Video Marketing
Video marketing is about generating aggressive growth. Perfect for small businesses that need to gain visibility.
1. Create a video of your product in a day or two.
2. Share on YouTube and/or Facebook.
3. Benchmark results.
Video marketing should be seen as an investment. If you don't measure success of your video marketing, you are doing it wrong.
Why video marketing works over static pictures, sound or text:
- Videos are better in creating emotions.
- Speech conveys information better than text.
- When watching a video, you have viewers undivided attention.
You should focus on emotion driven decision making. You must create a desire for people to act, not force people to make a decision.
Awesome product by awesome people -> buy.
Show crippled children -> easier to get a donation.
Plan before you make a video. Get basic concept of the video in your head before doing anything else.
1. Focus on one message. From everything you want to say, choose one
sentence. Make more videos if you want to say more.
2. Write a rough script and remove all stuff that distract users
from the message.
Video Content
Prefer short videos. Under 1 min videos are the best, but after 4 minutes, they can go up to 10 minutes without losing much viewers.
Define your target audience per video. You cannot please everybody.
Deliver one message per video. Business software usually focus on invoking jealousy and greed, build up a desire to buy the software. You must be able to define your video with one sentence. Make it clear in the video headline what it is about.
Prefer telling a story. Focus on attaining interest, show that you are telling about same kind of people as your target audience. Hint what is going to happen very early in the video.
Raise emotion. Best emotions to focus on are: greed, jealousy, laziness, fear and arrogance. Keep in mind what you are marketing, selling a lawn mower by trying to build up tears in the audience is not a wise choice. Emotions are contagious and usually shared on social media.
Be concrete. Make it clear what is the action you want the user to do at the end of the video. Embed links to learn more.
Surprise. Break a video marketing pattern that has been going on lately. Create a positive shock in the first 7 seconds, introduce something mildly surprising like scenery change every 10 seconds. Human faces and motion can also be used to keep viewer attention.
Be trustworthy. Use statements from known and trustworthy people in the related field. If you cannot get those into your video, use a doctor.
Prefer simple language. More about writing a good script in writing notes.
Use "like" over "for example".
Avoid adjectives. Make people to decide themselves. Don't tell how awesome you are, show it.
# bad
Best web framework.
# good
We built this cool web framework, wanna see?
*some benefits or features it has*
Videos that have practical utility generate more views. But they are more like content marketing than an advertisement. You should understand difference between slow and fast marketing so you can decide which one to use.
How to tie a tie
How to wear a scarf
Filming
Nobody likes to watch poor quality films. Get a good camera and record the video while paying attention to lightning, audio and framing.
Rent a camera on Friday so you get it for the full weekend.
As of 2012, Canon 6D or 5D is a good choice.
Lens for experienced: 35mm f1.4
Lens for unexperienced: 24-105mm f4
Also get some audio gear, cameras have bad recording.
Assign a 2-5 people team to make the video. One must have at least some experience being on the camera. You can spend extra money here as this is important.
Lightning aims to eliminate shadows. You should position two lights pointing to the person from sides, just above the person's eye line, one meter apart and next to the camera. If you are filming against a wall, place third light behind the person, pointing to the wall.
Go to a hardware store.
Get two scoop shaped lamps
Get four daylight balanced compact fluorescent light bulbs.
(Daylight Balanced High-CRI or Full Spectrum)
They look like normal fluorescent bulbs.
Get a bag of clothespins used to attach diffusion paper to lights.
White diffusion paper to control the lightning.
Two light stands that extend to about 6 feet.
Try to find interesting scenery where to film. This is best for one-off promotional videos but if you need to make a weekly series, just stay in the office/studio. Google Maps is there to help.
Use three second rule when recording. Start video 3 seconds before the action and stop video 3 seconds after the cut. Helps to fill any empty space you might end up. Also, if a clip is good, place your hand in front of your lens before you stop recording so you can find it more easily on your video editor.
Use the B-ROLL. A-ROLL is your real video where something happens, usually someone is talking. B-ROLL is the clips that show other stuff while main audio is used e.g. company employees, company logo, smiling people. Note that B-ROLL should always fit to the context, do not use random shots. B-ROLL can be used to hide edit cuts.
Promoting the Video
Video marketing more than just the video. In addition to the video you make, the marketing time you use to promote it is also part of the video marketing.
How to start the promotion depends on your established channels. Promotion focuses on driving people to start watching the video. The rest is up to the video. Most advertisement means can be used to promote the video.
SEO, Google Ads
"Watch the video" in email titles increases opening rates.
Video thumbnail and start are important. The video must grab attention with the video thumbnail and maintain it for at least few seconds when video starts playing. After that, consider adding unexpected sequences here and there to keep attention. Uncomfortable, surprising, action packed, or weird scenery.
Normal blender advertisements show blending of fruits.
Blendtec show videos of blending iPads.
Avoid YouTube on promotional videos. Main problem with YouTube is the YouTube-icon on the lower right of each embedded video. When a user clicks that, they will not be coming back to your site. You may use YouTube for your content, but not for promotions.
# Alternatives to YouTube:
Facebook
Viddler
Vimeo
Facebook Videos
Upload the video directly to Facebook. Videos will start playing when user scrolls past it, but without audio. Linking from Youtube works but is not as good approach. Buffer allows queuing video uploads to Facebook.
Make first 3 seconds visually extra interesting. The autoplay feature allows you to catch people's attention using the video itself. Even the first frame is important. Rely on opening visuals, not audio.
Use custom thumbnails. Related videos are shown under a video when user plays a video, create engaging custom thumbnails for each video.
Create shareable videos. People don't share videos to talk about you or your product. People share videos to tell something about themselves to their friends, amusement and awe goes a long way.
Add teaser heading. Set up expectation what will happen in the video but be vague to peak past-scroller's interest.
Add tags to heading. Popular people that contributed to, are mention in or inspired the video. You do this with @name syntax.
Add call–to-action buttons. The most important part is "Watch More" or "Learn More".
Oreo + popcorn, mmm
Add featured video to company page. Use well performing content to turn visitors into fans.