Marketing professionals are under constant pressure to innovate and find new content or channels to bring in qualified buyers to a business. This is an essential part of running a successful firm and ensures that there is a regular flow of new customers to fuel the bottom line.
As almost all businesses become more astute with digital marketing, the need to produce compelling content has become all the more critical. Sub-standard content will either be completely missed by the audience, or not acted upon.
Video is a great way of doing this. As increasing volumes of internet traffic centres on social networks, finding good content to place on them is a great way of raising awareness. Yet video can be time-consuming, expensive and takes skill to produce well. So how do you get started with producing compelling videos to promote your products and services?
Video doesn’t have to break the bank
Even without a huge marketing budget, you can get a video content strategy off the ground. Instead of opting for 3D video with people and glamorous locations, you can do it in a much more efficient fashion.
2D animated video is a great alternative to enable you to produce some visual content without breaking the bank. With animation, you can pick out the key points of your products and highlight how they help your target audience do what they need to do. Animated videos can also be tailored for the different social channels to optimize viewing.
Consider animated video a visual storyboard version of your products. You can show how they work, why buyers should buy, and how they solve common pain points.
Recruiting some help
Most firms do not have the skills or resources to produce animated videos in-house. This could be a combination of workload or capability – or both. The best way to bring in some help to produce 2D video is to hire an animation video company. This ensures you can capitalize on the best-in-class talent, while saving on the costs and risks of taking on new permanent employees.
To get started, put a recruitment plan together with some of your most important requirements. Look for a firm that has a referenced portfolio online that shows the work they have done for other customers. Check out their social media and see how they use video to position their own firm. You can even privately contact a couple of their customers to see how they found working with the agency, and what results their videos have delivered for them.
Document your requirements
The next step is to jot down your priorities. Where do you want your agency to be based? Are you looking for a partner in your city or state to enable face-to-face meetings? Or are you comfortable working remotely and relying on video calls?
Consider too how hands-on you want to be (or have time to be). Be clear about this in your brief, as it will help you to build an open, honest relationship with your video production firm from the start. If you want to be involved at every step of the process, or whether you just want to provide a brief and then review the final draft, let potential agencies know how you want to work.
Throw a few questions in about how each agency would go about representing your products, and how they would familiarize themselves with your target audience.
Making your choice
Once you have sent these requirements off to some shortlisted agencies, read through the responses and choose a few to interview. During these sessions, be open about your budget and what you are looking to achieve from the campaign.
Don’t be afraid to ask the agencies a little about your firm to see if they have done some homework. This knowledge will be essential in helping them bring your company to life in a very short space of time on 2D videos.
Getting started
With your mind made up, don’t waste any time getting started. Choose a product or service to focus on at first and concentrate on that. Brief the agency in detail about who that product targets, how senior they are, and what triggers them to buy.
Do not just focus on the video itself – consider the best platforms to distribute it on and ask your agency to optimize it to fit them. With such a short space of time (sometimes as little as a few seconds) it is vital your videos display with their best foot forward on the social networks.
