonder why you didn’t start making videos earlier.

When you think of “video production” you’re likely picturing a big set on a Hollywood stage with a director yelling into a megaphone and a crew of a hundred people all running around like mad. Lights, camera, action, etc., right? Many marketers can feel overwhelmed when they think about incorporating video into their marketing strategy. But the numbers don’t lie: video is here, and it’s BIG. So let’s take the movie magic out of video production and address your biggest concerns when it comes to making videos for your firm. You’ll wonder why you didn’t start making videos earlier.

This is usually the biggest roadblock for people who want to start making videos: “Isn’t equipment too expensive?” In short, the answer is no. In fact, you likely already have all the equipment you need to make videos now.

As one of the best consumer cameras on the market, your smartphone is ready and able to take high quality video at this very moment. And most smartphones automatically adjust the settings to give you the best quality video regardless of your environment.

Coupled with your phone’s good internal microphone, your video equipment is essentially free. Here’s a great article from Social Media Examiner that will guide you through setting up your own video studio on any budget. This includes free and paid options in case you want to throw some of your marketing budget towards video production.

Another issue for marketers (or their employers) is understanding the value of video content. If you’re going to put time, effort, and money into this, what are you getting out of it? The answer is people. Exposure, engagement, and more potential clients. Here’s a breakdown of what video gets you in two concrete categories: social media and SEO.

For social media, the name of the game is engagement. More engagement means the platform will show your content to more people for a longer time. Videos drive more engagement and hold attention for much longer than other forms of content. On top of that, video ads outperform any other paid ads on every social media platform. Video is a social media powerhouse, and here’s a great article explaining why it’s so good.

In the matter of SEO, video is quickly becoming more important. Although there’s no official statement from Google, marketers agree that the search engine seems to place results with video content above results without. By all accounts, data shows significant organic site traffic growth simply by including relevant video content on the page. Lemonlight put together an article based on their own first hand data analytics.

This is another BIG roadblock for anyone who wants to implement videos, especially those who don’t have a lot of time or don’t consider themselves particularly creative. The good news is that there are guidelines anyone can follow to help generate video ideas.

As a marketer, you should have a goal in mind when it comes to your marketing strategy: driving awareness, increasing conversions, etc. That also happens to be the first step in generating video ideas!

The next step is choosing what type of video will help achieve that goal. There are multiple basic formats you can use, and research on which formats are suited for specific goals. Testimonials, interviews, and Q&A videos are a few common video formats businesses use frequently. Here’s another fantastic article that covers the different format types and what they’re used for.

Finally, to come up with marketing video ideas… just do it! As you make more videos, you’ll start to learn which formats are best suited for your goals, and you’ll get quicker at coming up with video ideas. The more videos you have, the more you can see which ones resonate with viewers. Knowing what’s working and what’s not will make this task much easier.

Most people know that filming isn’t all it takes to make a good quality video. You have to edit it as well. Like most of the issues above, the thought of video editing is much more overwhelming than actually doing it.

You don’t have to have blockbuster movie editing abilities to make a 30-second ad or a 5-minute YouTube video. Fortunately, trimming your clips, applying transitions, and putting text on screen is usually enough to pull off a solid marketing video. In fact, as far as editing goes, less is usually more. If you overdo it with special effects, it tends to take away from the subject or message of the video.

If you’re worried about pricy editing software, don’t. Not only is there a variety of free options, the user interface for video editing software is nearly universal. So if you’re familiar with one video editing software, it will translate to others pretty well.

The best way to get better is to dive right into an editing software. But before you edit, check out this checklist for video editing basics. Refer to this, and you’ll be editing videos like a pro in no time.

There are many concerns marketers have when it comes to making video content. But often the case is that the IDEA of making a video is more intimidating than just doing it. Just get started, and then keep making video content. As you make more, you’ll get better and better at it. You’ll learn how to streamline the process, look out for obstacles, and as you accumulate more videos, understand which videos perform better. It’s not as hard as you think, so grab your camera (or phone) and hit record!