28 October 2019 Katie Nelson

How to make engaging marketing videos in-house

We’re here to deliver. To get stuff done. To bring experience, creative, skills and resource to make your project or campaign happen.

 

So, you want to create a marketing video, but you have no budget left.

Good news: you can still create content worth sharing and capable of drawing in an audience without any outside help.

Some numbers to get you inspired

If you’ve reached this blog post because you’re on the fence about video marketing, check out the following stats from a Hubspot report. In 2018, they discovered that:

  • - 74% of businesses who weren’t using video marketing that year said they would this year;
  • - 83% of marketers said video marketing gave them good ROI; and 87% of consumers wanted to see more video from brands in 2019.

Convinced? Read on to find out how you can create video marketing in-house, cost-effectively.
video marketing cars dramatic

Three video marketing vitals

Whether you produce video in-house or via an external agency, three factors remain true:

1) Sound quality is far more important than video quality.

2) A video without a story is pointless.

3) Gear should never be put before storytelling.

Let’s break those down...

If you buy an 8K camera, hire an Emmy Award-winning cinematographer and shoot in the most beautiful locations on earth, the resulting video will be useless if the narration is overpowered by wind noise.

Hit the ‘record’ button without any form of narrative or beginning, middle and end, and very few potential customers will ever engage with your video.

If you spend three days deciding which lens and camera body combination to use rather than working on the story, you’ve thrown away vital marketing time you’ll never get back.

Keep these three things in mind whenever you embark on a video marketing project.

1) Gather your kit

The worst thing you could do now is buy a shed load of video kit. 

Don’t.

Instead, work from this list:

  • - A smartphone (the camera will be more than adequate)
  • - Editing software (iMovie on iPhone is brilliant)

That’s it - the only essentials you need.

If you have a bit of cash to spend, consider the following:

  • - A lav mic (the clip-on mics you see on TV - they can be found for as low as £10)
  • - Lighting (£50ish will find you a nice studio LED light with a stand)
  • - Tripod (don’t spend any more than £20 for a smartphone-compatible tripod)

It bears repeating, however, that the optional kit above really is that. If you’re recording in a relatively quiet environment and producing simple interviews or product demonstrations, stick with the basics.
iphone

2) Think about how much the project will cost

There’s two things to take into account when producing video in-house:

  • - How much will you need to spend on kit (depending on the result of stage 1)?
  • - How much time will be required by those involved?

Putting some numbers against the above will help you calculate the ROI as you would with any marketing campaign. When it comes to the people involved, think about how much an hour of their time is worth, and add that to the overall spend.money american

3) Devise a story that meets audience expectations

If you’ve spent time researching topics for your blog, you’ll probably know a bit about audience personas and the kind of content yours will be looking for.

Apply those learnings to your marketing video. Once you have the central subject (say, a new product), think about the story behind the benefit it offers your audience.

This is the most important part of your production and could take you down a number of avenues. For instance, if you realise user generated content will work best, approach a client or two. Or, if a simple unboxing to unveil a revolutionary new product suffices, stick with that.

Your video should have a narrative, purpose and clear call-to-action (CTA) at the end.watching video marketing phone

4) Work out how you’ll distribute it

Once the video has been made, where will it end up? More importantly, can you get more from it than a single video?

Let’s say you have a 90-second product demo that includes a customer testimonial. What if you chopped it up into four snippets and used them to drip-feed your audience with tantalising info on social media?

The distribution method for your video needs to be strategised right from the start. Keep the audience in mind; where are they most likely to reside? Do you need the help of an influencer or partner to further its reach?

Although a few years old now, Econsultancy has a brilliant report on how to go viral with video that’s definitely worth a download.

Don’t want to do it alone? Get in touch

If you’ve got some budget left to play with and feel like you need a helping hand with your video marketing efforts, get in touch. As much as you can do this stuff internally, we’ll help you get the most from video.