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Welcome to our digital marketing blog. Here you will find free advice discussing all the tips and tricks you need to make and promote the very best online content.

From practicalities on set to the latest digital marketing trends, we’ve learned—sometimes the hard way—what does and doesn’t work. Here we hope to impart the methods and techniques we’ve come to know and love.

Jan 25
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5 reasons why video marketing and website videos can drive sales

By Digital Marketing

Website Videos – Why are they so powerful?

At the end of the day all businesses need to drive sales. They need to retain existing customers and engage and attract new ones. However (and as we all know), successfully achieving this is no mean feat. Here are a few key factors on why website videos have had such a great impact on driving sales.

1- Customers Trust Video

Even though customers acknowledge that all sorts of digital trickery can be achieved with video today they still implicitly trust video and in particular website videos. That’s because video is able to display raw emotion from real people.

Humans depend on emotions to make decisions, and this is especially true of purchasing decisions. Video and video marketing are without doubt the most effective way to convey emotion to your customers.

2- Customers Can See You

Wouldn’t every business love to have a one-to-one with each and every potential customer in the world? Businesses and brands can use video to form a connection with the viewer instantly, it enables them to look customers in the eye and say, “this is who we are, and this is what we believe”.

The power of what we see is so strong that if we experience a positive emotion from what we hold in our eyes then we also form a bond with what it is we are seeing.

website videos

3 – Google Loves Video

Fact: if you have website videos you will instantly have an advantage over any of your competitors who do not. It’s that simple. Google ranks like for like sites much higher if they feature video and customers will also spend much longer on your site.

Having video on your site will not only make it easier for customers to find you on Google, it will also make them more likely to actually click on the Google link (especially if the customer has searched specifically for video about their chosen search term.

4- Video Strengthens Your Message

Website Videos are at their most powerful when they ‘show and tell’ effectively. A well-produced video can use footage, graphics or stills to highlight a product or service, while a voiceover or commentary can highlight the benefits it provides. This fusion of visual and audible information happens in seconds and provides your customer with a much more compelling reason to give you a call that words or even pictures alone can ever do.

Nobody really wants to read pages and pages of text, but YouTube has taught us that everyone wants to watch video.

website videos

5- Your Customers Want to Consume Video

People today may interact with a brand’s video at any time of the day, especially if your target market includes international clients who may be in a radically different time zone. Gone are the days of videos needing to be scheduled into expensive TV advertising slots – video is now available online and on-demand.

Your new customer could have encountered your video marketing on their tablet or smart phone during their commute to work, over lunch, or in the middle of the night. Any website now that doesn’t feature video always feels a little flat or lifeless, and also gives the impression of being somewhat dated. Online traffic records reflect this: customers tend to gravitate to sites that include online video.

So there you have it: five simple reasons why video marketing is an invaluable tool for your campaign.

And if you’re a business-to-business brand then now is the time to steal a march on your competition! Despite all these great reasons to use online video marketing I’ve just outlined, at the moment only 24% of B2B companies are actually doing this, so getting ahead of the curve now will be hugely beneficial.

To find out more about us and our services, please click here.

Jan 25
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How to cast a voiceover for your company website video

By Video Production Advice

Website video advice – The Key to Casting the Perfect Artist

Finding the right voice for your business’ corporate video or website video is essential. All the creative effort you’ve gone to in producing great footage and images can be wasted if the voiceover or narration doesn’t connect with your viewer.

Tone & Style

So, taking the time to identify the right candidate and voice will prove beneficial and create a website video that suits your tone and style and also allows the viewer to identify with your brand.

The first step should be to establish how the voiceover should be delivered, i.e. should it have some pace to it, should it be dramatic, gentle, reassuring etc. This will provide not only a good casting guide but also direction notes for the voiceover artist when they are recording the vocal.

Secondly, an additional set of notes should be devised to summarise the nature of the brand or product featured. These notes are the starting points for establishing what character the voiceover should have, i.e. young, old, male, female, age etc.

website video

Target Audience

Finally, some notes on the target audience for your website video should be added. These should reflect the target demographic and the most suitable tone to communicate with them.

By now you should have a very clear picture of the sort of voiceover artist you need and how their voice should sound and feel.

So how do you go about casting them?

Voiceover Agency

Well, there are two distinctly different options when selecting a voiceover artist. The first route is to approach a respected voiceover agency, a wide selection of which can be found easily online. The key advantage of using an agency is that they will be able to instantly send you a range of casting options (in the form of MP3 showreels or samples) that suit you brief. You can then select your artist from the casting shortlist and the agency will then arrange the recording studio and sound engineer to record the script.

Your director can attend the recording to provide direction or sometimes you can listen into the recording by Skype or other means. The recording quality of the script will be top notch and the file delivered back to you for editing the same day. Here’s the drawback: this kind of service doesn’t come without a cost and although the agency route provides ease, choice and quality, it’s not the most cost effective option.

website video

Freelance Voiceover Artist

The second route you can go down when casting a voiceover for your website video is to use an independent or freelance voiceover artist. They usually have their own recording facility, which although not as high-end as the ones used by the agencies, still gives you high enough quality sound for online material.

There are lots of them across the country and you should be able to find the exact voice you’re looking for at a much lower cost than an agency artist.

The great thing about freelancers is that they will often record you a few lines of your script so you can see exactly how they will sound when representing your brand (you wont get this nice little bonus free of charge from an agency).

However the main drawback is obviously time. You need to spend a fair bit of it finding and getting hold of multiple independent artists if you need a good range to choose from, which means contacting them all individually.

In practice we use both routes depending on our needs and clients budgets. We’ve found that after a while, our contact list of independents offers a wide enough range for some of our clients and the obvious cost benefits they provide are always welcome.

To find out more about us and our services, please click here.

Jan 25
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How can I make my corporate video web friendly?

By Digital Marketing

Harness The Power Of YouTube For Business

Maximising the impact of your video marketing and making your corporate video web friendly is crucial to realising its full potential. The easier it is to find, view and share, the better your chances of it creating impact and allowing you to grow sales or awareness.

So here are a few tips on where exactly to place your video marketing and get the most out of your corporate video web marketing.

Embed or Host?

In terms of where your video lives online there are two options. The video can either live on your website and server and play out directly from your website, or you can embed the video on your site while it is hosted on either Youtube or Vimeo.

If you host the video on your own website then you have the advantage of immediately benefitting from the traffic it directs to your site, and you also have control over exactly where the video is seen. However there are a couple of downsides. Firstly the viewer’s ability to play the video depends directly on what playback software you’ve built into your own website. Customers access content on such a wide array of devices today so ensuring that a self hosted video can play back on everyone’s device or computer can be a challenge. You may even need to spend money making it available on mobile devices. So much thought goes into presenting a positive image of your business during the video, but someone wants to watch your content on an iPad and it won’t even play, straight away a negative image is presented.

That’s one of the key reasons many businesses choose to harness the power of the enormously capable playback software on Youtube and Vimeo. By uploading your video to these sites and then embedding the video on your website you effectively hijack the playback capability of these hugely powerful sites. That means your video will be immediately playable on pretty much any device out there.

corporate video web

How to Embed a Video

If the concept of embedding is new to you then let’s briefly explain how it works. Once you’ve uploaded your video to Youtube for example, a small piece of code can automatically be generated. This code can then be pasted into your website page (you may need your web guru for this part though) and the video can then be played on your site. The viewer need never know where the actual file is hosted and to be honest, they won’t care. What they WILL care about is not being able to play your video, so using Youtube in this way is our suggested route for online video marketing.

Now, even though your video is embedded in your site, you’ll want to maximise its reach and discoverability to attract new customers to your brand. After all, Youtube is the worlds second biggest search engine, so capitalising on this is vital.

Correctly tagging, titling and describing your video on Youtube and other places your video lives is important to ensuring that people can initially find your video, and then use it to click through to your website (after all, there’s no point in them engaging with your video if that’s where the story ends. We need them to be able to get to your site easily so that this engagement can develop further.

Giving the Upload a Title

As you upload, Youtube and Vimeo allow you to title your film. Use a title that will grab the attention of a search engine rather than a simple description of the film. A title that is a questions works well in attracting viewers.

Tagging

Add lots of tags to your film (you can do this when uploading). Separate all the tags with a comma and ensure you include key search words from your sector AND also your URL as a tag.

Film Description

The most important element of adding the description to your film is ensuring you include your URL. This is the key area for helping drive traffic using your corporate video web presence so its essential that you include this.

Finally regardless of whether you embed or not ensure that you upload each of your films to multiple sites rather than sharing one upload across all your social media pages. For example rather than uploading to Youtube then sharing the Youtube link on Facebook etc, do multiple uploads of the same film to ensure that a standalone copy of it exists on all social media platforms. We suggest uploading to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook (and also Pinterest).

This way you’ll make you corporate video web friendly and and in turn maximise the inbound traffic to your own website.

To find out more about us and our services, please click here.

Jan 25
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How John Lewis won our hearts with video and viral advertising 

By Digital Marketing

Article originally written in December 2014

Changing perceptions with video marketing and viral advertising.

OK, let’s be frank here. Very few businesses have the budget that John Lewis does to chuck at video marketing and viral advertising. There, we’ve said it.

However, the way in which John Lewis has used its video to drive sales is a good case study example and actually there’s a lot that we can take away from it to help ourselves.

Arguably John Lewis’ greatest successes with online video have been their Christmas TV advertising campaigns, which have almost become as big as the brand itself. For the past few years they’ve tugged on our heartstrings and made us feel all warm inside with these highly anticipated adverts, usually featuring a child, a present, and a small cute creature (you choose).

viral advertising

By tapping into our seasonal goodwill and desire for traditional warmth and togetherness, John Lewis brings out our collective emotions in a way that forms a long lasting bond. We all know the saying “a dog is for life not just Christmas” but you could also apply the same rule to John Lewis adverts. Yes, they will probably appear in any end-of-year ‘Best Adverts Of 2015 Compilation’ type of programme, but more importantly they have successfully established the brand in our hearts and created powerful emotional connections with us that will far outlast the festive season.

Cast your mind back a few years to a time before the advent of the retail chain Christmas advert and viral advertising war. What was your perception of the John Lewis brand? I bet you a cuddly penguin that you didn’t perceive the brand as being current, warm, clever or thoughtful. In fact I’d be surprised if you had any firm opinions about John Lewis at all. For a few years it seemed that they were losing business to retailers that displayed a little more brand personality.

Now that’s not to say that they’ve come from obscurity and transformed themselves into the rock ‘n’ roll king of department stores, and that’s not what we want from them. They have however become a brand that everyone not only knows and gets talking about every year, but has an opinion of as well. For the most part this is due to the impact of the Christmas advertising campaigns combined with skilful viral advertising and their effect on us collectively. They are a brand that is now firmly on our radar, which is exactly what they intended.

The power of video to control our emotions in this way is something that, with creativity and determination, any and every brand, business and organisation, whatever its size, can harness.

To find out more about us and our services, please click here.

 

Jan 25
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Why Does Production Quality Matter in Company Videos?

By Corporate Video Production, Video Production Explained

A Guide To Good Production Quality

Well production quality is important as it will influence that instant snap judgment that viewers make about a brand the second they start watching their company videos. When it comes to video marketing it’s essential that you cut straight to the chase in effectively representing your brand values right from the first few seconds of any video you produce.

Like it or not, we all form instant judgements about brands the second we encounter them and these opinions can be so strong that if we make a negative assumption it’s a very difficult task to change our mind. Such is the power of video.

However, get this right and you can gain the trust and enthusiasm of potential new customers right from their very first encounter with your brand.

Below is an example of various interview shots that we’ve produced over the years. The difference in what they communicate about the quality of the brands they represent is instantly apparent.

high-vs-low-production

Many of the elements that boost the production quality of a promotional video are relatively unseen. Your viewers will probably not exclaim “that’s a beautiful dolly shot!” or “this interview has been wonderfully lit”.

However all these elements will be subconsciously perceived within the viewing experience, and will be key to what our general opinion of the brand represented is. It’s these subtleties that provoke an emotional response from the audience and therefore they are powerful factors on creating that all important first impression.

Remember that if you are maximising your reach with a promotional video then you’ll probably be uploading it to YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter etc. When a viewer watches your video on these channels they will more than likely experience your brand with none of the other quality marketing collateral that would surround it on your own company website.

All the time and effort put into making your website a truly wonderful experience and brand ambassador is great for adding extra firepower to marketing items placed solely on your website, but lost when embracing the power of social media channels as these video sites won’t mirror the branding, messaging and design of your own site. Effectively your video has to be strong enough to be seen as a standalone element that can deliver your message isolation.

So making sure that your promotional video or corporate film champions your brand values and ideals is essential in allowing you the option of spreading its footprint as far as the web will allow.

Ensuring you produce a film with the highest production quality isn’t always directly related to video production costs. However budget does go a long way in providing the equipment and experience that this sometimes requires. There’s a common saying in the production industry that goes – You can produce video that’s good, fast or cheap but not all 3. This is mostly true but there are some ways to increase the quality of your company videos without needing a mortgage to pay for it.

company videos

So here’s some areas where companies can enhance the way they present their brand by maximising the production quality of the company videos they produce;

Crew

Finding a good Producer/Director is one of the most essential elements in realising great visuals and high quality production while keeping a lid on the budget. There’s no substitute for experience and a good pro will know exactly how to squeeze every penny’s worth of video production quality out of your budget.

Camera

Unfortunately this element comes down to cost. Using a higher end camera for your video marketing has obvious benefits and will create an instant impact on the visuals you distribute.

Lights

It shouldn’t cost the earth to make sure that any interview content you include in your video is nicely lit. You don’t need additional crew for this as any good cameraman should be able to light a simple talking head shot effectively themselves.

company videos

Sound

DO NOT cut corners on sound recording. This is the one aspect above everything else that if done badly can undo every other element within your video. What we hear when watching video content automatically over rides what we see so capturing beautiful images is pointless if your interviews sound like they’ve been recorded in a toilet!

Grip (moving camera shots)

This is one of the key factors in increasing the perceived production quality of your company videos. Using shots that gently track, jib or dolly is one of the most effective ways to elevate the general overall feel of a video to new heights and give it that Hollywood feel. Again it doesn’t cost the earth and many of the available options don’t require extra crew.

There will also be producers/directors out there who suggest that they can add the “wow factor” in post with some funky editing and graphics. However a general golden rule is that if you haven’t capture quality in camera (ie whilst on the shoot) then no amount of digital alchemy is going to lift the video further.

So our advice is always aim high, because if the quality of your company videos doesn’t match that of your customer’s expectations you may be doing your brand more damage than good.

To find out more about us and our services, please click here.

Jan 25
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SEO So What? What Are The Real Costs On Video Marketing?

By Corporate Video Production, Digital Marketing

How To Balance Message With Production Quality

Ok, so lets talk money. When it comes to producing video your budget is going to be the key factor in how good the final product is. Yes, there are fairy stories about films produced by companies shot on a mobile phone going “viral” and getting millions of views. And you may also be told that it’s all about being creative on limited budgets. But lets be honest, how many videos went viral this year? Can you name them? The truth is that only a handful (and we’re talking single figures here) of videos “go viral” so if that is part of your video marketing plan then you should be realistic about what you will actually achieve.

Search Engines Love SEO

There is also a school of thought that says “any video marketing content is good for your business” and that by simply having any video content on your site is a positive force due to its effect on SEO (search engine optimisation). If you’re not too familiar with this then let me break it down a little. Search engines LOVE video. There’s a much better chance of your company getting to the top of the search pages if you have video content on your website and on your social media pages (Youtube etc). This led to many SEO experts advising that “even video shot on your mobile phone” would have a positive effect on your business.

You’ve probably seen “video blogs” or “company welcome” videos on corporate websites that companies have shot with low production values in the hope that just having “any video content” would be a step in the right direction.

The approach assumes that viewers don’t expect high production quality from some corporate video and that the low budget “blog” type films are actually an endearing and honest way to engage them.

real-costs-of-video1

How Important is Production?

The idea being that as long as there is actual content being delivered (eg, advice, tips, news) then the picture, sound and production quality is not important. This is plain wrong and makes a dangerous assumption about what customers expect and demand from a business or organisation.

Let me give you an example. This was a real conversation that actually happened.

Business – “We’ve shot a 30 minute intro film for our business to help us increase SEO. Our internet marketing advisor said that having a long film on our site would be great for helping search engines find us and new customers engage with our brand. We were advised that quality wasn’t important as a search engine couldn’t distinguish between a professionally produced film and one we shot ourselves”

I need to re-iterate that this was actually a real conversation! A company actually did this! Yes, really. I’m guessing that no one (apart form the business owners) ever watched the whole thing.

There are many things wrong with this approach.

First Brand Experience

One of the most important things to remember when producing online video is that it will most probably be viewed be someone experiencing your brand for the first time. That’s a good thing. New customers are what this is all about.

But the power of online video is such that it’s not a static element. If you’ve marketed the video well then you’ll have probably placed a copy on YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, and twitter etc to maximise it’s distribution.

This means that your new customer may only ever experience and view your film out of the context of your website. It may be embedded in a Youtube share, or linked to on twitter. Therefore it wont be surrounded by the rest of your website as backup to its own presentation strengths and branding quality.

So if you’ve intended to create content with low production quality in the hope that the surrounding website will add the extra polish that you’d normally associate with your brand then you may have made a mistake.

real-costs-of-video2

All the Viewer Will See Is The Video

When the content is embedded, shared, or linked to by social media in many cases all that the viewer will see is the video itself. Every initial impression, assumption and conclusion they have about you will be developed from viewing the video alone. That’s why every element of the video you produce should have the polish and quality you expect from all the other elements in your marketing toolbox.

Lets imagine that you’ve produced a film that doesn’t really capture your usual quality or brand ethos but you decide to put it online anyway to help drive those all important search stats. If this works then your company may rise up the search pages and generate more visits. Great. But the top hit I the search traffic may be this video so all the new customers generated will all land on your less than ideal video. If the video then creates the impression that your brand values aren’t that high then the net result of the whole exercise will be making a negative impression on more people!

To argue that it’s all about delivering content NOT production quality is counterproductive. If I need to give a potential customer my business address then the quality of information I am about to give them relies on me accurately passing them my address. However I don’t hand write my business cards in the belief that as long as the information or content is correct (ie my address is spelt correctly) then the quality of the delivery mechanism (ie – a hand written business card) is not important. We all know the truth here.

Communicate Strength of Brand

As businesses we spend time and money ensuring that our marketing communicates the strength of our brand and the quality we deliver. Every aspect of the way in which we present ourselves will add to the way in which new customers perceive our business and the trust they have in what we offer.

If you really think that you can output low quality marketing items in the belief that “its better than having none at all” then take a look at some of the most successful companies in the world today – Apple, Samsung, VW. Everything you expect from these companies products can be seen in the way they present their online video. But, hey! I hear you say, “these companies have millions to spend on production and my company doesn’t!”. Well yes, you’re right. These companies will spend serious amounts of cash in order to present high quality video production values. But here’s an example of SME client that we recently produced video for who had a modest budget but a clear understanding of the quality they required and the importance of presenting every aspect of their brand in the best possible way to new customers.

If you would like to read more about how to boost your production quality, read our article about grip. If you’d like some quality SEO advice for your business then we’d recommend our own guru Mr Ben Read.

To find out more about us and our services, please click here.

Jan 25
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Can a video marketing company help my business?

By Digital Marketing

A Look at The Power of Video Marketing

As a busy video marketing company we know full well that the most common use for a video produced by a business is that of the promotional video. Let’s face it, at the end of the day we all want to drive sales of our product or service. That’s why we come into work each day and that’s why we produce videos for business – to help them increase sales.

The Customers’ Choice

Customers today are choosing the way and the terms in which they engage with our businesses. They are the ones choosing to press play on the video window that pops up on our home page or YouTube. They are the ones clicking share or comment on our videos. So it’s crucial that we create video content that will engage them and encourage this engagement with our brand.

Let me ask you a question, how many times have you visited a website which has a video as part of its front page? Now, when you first land on the page what do you do? Do you instantly start to read the copy? Do you search for a photo gallery? Or do you click play on the video. I’m guessing that 9 times out of 10 you’ve clicked play!

Why We Watch Video

Well, lets face it, watching a video is a lot easier than reading a page of boring product copy! It’s more convenient and relaxing and it’s also a process that we are naturally at ease with. We’ve grown up watching TV, VHS video and recently DVDs and BluRay so effortlessly absorbing and interpreting information delivered via moving screen image is an acquired skillset that we don’t even give a second thought to.

Watching video feels natural and most importantly, we feel in control. We have the power to press stop or pause. When considering video marketing this is a crucial element as the process becomes much more of a partnership in that the vendor produces content and the customer is empowered to either experience that content or to ignore it. It’s this single required customer action (ie pressing play) that helps to create a bond between the brand and the viewer.

video marketing company

Endorsing Your Brand

It’s like producing a poster to promote your product and allowing the customer the option of either putting the poster up themselves, or simply ignoring it. If they choose to put the poster up then they have effectively endorsed your brand and announced their approval to all their peers.

If a customer shares or comments on your video then in a similar way they’ve essentially endorsed your company and signalled to others that “this is a brand that I want to freely engage with.

It’s these elements that gives video marketing its power whether you produce you video in house or engage a video marketing company. Good content helps all brands build a lasting relationship with customers.

When this happens the brand has achieved something much more positive and lasting than good old fashioned marketing comms and advertising. They’ve actually achieved audience and customer engagement and started a relationship that will ultimately drive sales.

This is the power of video marketing and why promotional video in all its guises is one of the most essential tools a business can have to increase its customer base.

To find out more about us and our services, please click here.

Jan 25
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How do I write a brief for a Corporate film?

By Corporate Video Production, Video Production Explained

Corporate film

Whether you are producing your promotional or corporate film in house or using an external production agency, a key part of the corporate video production process is starting with a detailed and considered brief. A good production company will ask the required questions to establish most of your needs but if your staring at a blank page scratching your headand not knowing where to start then hopefully the guide below should be of use.

We put together an overview of some of the key factors and information that need to be agreed, established and communicated within your video brief.

Audience

Before you start the brief for you corporate film you need to ensure you know who your audience are. Who are you communicating to? How do they like to talk? What sort of tone and style of presentation is the most suitable for the audience to convey your message effectively.

So here are a few questions that should form the base point of any video production brief:

What is the desired response to the video?

ie – What do you want to achieve? Does it need to drive sales? (probably), deliver messaging or enhance your brand.

 

Corporate Video Production

What is the one key message that you want people to take away from watching the film?

A common mistake made in the corporate film production process is to try to load your video with too many messages. Ultimately this will bombard the viewer and result in not one single message being conveyed effectively.

Once these parts of the brief are agreed they will form anchors for the entire project and should influence many of the other elements that will follow within your brief. Your desired viewer response and the emotional reaction you’re aiming for will play important roles in answering all the other questions within your final brief.

Next up you need to think about the actual content and look of the video. The things you should consider are as follows:

People & Voices

Do you want to use talking heads, Voiceovers, interview testimony or actors within your video?

Tone

Professional, friendly, light etc

Production Values

What sort of screen and picture quality are you looking for? Everything is shot in HD these days but the type of camera you use, lighting and crew can dramatically whether the images look high end or more user generated.

 

Corporate Video Production

Feel of Vocal Content

We’d always suggest producing some sort of script even if the entire video is to be made up of interviews material. Producing a script with your desired interview quotes or “perfect world” soundbites will allow the director to develop interview questions that are “leading” and designed to elicit the responses that you noted in your script.

So now your brief should be starting to flesh out and give you a clear picture of what you want to produce. The next step is to consider and agree the presentation approach. There are a few common routes (as well as some other creative angles) that work well for promotional and corporate film. So selecting from one of the methods below assures you that you are using a tried and tested approach:

Company Figure

Delivering most of your corporate film’s vocal message and script from a key/senior company staff member gives the film authority and personalises the brand. The delivery can be either scripted (but beware that this doesn’t feel too cold) or taken from an interview situation (this is a good approach as the script will feel natural even).  You can prime the subject before hand so that they know roughly how the replies need to sound. Here’s an example of this approach.

Corporate Video Production

Customer Testimonial Film

By using you customers to tell the story you instantly get a film that feels honest and is something that viewers should empathise with. Scripting is rarely used in this approach as you’ll want your customers to come across as 100% authentic. Here’s an example of this style of video.

Voiceover

By using a voiceover that delivers the messaging over your action footage your video should instantly take on an increased production value. The strength of this approach is that you can carefully plan the script to exactly cover every single message you want to include. Additionally, as the voiceover recording is usually done after the filming has taken place you have the opportunity to tweak or amend the script in accordance with the actual film material you have captured.

 

Mixed Approach

By combining some of the approaches above you can present a balanced corporate film that has the ability to juxtapose your corporate messaging with real customer testimony and re-enforced by your key personnel. This is a strong combination but you need to be careful that the finished video doesn’t become overlong and boring due to trying to cram too much in. Here’s  project we recently produced using this approach.

So many of the factors we’ve covered above form elements that need to be considered in the corporate film production process from pre-production and even whilst physically shooting the project. However your brief should also include detailed descriptions of items that will be produced after the main filming has been done and the video is being edited. These elements are:

Corporate Video Production

Graphics

Do you want to use logo animation and illustrations? If so agree how any brand guidelines will be delivered to the editor.

Soundtrack

Do you want to use a musical soundtrack to form a soundbed that runs underneath your vocals?

And there you pretty much have it. There are other items that you may wish to include but the above gives you a blueprint of all the essentials of the corporate film production process and we do hope you find it useful.

To find out more about us and our services, please click here.

Jan 25
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Marketing Videos – How to get them right

By Corporate Video Production, Video Production Explained

Marketing videos and budgeting

A cold hard truth is that your corporate video or video marketing tends to look as good as its budget. There’s a direct correlation between how much budget you allocate to your marketing videos and the production quality of the final video that you will produce. However the way your final film looks is not always the most important factor when producing promotional video (good video marketing should always be wary of “style over substance”) and there are of course exceptions so here’s a few thoughts that may be useful when budgeting for your next corporate video production.

Find an Agency That Understands

It’s usually true that you very much get what you pay for when it comes to marketing videos. Creativity, knowledge and skill level should be a given from any good quality, experienced production company and many of the associated costs will be pretty much industry standard costs. So finding a video production agency that understands your product and your customers should take priority over finding the cheapest.

Making a huge saving on your video production wont really seem that exciting if your final video marketing doesn’t effectively engage your customers.

Of course there are cost effective options such as sourcing a resourceful self-shooting director/producer (or one man band) for your film but generally if you’re looking for high impact and high quality on screen then you should budget accordingly.

marketing videos

Your video should reflect the values of your product

To identify where you need to be budget wise it’s useful to look at your product or service and its perceived category. If you are selling within a luxury sector or using factors such as “high quality”, “reliability”, or “forefront of technologically” within your sales offering then any marketing videos you produce should directly reflect these values.

Customers’ perception of promotional video and its production quality is a subtle and often subconscious area that should not be overlooked. Viewers will make a firm judgement call on you and your brand within the first few seconds of your video so matching their expectations with your video’s quality is vital.

Consider the Retail Price Point

Equally the retail price point of your product or service should also be considered when developing budgets for marketing videos. If your product or service has a relatively high purchase price, then the value adding factors which make the purchase worthwhile should be clearly visible within your video. The quality of your video should reflect the price paid by your customers for your product or service.

This should also apply to any post purchase video material such as user guides or user training. If you purchase a brand new quality car then you wouldn’t expect the user manual to be supplied as photocopied paper. So if your producing video marketing to add value post sale then it still needs to reflect cost to the customer.

Research Your Competitors

It’s also important to look at your competitors to assess what level of production they have gone for and how effective their marketing videos are. High budgets will certainly give you higher production value but it doesn’t always follow that they deliver the your message in the most powerful way.

Alternatively if the values you trade on are quirkiness, creativity or fun then there’s more scope to present your video marketing using these traits and focus on originality rather than high quality/high cost. In fact sometimes lower production values can offer charm, earthiness and create engaging video marketing that really hits the spot.

Reflect Your Product

Its very much a case of ensuring that your video output accurately reflects not only your product (and its value) but also the value and importance of the purchase to the customer. Your video should match their expectations of not only the product, but also the purchase experience and user experience.

So rather than starting with a figure when planning your video production budget, start with a goal. Let your customers, your product and your brand be the measure of the level of production your marketing videos need and you’ll emerge with a much more suitable and effective asset for your marketing.

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Jan 25
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Video Marketing – What are the Social Media Basics?

By Digital Marketing

A Guide To Producing Video Marketing For Social Media

Using social media, video marketing and viral marketing videos to increase your brands visibility and customer engagement is a vital part of any marketing activity. It engages the customer in friendly territory and creates a powerful bond if done correctly.

If you have, or are planning on producing a promotional video or video marketing content then social media is a persuasive and engaging platform for you to connect with new customers.

However many companies and organisations still drop the ball in this area and make small mistakes that render such activity much less effective. Here some tips on how to easily maximise the use of social media for your video marketing. Firstly we’re assuming that you have (or are going to have) some video marketing assets that you want to get front and centre on the social media spectrum.

Drip Feed the Excitement

But before we get into what to do with your video lets step back a little and look at how you can even use social media while your video is being made. If you’re on the actual film shoot with your in-house guys or an external production company then make sure you take a few photos of the shoot and tweet them to generate excitement. If you take a few then don’t use them all at once. Instead drip feed them as single image tweets on social media (twitter) to generate a slow build of expectation. Use hash tags like #behindthescenes #onset etc to help users find and share your photos.

Viral Marketing Videos

Upload & Tag

Once your promotional video is complete then there are several strands to your social media plan.

Firstly upload the video to YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook. Tag it respectively using tags that aren’t too long and are separated with commas.

Then (and this is important) make sure you include your url in the films description. This creates a back-link to your site and helps to generate traffic in the direction you are aiming for.

You can also overlay live clickable links back to your site using youtube but you’ll need to register the content with them first so that they can verify the video is yours.

Embed

You should also embed the video straight into your own website. This means that the video sits on either youtube or vimeo but can be played directly through your site. The main benefit being that you don’t need to host the film on your own server and because you are harnessing the power of the youtube and its built in video player. Critically, this ensures that your film can easily be viewed on any computer or device available without any new video payer software being required.

Youtube is obviously the most popular video site out there but you should not overlook Vimeo for embedding the film into your own webiste. Vimeo gives you great insight into how many times people have viewed the embedded film on your site and where they are located in the world allowing you a clear way of measuring the impact of your film.

Tell the World

So now you’ve got copies of your film on Youtube, Facebook, Vimeo and your own website. It’s now time to tell the world about it!

A key mistake that businesses make is to only tweet a link or announcement about their new promotional video once. Many Twitter users may miss your original link if they follow numerous tweeters and so repeat tweeting is essential. Using a scheduler such as Social Sprout helps a great deal here. It’s really easy to use and allows you to load up tweets with links then schedule them to repeat on any given day. You can load up an entire months worth of social media activity and simply let the site do the hard work of spreading the word. It also allows you to send the same message to facebook, linked in and google + so it saves lots of time.

Viral Marketing Videos

Don’t Be Shy

Other social media sites that can be great for maximising your video marketing exposure are Google+ (you’ll be surprise how many people now use it!). Pinterest and of course Linkedin. Don’t be afraid of over saturation as many social media users dip in and out of each platform so the chances of them seeing your message repeated too many times are slim.

Behind the Scenes

Now remember those photos you took on shoot that you tweeted individually? Now is the time to make further use of these by creating a “behind the scenes” gallery (something that people generally love to see). You can upload all the shots to a gallery in facebook, on your own site, or pinterest and include backlinks to the embedded video on your own site. This helps further boost interest once the intial launch has passed.

One thing that I really want to stress is that none of this is either complex or time consuming. All of the actions described above require little technical knowledge and go a long way to making your Viral Marketing Videos work at their maximum potential, giving it every chance of engaging new customers with your brand.

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