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Video in digital marketing today is big. Actually, it's gargantuan: more than 500 million hours of video are watched on YouTube every day. On Facebook, it's the same number with a different stat: 500 million people are watching video on the social platform every day.
Businesses of all sizes are using video marketing campaigns to get their product or service in front of as many eyes as possible, capitalizing on the boom in video content. This means that videographers are being asked to produce a type of video they may be unfamiliar with: the marketing video.
Take a look at this marketing video we made for our homepage, edited using the transcript:
As you can see, videos for marketing are an entirely different medium than the video production process most videographers are used to. There are a few key tools that must be used during and after production to make marketing videos a success - without these necessary elements, the video will fall short of its main purpose: selling a product or service.
Have you ever watched a TV show or movie where one of the characters spoke directly to the camera? Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sex and the City and many more have used this technique. And there's actually a psychological reason for this: directly addressing your audience can make them more engaged.
This is also true for online video, according to a study by TubeBuddy and Hey.com. They found that videos with the word 'you' in the first five seconds had 97% more views than those that didn't. If possible, address your viewers by saying 'you' in the first sentence of marketing video dialogue. It's an easy way to increase views increase your views in a big way.
Producing a marketing video begins in the planning phase. Before you get behind the lens, recall a lesson your high school English teacher gave you when preparing to write an essay: "Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them."
The same structure should be applied to a marketing video: start with a short, engaging introduction; follow this with the body of your video, where you explain the product; and finally, a short conclusion that gives viewers a Call to Action (CTA) or something you'd like them to do after they watch the video - for example, email for more information, sign up for a free trial, place an order, etc.
Since marketing videos are used to reach out to potential customers, they should match all of the other marketing materials your company uses. That means aligning with anything that customers might see: a website, brochures, email templates, product packaging, conference stands, etc.
If you're using text overlay and graphics on your marketing video, start with the company website, aka the digital storefront, for some quick inspiration. This is a great place to see the company's colors, fonts, icons and more. If the company's marketing department has these graphic files and/or a branding document that specifies all of these, that's even better.
It's easy to rattle off a list of features when trying to describe a product or service, but that's not the most important message you want to send to potential customers. Instead, tell them how your product or service will change their lives, and how things will be vastly improved after they start using it. For example, if you're creating a marketing video for a type of software that integrates into most major email clients, potential customers don't need to hear about how it's built, but they do need to hear about the extra free time they'll have once they start using it.
As we mentioned before, a CTA is something that prompts the user to take an action. CTAs should be simple and straightforward, leaving no doubt what you want the viewer to do after watching your video. The most logical place for a marketing video CTA is at the end, since by this time the potential customer will have just learned all the reasons they can't live without the product or service you're marketing and want to find out how they can get involved.
There are lots of different places you can publish your marketing video, and each of them has its own specifications. Large companies with generous budgets probably have software that automatically adjusts the format of a video, but if not, it's up to you to optimize the marketing video for each platform.
Sprout Social has put together the video specs for the major social media platforms. They've also included the best sizes for different types of posts on each platform - for example, a Facebook shared video versus a Facebook video ad.
There's a long list of reasons why captions are a necessary part of producing a marketing video: it helps SEO, it makes content more accessible by people with hearing and sight disabilities, it still communicates the message when the video is watched without sound.
The fastest and easiest way to transcribe captions for your marketing video is with Trint's automated transcription software. Just upload your file and within moments you'll have a full transcript that can be edited (if necessary) and easily searched for keywords. Then download the transcript as an SRT, VTT or EDL file and embed onto your video.
If you use Adobe' Premiere' Pro to edit your videos, transcription has never been easier: use Trint's free Premiere extension to seamlessly transcribe your video and add captions with just a few clicks.
The length of a marketing video has a huge impact on how many people will watch it. In general, shorter is better. Wistia researched length of videos and how much they were watched, then graphed the results:
The videos with the highest engagement rate were under one minute, and as videos got longer the number of engaged users quickly plummeted.
The takeaway here is shorter is better. Shorter videos are almost always more effective, so keep your final cut snappy. As a best practice, make sure all of your marketing videos fall under the two minute mark.
Marketing videos are a valuable tool that can help businesses grow. Build your videos with these tips for the best chance at success. Find out how valuable Trint can be in your marketing video arsenal with a free trial:
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Michael worked for 8+ years as a manual transcriber in the US and UK before building an in-house transcription department for a mobile-to-web software company. He then moved to content marketing, followed by digital marketing. Michael loves to write about emerging technology, digital trends and the ways technology makes our lives easier.
