Remember when that direct email went viral? How about that newsletter? Remember when that blog post took off across the Internet and got more than a million hits in just a few days? Me neither. Why? Because it never happened.
There are a ton of ways to get a message out to a ton of people, but there is one that stands alone as being able to reach the most people and have the most impact in the shortest time: video. If you sell online or have an online presence, a video marketing campaign can do more to improve your advertising and promotion than any other single entity.
Perception
A single, good, well-made, quality video can do more than just get your message out – it can change the way you’re perceived by current and potential customers, clients, and business partners. It can bring a level of sophistication and professionalism to your brand that no other medium can.
Anyone can throw together a website, boilerplate email template, a WordPress blog, or a newsletter. But a video marketing campaign means you’re serious and sophisticated.
Your Message
People spend about as much time looking at an email, a newsletter, or a website as a potential employer does looking at a resume – not long at all. It’s so unbelievably easy to zone out while reading through a block of text, but if the homepage of your business’s website has a video, the visitor can simply hit that little “play” triangle and let your message come to them. Even if they only spend a moment or two watching, they’re much more likely to digest and retain it than if they had read an equal amount of text.
Introduce Yourself
In a generation of automated corporate juggernauts, there is nothing people like more in a business than a human touch. Video marketing gives you a chance to introduce yourself to customers or contacts – to let them hear your voice, see your face, read your emotions, see the human being behind the brand. It, more than any other medium, lets you showcase your humanity to a world that likes doing business with humans.
If you’re a chef in a restaurant, you can take the world into your beautiful kitchen, introduce them to your staff, and show them how you make a signature dish. Try doing that in a newsletter.
Go for Quality, Not Quantity
First, you’ll need a video – a good video. This is, by far, the hardest and most important part. You know the furniture store commercial on local TV where the guy, his wife, and his daughters are dressed in bad Colonial garb sitting on the everything-must-go loveseat for the Fourth of July sale? Don’t do that.
There is a ton of bad video out there, and it’s better to have no video at all. Poorly done video is common and crushing. It’s better to have one, single, quality movie than to have a low-rent, amateurish, recurring series.
Make it Happen
Making good video is an art and a science. Audio, video, lighting, angles, shots, incorporating stills, writing, editing. These elements (and many more) have to work together like a symphony. It takes skill and experience to do it well. Sorry, but your iPhone isn’t going to cut it. It requires a crew of people with expensive equipment.
If you can afford to hire professionals, congratulations – you’re ahead of the game. If not, put an ad on Craigslist and put a few calls into your local colleges, universities, and trade schools to find film students or recent grads who are willing to do a shoot pro bono just to have a finished piece in their portfolio. Film students are passionate, ambitious, imaginative, and often young. Hollywood may not have called them yet, but they’ll do better than you and your flip cam.
The Elements
Your video should be, above all else, brief. Twitter’s popular video app records nine seconds on a loop, and people today barely have the attention span for that. Get in and get out.
Be yourself. For whatever reason, when the cameras roll, people tend to either ham it up or shrivel up. Try to be natural; don’t turn into a salesman, a superstar, or a slug. Have fun; show your human side, your personality, and your sense of humor. This isn’t a movie, and you’re not an actor. You know why your business is awesome; showcase that and let your viewers know why you’re in business. Let your passion and pride make them want to come to you. This isn’t a sell.
Going Live
There are a lot of sites that can host your video; many of them are really good. The ubiquitous YouTube is the granddaddy of them all, and that should be your video’s first stop. If you already have a YouTube account, create a new channel just for your marketing videos so they don’t get lost in the shuffle of whatever else you have on your personal channel. From there, be sure to make the video public so people can actually see it. Then hit share, which should bring up a string of HTML code, cut and paste that into your website’s HTML widget, which should make it magically appear. Next, share it on Twitter, Facebook, and all your other social media networks.
Your video is now online, on your website and integrated and cross-promoted on social media. You’re on your way to adding a stellar new dimension to your marketing campaign. Re-promote it every so often (NOT so often that you become an annoyance), and if all goes well, think of a script for your next video.
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Andrew Lisa is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles. He writes about marketing and online video hosting.