The digital world moves quickly. Just a few years ago, businesses were still getting to grips with nailing the perfect tweet copy, and now video has been added into the mix.
In today’s tech-focused world, your business needs video for helping your business get its message out. Video can be fun, informative and engaging – but it also poses many challenges for businesses. There are costs and skills involved that your business might not have at the moment, but you’ll need to find a suitable solution if you’re going to make video an important part of your marketing and communications strategy.
Read about the different challenges of creating video for your business and how you can overcome them to produce some excellent visual content for your various channels.
Not having the right strategy
It’s all well and good to say that your business needs video, but what do you plan on using it for? That’s a key question to answer before you decide to start making video for your business. Video marketing has many benefits, from helping to boost conversions to generating a discussion around your product or services. But as with anything that will require some major changes to your business or create a lot of work, you’ll need to think things through carefully first.
Building a video marketing strategy involves answering some key questions, such as:
- Who is your audience?
- What are your objectives?
- How can you stay on brand to deliver your message?
- How can you use video content across your channels?
- What sort of resource can you dedicate to this work?
With the right considerations, you can develop a great video marketing plan that will take your promotional content to a new level and hopefully connect you with a whole new online audience. Think carefully about the channels you’ll be using for your content to help you decide on the most appropriate content for each platform.
It’s worth taking a look at what others are doing to help give you some inspiration. Take a look at examples from your competitors as well as other companies you admire to help you get a sense of what’s popular, what works well and what could be achievable for your business.
A lack of video skills
Wanting to create amazing video is a step in the right direction for your business, but it’s not something you’ll want to go into half-heartedly. Having the right video skills in your team is important, so you’ll want to consider upskilling existing employees, or bring in some fresh blood.
There are a lot of tips you can take on board to make great video content for your business. However, undergoing some training in shooting video and editing can help you deliver the most professional results. Learning how to use the Adobe suite of programs such as Premiere Pro and After Effects will help you create some high-quality content in-house that meets your exact requirements. Alternatively, you can hire freelancers or an external video production company who can help you to create the videos you need to meet your objectives.
Low budget
Budget can be a major factor holding your business back from making great videos. However, it can be easier than you think to produce high-quality video. Most smartphones are capable of shooting video in high-quality 4K, which can help you film content easily, without the need for extra equipment.
Some low-budget video ideas for your business include explainers and product videos that can help you develop some simple content. Short interview clips can be a good way to practice the basics of making video for your business, and you can start building up to storyboarding some bigger ideas later on. Most of the cost involved in making videos comes from the cost of equipment, so if you’re willing to make an initial investment, the only real cost to your business going forward will be time.
There are some simple ways to create video on a shoestring. It’s easier than you might think to shoot and make some basic cuts, while free graphic design tools like Canva can help you make some great graphics to help give your videos some polish.
The right promotion plan
Putting energy and time into creating your video content deserves to have it seen by as many people as possible. With so much effort going into making your video, it can be easy to forget to create the promotional plan to go with it. Each piece of content you create should go into a wider content plan using all of your available channels.
Sprout Social has some interesting and useful tips for your social media promotion strategy. They highlight the need for staying up to date on video dimensions for different platforms to allow you to create the most relevant content for that platform. Give people a call to action that asks them to engage and share your content – this will help you benefit from organic reach and get your content seen by a larger number of people.
Remember that you can also pay for your video promotion, with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram offering some easy to use platforms for some targeted campaigns. Social media advertising provides some alternative forms of marketing that means even businesses with next to no budget can generate some impact around their work.
Making them accessible
There are many accessibility issues when it comes to making video, and you should build in accessibility from the start to make sure your entire audience can consume your content. There are some steps you’ll need to take to make your video accessible, including making sure that you don’t include flashing images and that your video is watchable across several different platforms, particularly mobile devices.
You’ll also need to make sure that you provide subtitles for your videos. This not only helps people who are deaf or have hearing problems, but it provides flexibility to those who want to watch your content without sound. Captioning video can be time-consuming, but using an audio and video transcription company can save you a lot of time – ideal for delivering a quicker end product. This transcription services guide from Take Note provides details on the different services that are available to help you make your offering as accessible as possible. Providing a transcript of your video demonstrates good practice, and it can also help you translate into different languages.
Keeping things consistent
Once you’ve made video an ongoing part of your content strategy, you need to be able to maintain some consistency to make sure you put out regular content.
Analyzing the reach and engagement that comes from your video is important, and it will help you understand which areas are working well and which ones aren’t, allowing you to adapt your strategy as you go along. Maintaining a consistent style and feel for your videos will help develop essential brand recognition, and could be something that your followers will look out for when you publish. Be sure to include video as a part of your ongoing marketing plans to identify some good opportunities for promotion.
Video can help you achieve great things for your business, bringing a new dimension to your marketing content that appeals to a wide audience and creates an impact. While your business might face some initial challenges with producing video, once you overcome them, you’ll find a natural fit that could help you take your business to the next level. Explore what video can do for your business, and don’t let the challenges hold you back.
