How to Master Video Marketing on a Budget

73% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase after watching a video and 71% say video content leaves them with a positive impression of the brand, which means that video is quickly becoming one of the best ways to increase engagement and connect to your target.

The ROI doesn’t lie. It’s clear that video should be a key component of your digital marketing strategy, which means we can address the real questions you’re probably thinking:

Why Does Video Cost so Much, and What’s the Best Way to Optimize My Spend on It?

Making an effective video is really the process of crafting a customized, visual story; and processes like animation. Animation can take weeks of incredibly detail-oriented work and revisions. Video marketing is an investment because there’s a huge difference between making something pretty and making something effective and pretty. But, there still is a lot you can do to optimize your spend.

Do Your Research

You want your content to cut through a lot of noise, and that’s not going to happen if you have the same old video everyone else has. What works for someone else may not work for you, which is why it’s important to have a solid strategy behind your marketing video. Before you start producing, figure out the purpose of your video. Are you educating, entertaining, or some combination of the two? Your end goal might just be, “to sell more”, but bombarding your viewers with self-promotional content in a video isn’t going to accomplish that. Video can be a highly emotional medium, so putting in the effort to understand what will connect to your target will translate into results. Look into some of the different types of marketing videos to figure out which type best reflects your business goals and aligns with the interests of your audience.

Ask Your Audience

Now that you know which type of marketing video you want to create, you can try to incorporate user-generated content. It could be a great way to increase engagement and a source of authentic content that resonates with your users. All you’ll have to do is ask and edit. Just keep in mind that you’ll want to come up with some kind of release agreement that grants you rights to use the content in your marketing campaigns.

Cut Back on Actors

While it’s true that people relate to other people more than they relate to objects, you can cut down on costs by reducing the number of actors (or disgruntled co-workers) you use for your video. Or cut back on actors entirely and go for an animated video. It’ll give you precise control over the imagery, and even converts at a higher rate than live-action video.

Get to the Point

Keeping your videos short can help minimize production costs and increase the amount of time viewers actually spend watching. On average, your audience’s attention span is just eight seconds. Shorter videos will help you retain your viewers, which in turn will help improve your video’s rank on YouTube.

Promote, and Promote Again

One of the best ways to get the most for your video marketing budget is to come up with a solid promotion strategy. Knowing how and where to promote your videos can be the difference between your next viral hit or a complete flop. When it comes to promotion, YouTube has a lot of potential for getting your content right in front of your viewer. With more than 3 billion searches processed per month, YouTube is actually the world’s second largest search engine by volume behind Google. This means that YouTube is a huge untapped traffic source.

You can optimize your video’s title for search within the platform, and combine them with special video keywords like “tutorial” and “how to” that rank on Google’s first search page. Brian Dean of Backlinko reinforces that YouTube is a great place to reach a massive audience while dealing with a lot less competition for search rankings. A great YouTube promotion strategy, combined with purposeful guest blogging will make sure your video is seen by the right audience.

Repurpose When Appropriate

This goes hand-in-hand with promoting your video on social media. Be sure to repurpose your content whenever possible. Once you have a great marketing video, you can easily incorporate it into a landing page, write a blog post to support it, or even include it in an email newsletter to boost your open and click-through rates. Your design team could also provide you with alternate cuts to make it easier to share your video on different platforms.

Never Sacrifice the Quality of Your Content

And this is important with any budget. Having a tight video marketing budget doesn’t mean you should sacrifice quality, because poor quality video can be more of a disservice than not having a video at all. Saving is great, but make sure that you’re not costing yourself conversions and compromising ROI in the process. Production quality and great storytelling will keep your audience engaged from start to finish; so it’s important to make sure that the visuals and stories are well-developed. Try to find a professional who can work within your budget because the ROI of a well-produced video is worth the effort it takes to make something great.