One of the strategies that Smashing Pixels helps businesses with is video-first marketing. This puts video content over other forms of media content. Conveying information and engaging audiences through video helps increase audiences.
Video production’s complexity and drop in cost allows this strategy to be a possibility for an entire new generation of business and brand marketers. Video gives more information and grabs the attention of viewers better than still images or the written word. It can be produced easier and more affordable than other forms of media, and be repurposed into less rich content or repurposed into other video with little effort.
For many marketers, video has become the medium to beat. Those markets prefer to use video for promotional needs and most of the content used for marketing their products, services, or brand.
Though it seems as though video marketing is the best medium, why aren’t there more marketers who have adopted the video-first marketing strategy? Video-first doesn’t mean that video is the only content used for marketing, but rather that video is prioritised over other mediums with its increased ability to convince and convey the targeted information.
Video production is continuing to fall in both complexity and price, which makes it far less risky and more affordable. More than that, the workforce has seen an increase of people with video skills in recent years. This also increases the chance of finding someone that has, at least on a basic level, an idea of how video production works in your company.
Many brands and businesses struggle to develop a strategy for video marketing that can help them understand the role video plays in their promotional content. Smashing Pixels can help businesses and brands create and follow a video-first marketing strategy for video content to market services and products.
The foundation of any video-first marketing strategy is formed by these four key elements:
1. LEARNING TO EXPECT THE NEED FOR VIDEO TO RESPONDING TO IT
Most marketers have a good idea of the marketing projects needed to be managed or developed at the start of any fiscal year. So, planning for what video forms will achieve your goals effectively with procedures in place will help you easily respond to the marketing need for video content. Having to recreate the wheel with each video production will cost you time and possibly potential sales. Knowing what videos are needed to help market your products or services will make it much easier to get content out to your audience.
2. PLAN SEVERAL SHORTER VIDEOS INSTEAD OF A FEW LONGER ONES
Producing small, short videos will keep the attention of viewers better than longer ones. Long, elaborate videos rarely serve any of the intended purposes and are hard to convert to sales of products or services.
There’s no need to film and post a Hollywood movie when showcasing new services you offer or how your latest products work. Not many people will be able to wait the entire video just to find out about one certain product or service. Instead, produce a shorter video for each product or service. It will help you build the promotion or distribution channels and infrastructure required.
3. MARKETING AND VIDEO PRODUCTION INFRASTRUCTURE BUILDING
After gaining a clear idea of the kind of videos you will need and how they can be best produced, it’s time to build the infrastructure required. While you can get this done in-house, outsourcing these videos, or at least the tasks you wouldn’t be able to easily complete, will make the process incredibly easier on you and your staff.
The main thing needed for this part of the strategy is to have someone who knows what is required at each step of the process of video production and how to incorporate videos into marketing campaigns. Don’t be afraid to get advice or seek professionals to guide you through each step.
4. CHOOSE THE CHANNELS FOR YOUR VIDEO MARKETING WISELY
After determining which video you need to conceptualise then produce, it’s time to sort out the distribution. Several channels are available to distribute promotional videos.
Choosing the right channels to distribute your videos is very important. Be sure to answer questions when trying to determine which channels work for your video content. These questions include where you already have audiences, where audiences need to be built, which digital marketing capabilities currently exist, and if you will need to create any.
REMOTE DIRECTED VIDEO
Another thing to consider is remote directed video, which captures video 1080p or 4K on your smartphone and is sent to a cloud for editing that is private to you. Interacting with you, ensuring that the performances are the best they could possibly be and all technical requirements are met, remote directed video, or RDV give you the ability to affordably and quickly build a collection of videos of a professional grade. This makes it easy to sustain and adapt the strategy of video-first marketing.
This is a strategy that Smashing Pixels can help you adapt to. Walking you through each step of the video production process and helping you determine the best channels for distribution, we will guide you through building the infrastructure of this strategy and ensure you have a firm grasp on what videos will help you gain a larger audience and promote your products or services. If this is something you’re wanting to start for your brand or are struggling with any part of the process, contact Smashing Pixels today.
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