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My Video is Better Than Yours – Budget, Style, and Concept

This is an in depth series on video marketing:

  • Budget, Style, and Concept.
  • Pre-Production (coming soon)
  • Production (coming soon)
  • Marketing (coming soon)

 

INTRO

Look around the interwebs and you’ll quickly find an answer to almost any question you can think of. Most of the answers are good, a lot of them are completely wrong, and some of them are myths from years past. Good thing us search-pros know how to weed out the crap and harvest the reputable sources.

Online Video Marketing is one of those topics that have more wrong and mythical information than correct information that’s actionable. The reason? It’s only been around for the last 7 years, and taken seriously for maybe 3 of those years. In this series we are going to be giving actionable facts that will directly impact your video marketing. Starting with the concept of your video.

 

DECIDING IF VIDEO IS RIGHT FOR YOUR BUSINESS

This must be a joke, right? The only way video is NOT right for your business is if your clients aren’t on the internet at all or if your business makes a profit selling anti-video products. Let me prove it to you.

1) Salesforce CRM recently just added an explainer video to one of their landing pages. That explainer video increased their conversion rate by 20%. Now we don’t know if that lead to sales but it’s a huge increase.

2) Crazyegg.com is a company that is in the business of conversion rates. They added a video to help their clients better understand their Heat Map tool, increasing their conversions by 64% which led to $21,000 a month in additional revenue.

3) Wheat Thins  Took video marketing to a new level and saw some huge results because of it. They would take a camera and crew to a persons house who had recently tweeted about the brand. They then aired the results on a t.v campaign and became the top trending hashtag, 3 times. Understand their platforms, being genuine, and thinking outside of the box paid off for them.

 

STYLES AND BUDGET

You’ve now made the decision to dive head first into this video marketing thing. The questions that I get asked the most are definitely “What should I spend?” and “What type of video is best?” Those questions both go hand and hand. You need to figure out what message you want to get across (product overview, lead generation, coming soon, etc.) and to do that we’re going to help you break them down, starting with free.

FREE, OR CLOSE TO IT:

If you spend free, you’ll get free results. We suggest not spending free and hiring a team; but hey, who needs to pay for a car when you’ve a cousin Billy who can build you one that’s ALMOST good enough. However, there are some free options that don’t suck.

• Testimonial Videos are hands down the best free video you can get. According to Ambitious.Hubpages 72% of consumers trust online video reviews as much as a personal recommendation. Which is just mind-blowing.

• Template Videos Ah, the good old repurposed videos, these are also another cheap option that might work if you’re on a tight budget. Sites like Animoto can make some pretty decent slideshows, while sites like Wideo and GoAnimate attempt to make animated videos. There’s also Screenr for a low cost screen cast.

**A big thing to keep note is that you’re doing all the work yourself, scripting (at least we hope you’re scripting), voice over, capturing, editing, compressing, and uploading. It can be a lot to learn.

NON-FREE OPTIONS (THAT GET RESULTS):

ROI you say? Lets talk about it. There are some really great options for under $2,000/min, that gives you most of the ingredients that makes up a great video; scriptwriting, great voice over or live actor, motion graphics, and stream-friendly delivery.

If you want to test the waters with video marketing, the options above can lead to some great results. But, if you really want to hit the emotional core of an audience, here are some of the top options under $8,000/min.

**All of these options have been known to have some really huge returns.

**Keep in mind that not all studios are created equal. Always look at several different studios and their portfolios to get a feel for which one best fits your business.

TARGET AUDIENCE & CALL-TO-ACTION

You now know your budget and the style of video you like, you even know which studio you’re going to use, what now? Pretty much from this point on the studio should take the reins and walk you through the rest of the process. If it’s a product or service overview than the studio is going to need to learn everything there is to know about that product or service (or event).

Make sure you also have information on:

  • Target audience; age, gender, tone, likes, dislikes, etc.)
  • Purpose; what problem are you solving for yourself and your client.
  • Call-To-Action; what you want the viewer to do after watching the video.
  • Consumption; where will this video be viewed (landing page, YouTube, etc.)

You now are on your way to getting some big results with video marketing. Remember that any type of marketing needs to be planned and tested, and video is no expiation to that rule.

On to pre-production!

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