March 14, 2024

How To Shoot A Marketing Video 101

Video marketing is one of the best ways any small business can impact a potential client. Our digital world is becoming increasingly video-centered, and brands that don’t use video marketing to convey information are likely to be drowned out by those who do.

There are so many potential use cases for business videos, whether on social media, a webpage, email marketing, or paid advertising. Many brands understand the need for business videos.

However, few small businesses can use videos in their marketing strategy. Shooting a video can take a lot of time, effort, and technical know-how, and many small brands just can’t put the resources into developing videos.

Luckily, the experts at JSL Marketing & Web Design put together this handy guide on how to shoot a business video for marketing purposes!

Step 1: Know Your Goal

If you’ve decided to use video marketing in your strategy, you’re likely excited and fired up to start shooting. We understand the enthusiasm, but take a deep breath and remember to tie the video back to your strategy. Each video you develop for your marketing should be tied to a specific goal. The way your brand will research, plan, and shoot a social media video about a new product will be quite different from a YouTube video series about cutting-edge issues in your industry.

The basics of video marketing won’t change from one video to another, but the length, props, storyboarding, and tone from video to video could be vastly different. We are so excited to help you plan your video, but we recommend slowing down and taking the time to consider your goal. Once the goal and video alignment are done, the rest can fall into place nicely.

Step 2: Know Your Format

It’s exceedingly easy to think of your video without considering where it will be displayed. That can be a problem. A two-minute video might make a lot of sense for your website. It won’t make sense for email marketing or social media. You’ll likely want to trim that 30 seconds or under for those mediums.

Now, you can take the same introductory video and trim it down into two versions, one for the website and one for social media, but it is worth pointing out that it’s not just as simple as “making a video.” Keep the tactics in mind for the best results.

Step 3: Know Your Audience

Always keep the intended audience in mind for the best results. Anything you know about your ideal customer profile should be analyzed for relevancy for this video. What are their pain points? What problem are they trying to solve? Why should they care about your business? What separates you from your competition? You don’t need to include these data points, but they could be helpful.

Step 4: Storyboard

Now that you’ve researched and planned, it’s time to sketch a storyboard before shooting. The purpose of the storyboard is to carefully plan out every piece of your video. Occasionally, a “point and shoot” approach might work, but generally speaking, you’ll want to lay out every scene in your storyboard.

This helps all parties involved prep their scenes, consider what additional accouterments are needed, and prepare for the video. Remember, a storyboard shouldn’t be the video itself but rather a comprehensive brief that gives everyone the high-level flow of the scene. Generally, we recommend:

Making all instructions regarding the scene incredibly clear and easy to read
Forcing yourself to make sure every scene in your storyboard is necessary
Keeping video angles as simple and direct as possible
Keeping any additional info that could be helpful in a storyboard (lighting, additional props needs, etc.

Storyboarding is a rich and intricate process. We recommend doing additional research into the subject to prepare yourself to create your first storyboard.

Step 5: Shoot

All the hard work is prepped, and you’re ready to get to the fun part: the shot itself. If you’ve done it right, you shouldn’t be making many changes in this scene. Your planning and storyboard should have gotten you precisely what you need, and everyone should know exactly what they need to do!

We always recommend keeping the shooting as brief as possible for a first-time business video shoot. Generally, viewer attention spans for business videos are relatively short. There will be some variation depending on your needs and goals, but often, 2-3 minutes is the maximum we’d recommend for a business video. This can help keep the shoot nice and short and reduce stress for all parties involved.

Step 6: Edit

If shooting is fun, editing is possibly the most crucial part. Well-shot and planned videos can fail if the video is skipped or done poorly. Inversely, a good video can become great with top-tier editing. Pay close attention to audio quality, light quality, and length.

Nothing is worse than a video with poor light and sound quality. Releasing any business video with subpar quality is also an easy way to lose your clients’ trust. For this reason, we recommend putting more time into editing than the shot itself.

Shoot Your Video With JSL

Are you looking to shoot a marketing video and need expertise to guide you through the process? JSL Marketing & Web Design is ready to help! Our talented videographers are waiting to assist you with the following:

Video Ideation
Storyboarding
Shooting & Editing
Video Promotion
& More!

January 26, 2023

How To Maximize Video Marketing In 10 Seconds Or Less

Video marketing is dominating the marketing news lately and more. As social media, YouTube, and video search increase their reach, more and more consumers are learning about products and brands via video marketing. Small business owners, interested in this growing medium, are asking themselves how to make an impression with video marketing. Video marketing used to be a “nice to have” for marketing, but impressive video marketing is now a necessity, not a luxury. After all, it’s now the number one way consumers learn about products they go on to purchase. Failing to invest in video marketing is a huge missed opportunity for many small businesses.

However, video marketing is a broad term and covers a variety of video tactics. The sheer number of videos online means that while more and more video content is being digested, audience attention spans are falling. If you don’t make a lasting and powerful call to action in the first 5 seconds of a video, your audience will likely not finish the video in question.

It’s critical that your videos are engaging enough to keep your audience’s attention past the first few seconds, but that can be easier said than done. If you’re unsure how to use video marketing to make quick and lasting impressions on your audience, read on!

Know Your Audience

It can be tempting to get out the storyboard and camera and hit the ground running! After all, shooting videos can be fun! However, it’s important to remember that video marketing isn’t just an end to itself… it’s a tactic intended to make an impact on a particular audience. That sounds simple enough, but the fact that you’re targeting a particular audience needs to be front and center as you plan. The audience can’t be an afterthought… they need to be your focal point. Know your audience and you are able to more effectively reach them with your video marketing.

Who Is Your Audience?
What Are They Interested In?
Why Should They Care About Your Video?
What Action Do You Want The Audience To Take After Viewing Your Video?

Be Brief & Direct

This can vary a lot from video to video. What might be brief for a TikTok might come across as rushed and forced on a doctor’s homepage. However, as a general rule of thumb, it is better to keep your video brief. Two minutes is likely the maximum for a website, although there are certainly use cases where a longer video might make sense. (Think a marketing webinar or an informational YouTube series.)

Still, even with longer videos, being direct is a good practice. A ten minute YouTube video on a legal question or medical ethics issue might be a longer use-case for a video, but the most effective videos will still summarize these mammoth topics effectively and without filler. Brevity is a good trait for video marketing; keep your videos as succinct as possible. Trust us; your audience will thank you.

Think About Where This Will Be Shared

The vector for your video is in some ways just as important as the content. Some small business owners look to repurpose the videos they produce from one channel to another. This is a perfectly valid way of reusing video content, but it usually does require some editing. It’s just not possible to take one video and put it on YouTube, Tiktok, your website and social media without minor tweaks.

If you know the main channel of dissemination prior to storyboarding, you are able to be more impactful and strategic with your time. That’s not to say that you can’t trim down a long industry roundtable to share on TikTok and social media, but be prepared to deal with the channel-specifics.

It’s also worth remembering that just because your video could be shared via a certain channel, doesn’t mean it should be. For example, if you’re a craft winery, your video content about new bottles and specials likely isn’t a good fit for LinkedIn, but it’s probably a great fit for social media. Inversely, if you’re a business law firm, your content is probably a much better fit for LinkedIn than TikTok. Keep your promotion plan in mind as you develop your marketing videos.

Find A Brand Voice

An irreverent and charismatic tone could be great for a local vineyard. Our business law firm, however, probably wants to portray their business as a serious and erudite group of professionals. The tone that our vineyard uses to advertise a wine-tasting festival is likely not going to work for our law firm. The right brand voice can make or break your business outreach. This is good marketing advice writ large, but it’s especially pertinent to video marketing. If your videos don’t align with the tone of the medium and the voice that your audience expects, they’re likely to keep scrolling.

Let Clients Or Products Do The Work For You

If you don’t have the resources to plan and script a video, your clients and products can be a great way to fill a blank space. Client testimonials and product demos are great ways to streamline the production process, but they are also amazing ways to show that your brand is the real deal! As video becomes more and more common in internet marketing, savvy brands need to find ways to cut through the chatter and grab the attention of their audiences faster. Videos that demonstrate ‘social proof’ are great ways of doing this. Every business owner thinks their brand is special; let a client testimonial or product demo prove that to your audience.

We recommend….

Testimonial Videos
Product Demos
Client Interviews
Location Opening Videos

Offer Something Of Value

No one is interested in your brand for their health. (Unless you literally are a doctor!) Keep your audience’s needs at the heart of your video. That sounds like a given, but it can be easy to forget about what your audience expects when trying to fit your brand’s story and value props into your video. Your audience is much likelier to finish your video if your video offers something of value, not just promotional material or a laugh.

That’s where your expertise comes in. The more authoritative your video content is, the more your audience is incentivized to keep engaged. Quick and punchy calls to action might work for short videos, but the longer the video gets, the more informative your content needs to be.

Your industry expertise is a great way to offer value. Your audience is interested in how your knowledge can benefit them. Showcase this in these sorts of video formats!

Webinars
Industry Roundtables
Industry FAQs
Topical Lectures

Maintain Quality

The best writing, storyboarding, setting and brand voice can’t redeem a shaky hand or poor audio quality. That doesn’t necessarily mean that every video you produce needs to look like a Hollywood production, but there are certain baseline levels of video quality that you need to hit. You might have the best content in your video, but your audience will keep scrolling if your video is filled with harsh sounds or poor lighting.

Pay close attention to…

Lighting
Sound Quality
Stability Of View
Sluggish Video Plays
No Sound
Video Distortion
Black Screen While Playing
QuickTime Errors

Your Video Marketing Partner

Do you need to maximize your video marketing? JSL Marketing & Web Design is here to help you reach new heights! We’re an award-winning marketing agency, based in Dallas, TX and we’re ready to talk shop!

Our commitment to telling your story is what separates us from the rest. Our team of video marketing experts will work with you to uncover what makes your brand different and how you need to communicate that to the broader public. Your brand is your story; let us help you tell it.

Fill Out The Contact Form Below To Get In Touch!

May 24, 2019

The Videos are Coming, Are You Ready? [Why 2019 is the Year of Video]

Video Marketing (or using videos in your digital and content marketing strategies) has been surging in popularity in recent years, and our team at JSL Marketing knows 2019 will only continue this trend.

That’s one of the reasons we had video shoots in both Dallas and San Diego this Spring (and, of course, because it was fun). We fully expect videos to become an even bigger part of digital marketing in the coming year – and we can’t wait!

Learn Why Video is Taking Over in 2019

The People Want Videos

Every study – and we mean every study – shows that people want video. So, give the people what they want!

Short videos, long videos (within reason), funny videos, emotional videos, educational videos, it doesn’t matter as long as it is a motion picture. And everyone knows it.

Some of the biggest names in digital marketing and SEO education have made it clearly known that videos do better than emails, social images, blogs, or PDF/downloadable content.

HubSpot’s chart below shows the numbers:

But if you’re thinking ‘54% isn’t that much’, know this – many predictions place video traffic at up to 80% in 2019. Which means if you aren’t taking videos, posting videos, and keeping up with the trends, you could be missing out on 80% of your audience.

All of the trends, research, and data seems to be saying that video isn’t just a fad, it’s taking over and it’s here to stay.

More Engagement, More Effective

Yes, video is what your audience wants to see. And yes, video has a higher conversion rate. So, is it surprising that videos also are much more effective at grabbing your customers’ attention and pulling extra engagement from them?

This means that video is not only good for sales, but also for brand awareness, even if you aren’t trying to increase your sales just yet. Brand awareness can increase your audience and their trust in you – and trust is huge, especially with millennials and their buying practices.

According to the above Washington Post chart, societal trust is declining, especially in businesses, which means you have to work extra hard to make your brand ‘one of the good ones’ – and video is a great way to do that.

Are You Ready to Take the Leap into Video in 2019?

Want a fun bonus stat? Over 85% of Facebook videos are played without sound – and even our team at JSL is guilty of this.

How does this statistic help you?

It means you either need to have a quick blurb stating your video is ‘better with sound’ before it starts or in the caption. Or you need to optimize it on mute – essentially meaning you need subtitles.

Want more stats and tips from JSL Marketing? Contact us today to get your video marketing strategy rolling!

Tag: video