Five Tips for Improving a Marketing Video
In this blog post, we discuss five quick and easy tips for improving a marketing video. This goes over things you can do in production to make the process faster and smoother, in addition to getting better results when interviewing either personnel, clients of yours, or anyone else. Additionally, there is advice on what to do after the video is made to better ensure a return on your investment.
Locations Matter
How many locations should you film in? The changing backdrop, especially if relevant to the spoken content, is something we’ll never say “no” to. It adds credibility to the person on camera and keeps the viewer better engaged from the changing scene. Imagine watching a movie has the exact same background the entire time! No filmmaker has even tried that and neither should you on your shorter marketing video. However, keep in mind that each time crew has to pack up and set up equipment, you’re adding downtime to the process that could be used elsewhere or even saved overall on the budget. Your choice of backdrops, while visually appealing, also has the potential of both lighting and, in particular, ambient sound issues with stuff going on in the background.
It’s a balancing act to be sure, but also don’t neglect the possibility of green screen. We can film the backdrops you want on site but keep the interview film set in one place, that’s ideally noise-free and easy for everyone to access. This also has the benefit of speeding up the interview process considerably with no moving of sets. We can better control lighting and the differences between the two finished products are negligible, if noticeable at all.
Pre-Interview Your Subjects
Don’t leave the content you capture to camera to chance! To be clear, we’re not suggesting you script everything, because most of our clients still want that organic, “in their own words” feel to dialogue. They should, because authenticity is the currency of the future in marketing. What we’re referring to with a “pre-interview” is simply that you ask the intended subjects the questions you want to ask ahead of time and get them to write their answers back in an email. Their answers don’t have to be super long, just long enough for you to get the gist of what they would say on camera. This way, you can screen what you like, or perhaps don’t like, and tailor the interview on camera accordingly.
You can also ask them for anything else that they want to talk about related to the overall message and potentially get some great content that you might not have otherwise thought of. We encourage clients to do this after they go through their questions, but it should also be done during the pre-interview as well.
Plan Your B-Roll
Among the top ways for improving a marketing video is to make sure the visuals are on-point. In the industry, we refer to those additional visuals as “b-roll” or footage that the B-camera typically captures while A-camera is capturing interviews. Especially if you follow our advice with pre-interviewing your subject, you can also get a sense of what visuals to capture that reinforce the dialogue interview subjects will discuss. Effective marketing videos show, not just tell. The last thing you want to do is send a video crew in to film b-roll with nothing prepared on your end and nothing interesting to capture.
This may mean you have to coordinate with personnel to be available, at a specific time, and with certain activities or processes ready to be filmed. What you don’t have to do is plan how you will capture this content. That part can be left to us and our years of experience in visual storytelling. You simply just have to help us out with the “what to film”, as the subject matter expert.
Branding
When getting content into the edit bay, here’s a short list of things we’ll ask every client for in order to ensure the branding you’ve established for your organization remains consistent into your marketing video:
- Font(s)
- Color(s)
- Style/genre of background music (we can source royalty-free music options based on your notes)
- Logo & tagline (please email that to us in all file formats you have it in)
- Names and titles of all individuals captured on camera, if applicable
All of these elements play into graphics we create for the video such as a logo reveal animation, lower thirds, on-screen text, and more.
Having a Plan for Your Video
The first step for improving a marketing video after it’s made is to actually have a plan for how to use it. As obvious as that may sound, we’ve observed over the years that it’s not something every client does. Easy and free things to do include uploading it to a YouTube channel, pinning it to your social media channels, and a few other things we go over in this blog post.
Other things include installing a call to action in it that encourages viewership. For example, if you have a subscriber list that you can email blast the video out to, inform them in the email there’s a discount code or some other incentive they can only discover by watching the video. If it’s a product or service launch, let them know the video explains how a problem they’ve been having will now be solved through use of the product or service.
If you’re relying on passive forms of marketing, paid ads on Google and/or social media platforms will ensure both targeted and overall better reach across otherwise very crowded platforms. If you need assistance specifically with these types of things or other forms of online marketing using video, please visit our page set up specifically for how our team can assist you.