Online video marketing might have been a luxury in 2015 and 2016, but it’s a necessity in 2017.
HighQ, a UK-based Software as a Service company, conducted a recent study on the state of video marketing. The results were staggering. As of 2017, online video accounts for 74 percent of all web traffic. More video content gets uploaded to the web monthly than three decades worth of TV content. Over 500 million people watch videos on Facebook every single day.
The point is, if your small business isn’t video marketing, it’s missing a huge opportunity to reach target customers when they’re most engaged. But online video marketing can be expensive. You have production costs, distribution costs, not to mention good actors don’t come cheap.
A tight budget shouldn’t prevent your business from taking advantage of online video marketing. Use the following tips to launch your first video campaigns inexpensively.
Cast Employees as Actors
Using employees as actors in your marketing video offers several advantages. The most obvious one: your business saves money.
Employees also give your videos a genuine feel that you don’t get with professional actors. Your employees know your business better than anyone. They can deliver your message from the heart rather than reading it from a script.
Corey Batt of Master Your Money Now highlights that creating weekly video content starring his team has been highly effective. “I actually think that having our team on camera helps us in several ways. The videos feel more authentic, they introduce our audience to our team, and I don’t think I could hire actors that would show the same passion our team has for the product.”
If you are worried viewers will be turned off by seeing amateurs on screen, don’t be. Think about the videos that go viral on YouTube and Facebook. The vast majority aren’t professionally made. They’re regular people being captured on camera in authentic moments.
Consider Animation For Online Video Marketing
You can remove the need for actors altogether by animating your marketing video. Animation also doesn’t require a fancy studio or special lighting.
Perhaps you think it costs a lot of money to hire animators or buy animation software for online video marketing. Turns out, this isn’t the case. With services such as Animatron, you can start making animated videos online for free. Once you get some practice and decide to get fancy with your marketing video, the site has paid features that are more advanced. But it’s still far cheaper than hiring actors or freelance animators.
Skimp on Sound
Here’s another amazing stat from the HighQ study: an astounding 85 percent of Facebook videos are watched without sound. It makes sense when you think about it. People watch these videos while scrolling through their phones at work, in waiting rooms and in other places where they don’t have the luxury of turning up the volume.
Brainstorm marketing video ideas that don’t need sound to entertain your audience or deliver your message. You can save money on production costs without compromising effectiveness.
Remember the A-F-H Rule for Going Viral
Distributing your videos to your target market can be costly. The fees for Facebook, YouTube and Twitter ads can accumulate quickly. But if your videos go viral, you don’t have to pay to get them in front of a broad audience. Your distribution costs are zero.
Spend some time watching viral videos, and you’ll quickly see most of them fall into three categories – amazing, funny or heartwarming. People watch “epic fail” videos to laugh, and they watch footage of kittens bonding with Doberman Pinschers to be uplifted.
Find a way to deliver your business’s message while fitting in one of the three viral categories. It only takes one viral video to turn your small business into a household name around the world.
