How to Leverage Video Production for Your Business
In the last decade, companies have adopted content marketing as a way to draw traffic to their site and grow their business. Our company 2Bridges Productions, a specialist in video production services, also believes in the power of the written word. It’s a proven strategy. It works. But do you know what’s even more powerful?
VIDEO.
Video content is set to EXPLODE, as mobile tech and internet speeds improve. Now is a great time for any company to use corporate video production services into their marketing and growth strategy.
Here are vital research and statistics on the growth trajectory of video:
- A Cisco study estimates “Video traffic will consist of 82% of total consumer traffic by the year 2020… Worldwide IP video traffic will grow more than 3X from 2015 to 2020, a compounded annual growth rate OF 26%!”
- According to Nielsen, “36 percent trust online advertisements” and this figure represents an increase of 27 percent since 2007.
- Spurred by investor bullishness over video sharing, Snapchat (the popular video online sharing platform) has grown exponentially since launch and has recently gone public with a market valuation of $33 billion.
- With a billion users, people around the world watch billions of hours of video on Youtube, making it a cash cow for Alphabet for decades to come.
- Statistics on Facebook show 8 billion views per day and have 135% greater organic reach than photo posts
- According to research, a minute of video is worth 1.8 million words!
Video is the ultimate form of marketing to convey information:
It combines all the various mediums of communication into one powerful storytelling tool.
Books and blog content use written words to tell a story. Podcasts employ “sound” as a form of storytelling.
Video is a combination of a blog article, a podcast and 24 still photographs every second (hence the term motion pictures).
Our favorite quote is the following from Jean Luc Godard:
“The cinema is truth 24 frames per second.”
History of Storytelling
Humans come in various forms – black, white, male, female. We’re a diverse species but one unifying aspect about humanity is our love for storytelling:
- Pre-Historic – Visual storytelling from 35,000 year old Chauvet Cave drawings continue to amaze scientists and historians today.
- Roman-Greco Period – Writers like Homer, Cicero and Virgil have influenced many writers to this very day.
- Invention of the Printing Press – The ability to mass produce works of literature brought society out of the “Dark Ages” and into a period of Enlightenment. It helped spark the Protestant Reformation, and advances in science and literature.
- Age of Radio and Television – President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used radio for his “fireside chats” to build support for his policies and garner support. By the end of the 20th century, cinema and television became dominant forms of communication and entertainment.
- Youtube and the Internet – Video on steroids as more and more people can access and watch videos on their smartphones, tablets and computers. Anyone, anywhere with good content can showcase their work.
And So it has come to this… Video Production FTW!
From cave drawings to Maru the box cat, people are inspired by good stories. If you have compelling content, people will want to share your message to the world. They will retweet, Google Plus, Facebook share, re-blog, and email your message to their friends and their friends’ friends. Video is one of the best ways to achieve the holy grail of viral marketing.
There’s just something very human about video as a medium of communication. You hear people speak. You see them speak. You see their faces, the way their body moves, their facial reactions… Video is the best way to connect from one person to another. It’s the closest thing to human contact until virtual reality (essentially a form of video but in 3D) becomes ubiquitous (estimated to be a billion dollar niche niche!).
Grow Your Company with Corporate Video Production
Because of video’s importance in marketing and SEO, more and more companies are keen on hiring professionals from film production companies, specializing in TV or movie production. Alternatively, companies would hire a freelancer, like a videographer who can provide video production and marketing services.
Whichever route your company chooses, video can significantly benefit your company in the following ways:
- Lead generation
- The use of a promo video to enhance brand awareness
The Marketing Power of A Corporate Video
One of the hottest trends in online marketing is “growth hacking.” Growth hackers focus on building and engaging the company’s customers, using low-cost alternatives to traditional advertising (i.e. print ads). They often use social media, viral marketing and targeted advertising.
This type of approach to marketing is common in startups, who often don’t have a marketing budget that can match an established player in their industry. One of the best ways to create a viral effect with little to no budget is the use of video.
They would use content marketing to rank highly on the search engines. In the past 10 years, blogs have been the go-to source for marketing. However, more and more people are turning to video (in particular Youtube and Facebook) to spread their message. In Youtube, videos are easier to rank (get on the front page of Youtube search).
Do you know the second best part about ranking on Youtube search? It’s the second most popular search engine on the Internet with over 30 million visitors per day.
Do you know the #1 best reason about ranking on Youtube? It’s owned by Google so that means if you rank highly on Youtube, you’ll likely rank highly on Google search.
Remember all those statistics mentioned at the beginning of this article? Imagine having a highly ranked video on two of the most powerful search engines in the world? And if that’s not enough, here are more statistics from Hubspot:
- 74 percent of online video will account for 74 percent of all web traffic in 2017
- 65 percent of viewers watch more than 75 percent of a video
- 33 percent of people who own tablets watch about one hour of video
- 28 percent of users with smartphones watch videos on their phones at least 1X a day
- 78 percent of people watch videos online every week
- 75 percent of business executives watch work-related videos weekly
Okay, we get it. Video is awesome! If you’re still not convinced:
- 500 million people watch Facebook videos every day
- 10 billion videos are watched a day on Snapchat
- 82 percent of Twitter users view video content
Hubspot is a great place to get all kinds of video. But even if you don’t want to believe what Hubspot tells you, just Google video trends or SEO video on Google and take in all that info. Regardless, it’s clear video is a great way to drive customers into the front end of your sales funnel. Hence, it’s popularity with growth hackers.
I know one startup who was paying $100K a month to run subway ads. With the right video marketing services, you can be more effective hiring a local videographer and posting online. Here’s the breakdown of costs:
- 10 hour production for a small film crew – $5,000
- Post Production (editing raw footage) – $1,000
- Cost of posting on Facebook, Youtube, company blogs/website, Twitter, Snapchat – $0
You might be thinking – $6,000 for 10 hours of film production? That’s ridiculous!
Remember, with 10 hours of film footage you can at least get 4 half hour interviews. This means having a CEO, an account person, or a celebrity personality (you’d have to hire one of course) to speak on camera about your product.
If you run a tight ship, you can probably squeeze a few more interviews. Get your videographer to get raw footage or get free copyright footage online.
Now what can you do with all that footage? Almost anything!
Look at how we spliced up the footage for a FOUR HOUR shoot for Skymark Ventures. Most of the videos are just 2-3 minute clips, and the full interviews will be coming shortly.
If you have all that footage from filming, you can start ranking EVERY PROMO VIDEO on Youtube and Google. Imagine having four of your promo videos on the front page of Google AND have the top 4 slots on Youtube search? The traffic would be tremendous!
You might be asking – but how can I convert viewers to actual leads? You can’t insert a contact form on video. How does this help with lead generation! This is where your marketing team comes in (or your outsourced SEO agency). Follow these steps from searchenginewatch.com:
- Write Long Descriptions – Today, you’ll need at least 2,000 words for a blog post to have a chance at ranking. Personally, in this site, I side with caution and go for 3,000+ words to give my posts real authority. However, you don’t need that much for Youtube videos. You can go with 250-500 words to describe the video. Having descriptions in your video is your way “to talk” to Google’s algorithm so this is super important! It’s also easier than researching and writing a 3,000+ word blog article.
- Target Keywords – Don’t stuff your description with keywords, but definitely mention it in the first two sentences and in the last two sentences. Get your video title to have the keyword as well.
- Use Keywords in Your Playlists – Google is the modern day, digital equivalent of a librarian. It’s main job is to index the world’s information so make it easy for their algorithm to categorize your content. If your video is about “plumbing,” then use a “Plumbing” playlist to put all your how-to videos about plumbing.
- Drive traffic to your videos – Share your video on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Drive organic traffic from everywhere and focus on watch time. Watch time is super important for ranking videos. It doesn’t help to get a 1 million views and they only watch 5 seconds of your 10 minute video. That would be very bad. Alternatively, there are black hat ways to drive views and retention. White or black hat – both ways can help you rank videos. Ask your go-to SEO guy or gal, or ask us!
- Get Subscribers – Google is all about social signals. They value Google+ (so gets lots of those) and they value highly subscribed channels. So definitely encourage your entire network to subscribe to your channel. This will drive views, engagement and all the good things about SEO.
Once you do all that, then you’ll rank highly on keywords on Youtube and Google. Now how to get conversions with a highly ranked video? Remember the long description in the points above?
This is where you put a link to your company’s landing page.
I recently ran a quick test to show you how easy this is. Last year, I was involved in a short film production for my company. We shot this:
I had it on Vimeo, but wanted to test how easy it is to rank on an easy keyword on Youtube. It was a “thriller web series” so I focused on that keyword. I put the keyword in the title and in the long description of the video.
Now, if you look at the long description, you’ll also see several bitly links to an affiliate offer from Clickbank. It’s an offer to show how one can start making films and become a filmmaker.
I threw several social signals (from friends, family and acquiatances), drove up the views via social media and focused on ranking it on Youtube.
At the end of the experiment, I was able to land on the front page of Youtube AND on the front page of Google search for “thriller web series”. That means for every single person who is looking for that particular type of web series – he or she will get to see the video on two of the most powerful search engines in the world.
For a short while, it was also ranking for “simple guide on filmmaking.” But it may have dropped for now, as I’ve ended the SEO test.
As of April 1, it was still ranking on both search engines and this is a 6 month old video, re-done for Youtube! This shows if you have footage from prior shoots, you can easily re-purpose it for future marketing initiatives!
I’m biased when I say I liked my own film, but I do admit it’s not Alfred Hitchcock. Regardless, with a few social signals, an SEO optimized 200 word description – I was able to rank my video.
Do you know the best part?
I actually made a few sales from my Clickbank affiliate link!
Video content marketing works.
The Power of Using a Video Production Company
Think of how long it would take to research, write AND rank a 3,000+ word blog article. We’re already at 2,000 words in this article (Congrats and thanks for making it this far), and I can tell you it’s really hard to do.
With 10 hours of footage, a good film production company can get 5 thirty-minute interviews. Then your editor can splice that up into several videos. So let’s do simple math. 5 thirty-minute interviews results in 150 minutes of footage. If you create 5 minutes videos for your channel, you’ll get 30 videos!
Remember, you will also have the full interviews themselves (that’s another 5). Finally, you can have “sound bytes,” like what we did for Skymark Ventures. These sound bytes can used anywhere (blogs, tweets, Facebook) and with 150 minutes of footage, the potential is incredible.
Then get your marketing team to write 250-500 words and do basic SEO on the videos you want to rank. Finally, insert a link to your landing page and… VOILA! You can have multiple videos that are ready to rank.
And I can’t emphasize this enough – Blog posts will rank you on traditional search engines only.
Video?
You can get ranked on Youtube AND Google. Post it on Facebook and you’ll get noticed there too!. That’s three platforms you can leverage your highly, stylized SEO content with a link to your company’s landing page!
And there’s more!
Remember video includes audio… What does this mean? This means you can get your video producer to extract the audio and use it as a podcast!
What can you do to a podcast? Well, write super long descriptions with basic SEO. And of course, insert a link to your company’s landing page.
BOOM!
With the right video production strategy, you’ll have multiple videos to rank and podcasts to spread your company’s brand. You’ll be ubiquitous.
The cost of posting this content? ZERO. It’s free to share your videos on the biggest and most popular social media platforms.
This is why growth marketers are getting into video. With the right strategy, you can get ranked. Get TONS of views and drive traffic to your landing page, which results in conversions and conversions into sales.
Corporate Video Production Services at 2Bridges
At 2Bridges, these steps are exactly what we do. This is what makes us different than our competitors:
We are storytellers first, videographers second.
Anyone can point and shoot an iPhone and an expensive RED Camera. However, images alone are nothing without the right story and right strategy to get it ranked.
Depending on the complexity of your project, we will work with any budget to make sure your company is taking advantage of the power of video in 2017 and beyond.
Our normal process involves the following:
- Understand the project – We sit down with your team and discuss what exactly you’re trying to promote. We outline different subjects that can be filmed and how they can be used for your marketing platform. We write scripts. We outline the episodes and design a full video marketing platform, specific to your industry and your company.
- Film Production – We have the equipment (the cameras, the sound, the lighting and even drones) and can get actors and actresses to serve as interviewers or characters in your personal branding stories.
- Post Production – If you require editing, we have a team of editors that can handle the most basic editing in Adobe Premiere. We also have contacts if you really want to make videos that would rival a Star Wars highlight reel.
- Video Marketing Services – Finally, we can help design your Youtube channel. Find keywords to help you target and write highly descriptive text (along with a link to your landing page or company store) on your videos.
We highly suggest a comprehensive package to drive the front end of your sales funnel, but of course, we are willing to working with you if all you require is a corporate video or a promo video.
Here are samples of corporate videos we’ve done for London Dry Gin, which recently sold for $55M dollars. We also offer head shot photography for executives to put on your social media profiles. As mentioned before, we can help you design a comprehensive and integrated video content marketing strategy that will get you leads and conversions.
