Video marketing is an extremely important part of any digital marketing campaign nowadays. Looking at video marketing statistics in 2018, it is evident that video marketing is growing at a significant rate. It will continue to grow in the coming years so it is something that all businesses should be carefully considering. However, most people would consider themselves to be rookies when it comes to the world of video marketing. This is because video production can be complicated and people don’t know where to start; What camera to use? Which software to use? How to measure results? Etc. I guess that this is the price you pay for the success of video campaigns in 2018. Thankfully, there are many great tools that are designed for people who aren’t used to video content creation. This non-exhaustive list of video marketing tools are essential for all beginner video content creators.
1. Books
You might think that I’m joking, but seriously… books are a great tool to have when recording video marketing content. If you are recording videos on a laptop or mobile phone, you can place the device on a stack of books in order to create a nicer viewing angle that isn’t looking directly up your nostrils. This may sound ridiculous at first but trust me, if you compare videos shot at different viewing angles, you will notice that the video recorded at eye level or above always looks more professional.
2. External Microphones
A great way to take your laptop or smartphone video content to the next level is to invest in an external microphone. When you think of video you think visual, but audio is arguably more important than visuals, especially in video marketing. Why spoil a great video with poor audio? Having poor audio will lead to your video marketing content performing much worse than it should. You can purchase a high quality external microphone online for less than €50. This small investment will turn your amateur video into a much more professional one. If you are not ready to make this investment then you should at least use a pair of earphones that has a built in mic – these microphones tend to be better quality than those found in a laptop or smartphone.
3. Tripod Adapter for Smartphone
One thing that is extremely noticeable is shaky video, especially when recorded on a smartphone. This is something that can be easily prevented by investing as little as €5 and improving the quality of your video immensely.
4. Apps for Filming on Smartphone
Smartphone cameras are beginning to produce video quality similar to that of a €2,000+ camera, and they are continuously being improved year after year. However, there are certain features that smartphone manufacturers enable to improve the look and feel of the videos and pictures being captured. Whilst this is great for their broad target market, it doesn’t always benefit video content producers. In order to disable these features, there are apps that will allow you to control the settings of your smartphone camera manually and produce videos that are of similar quality to an expensive video camera. iPhone’s can now even film in 4K at 60FPS which a lot of these expensive cameras still can’t do! Some great apps that make this possible include the Adobe Premiere app and FiLMiC Pro.
Here’s an example of a video shot with FiLMiC Pro:
5. Apps for Editing on Smartphone
Sometimes we need a video captured and edited extremely quickly. Maybe you were walking down the street and were presented with a brilliant opportunity to create some video marketing content but all you have is your phone. In these situations, we need two things; an app for recording (which we have just talked about) and an app for editing. There are lots of great apps that allow you to edit videos easily on your smartphone and some of them have some really advanced features. These apps are perfect for on-the-go video content creation especially in the world of social media that we are living in today. Some of my top picks are InShot, Spark Cam and iMovie – the native iPhone video editing app. Each of these apps are simple to use and offer a lot of features that you only tend to get with paid editing software.
Spark Cam tutorial by Tyler Stalman:
6. Paid Editing Software
Whilst there is a lot of great free video editing software, you’re videos will often require a little more complexity than what those free programmes offer. Complexity tends to cost, but it is definitely worth the investment. That said, you don’t need to go and buy the most expensive and most complexed piece of video editing software in the market. There is lots of really intricate, but simple to use, video editing software available for an extremely affordable price. The most popular video editing softwares include Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro – both of which have extremely advanced editing capabilities and will require some training in order to use efficiently. A more beginner-friendly editing software is Camtasia which allows advanced video editing for people with no previous experience.
7. Template Based Video Maker
For the less confident people wanting to immerse themselves in the world of video – a template based video maker is a great starting point. They offer a users lot of guidance, often you will select a template to work with and then just add photos, videos and text and the software will make the video for you. This is a quick and easy way of making great looking videos. However, there is a drawback with these kind of video makers; they are extremely limited in creative flexibility. You will only be able to edit certain elements within the video and you have much less creative freedom. If that’s something that matters to you then I suggest digging in to the more advanced video editing software and start learning!
8. Screencast Based Video Editor
If you are a digital, software or web-based company then you know the struggle of having to explain certain things to clients. It can be extremely challenging to teach a client how to use simple features or where to click on certain pages. This can be made a little less stressful with a freemium Google Chrome plugin – Soapbox from Wistia. This plugin allows you to easily switch between webcam, screencast and split-screen views making it much easier to explain things to your clients. Once you are finished recording you can edit your video and share it instantly in a number of ways including email. This is a must have for anyone who regularly makes explainer videos for clients.
Soapbox by Wistia:
9. Promo Video Maker
One of the most popular formats of video content marketing is promotional videos. They are great at raising brand awareness and reaching out to potential customers. Like with all types of video content, it can be a bit daunting to jump right in to creating a promo video and not knowing where to start. After all, you need to have a great promo video in order for it to be successful. One of our personal favourites is Promo which is an affordable and easy to use web-based promotional video maker.
Here’s a simple video we made in 5 minutes:
10. Data Tracking Tools
It’s almost pointless creating these beautiful videos if you are not tracking how well they are performing and thinking about how you can improve your video marketing efforts based on this data. YouTube offers the ability to see how many views, likes, dislikes and comments your video receives. However, with a paid video hosting service, you can get much more detailed insights and track the actual results of your video. One example is Wistia which allows you to view data such as who watched the video, which exact parts of the video they watched and how many times they watched it. This helps marketers to understand the type of video content that their audience reacts positively to and use this to their advantage by implementing a video strategy that can help drive new leads and sales.
Conclusion
Most people will shy away from video marketing because they don’t feel confident enough to start creating something. They’ll use the excuse of having “no equipment”. Well actually, we do have the equipment – almost all laptops and smartphones nowadays can record video and audio quite well. So instead of using “no equipment” as your excuse, use what you have and start creating video content now! It may take some time and investment to figure out what works for your company, but once you know what type of video content works, it can be the most powerful marketing tool that your business has.
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