This article covers the types, themes, and primary purposes of modern-day video marketing. The purpose is to education marketing and content professionals on the various benefits associated with each type of video production and asset.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Section One: Video Themes
- Brand Centered
- Product Centered
- Section Two: Types of Video Marketing
- Live Action
- Pros
- Cons
- Animated
- Pros
- Cons
- Live Action
- Section Three: Three Purposes of Videos
- Awareness
- Education
- Engagement
- Final Thoughts
Introduction
Video marketing continues to attract consumers and businesses alike. In fact, six out of ten people would rather watch online videos over television. As a result, video is now a crucial component in marketing promotions, used to increase engagement, educate consumers, and reach wider target audiences.
Whether attached in an email, posted on social media, or uploaded to YouTube, videos garner a higher engagement rate than any other form of content marketing. Audiences are roughly 10 times more likely to engage with and share video content than any other content type, and people spend more than two and a half times as long on pages with videos than pages without. And not only do videos increase engagement, they also substantially increase conversions rates: 64% of users are more likely to purchase a product online after seeing a video.
Videos are also becoming critical to brand marketing. More than 50% of consumers want to see videos from brands — as opposed to other common types of marketing content, such as blogs or podcasts. So, if you’re not already creating videos as part of your marketing strategy, it’s time to get started.
Video Themes
Every video has a key theme. When determining the right theme for your video, the first question to ask yourself is:
Does the message you wish to convey center around your brand or your product?
Brand and product (or service) have different messages and serve different purposes, so it is crucial to decide which is more applicable at the very beginning of your video marketing plan.
Brand-Centered
Brand-centered videos portray your organization’s message, purpose, and vision. They display the business in a positive and personable light, helping your audience get to know you better. These videos add authenticity to your brand while showcasing its mission, and are designed to build a positive, lasting brand perception.
Examples include meet the team videos, interviews, and behind the scenes videos. All of these help with brand awareness while conveying your desired message.
While there is no direct monetary return on investment, brand-centered videos increase your likelihood of developing loyal consumers.
Product-Centered
Rather than focusing on the brand, product-centered videos — such as demos or how-to videos — focus solely on your product or service. These types of videos are typically geared towards a specific demographic within your target market, as opposed to the wider net cast by a brand-centered video. Product-centered videos may target current customers or prospective customers, at a more technical or feature-and-functionality-specific level than a brand-centered video.
Product-centered videos highlight how your product or service can solve your customers’ problems or meet their key needs. This message will resonate with product users or potential users more than a brand-centered video might.
Types of Video Marketing
Another key component of video creation is video type.
Should the video be live action or animated?
To make this decision, start by determining which will resonate best with your target audience and your theme. We’ll dive into the pros and cons of each to help you decide which is best.
Live Action
In the simplest of definitions, live action showcases scenarios revolving around “real life,” meaning real people, animals, landscapes, etc., as opposed to computer-generated images. Live action videos may include interviews, case studies, product demos, and live videos.
Pros of Live Action
Relatability
By showing real people and real environments, you can more easily convey emotions and other human elements. This realism can help make your video more relatable to your audience. As what is shown in a live action video is typically familiar, people are more likely to be drawn to the product or service being displayed.
Moreover, because live action videos are often driven by a story of some sort, the audience is discovering and learning about the product or service alongside the characters. This gives them more motivation to want to create their own experience with what they are seeing in your video.
Story Driven
In addition to motivating the audience to create their own story or experience with the product or service, a story-driven live action video also alleviates some of the workload for the producers.
Telling a story allows for a more direct approach. You can focus more on the message you wish to convey as opposed to creating whole other worlds or manifesting the abstract ideas often present in animated videos.
No Experience Required
As technology progresses, it continuously becomes much easier to create live action videos. In fact, all you need is a cell phone and an editing app or two. Companies often prefer extensive video creation experience to ensure the most professional results, but this experience is not a requirement for creating a successful video.
Cons of Live Action
Real Life Situations
When creating live action videos, you are subject to real-life situations. Examples include changing weather, shifting lighting, participant availability, and the progress of time. You have to work around unpredictable obstacles beyond your control, such as a pandemic.
Furthermore, it can be difficult to find and direct talent — both producers and actors. Rather than working with only one or two people, you are working with a handful or more, which can be challenging in itself.
Cost
The biggest drawback of live-action video is the cost.
While we listed under the “pros” that it is possible to create a video by yourself with just your cell phone, that typically does not create the professionalism desired by your audience. Whether outsourced or DIY, there are the costs of scriptwriters, casts, and crew as well as equipment such as cameras and microphones. Factors such as length, style, and quality especially play a huge influence in determining the cost of video production.
Even if money is not a problem, there is also the time investment needed for production to consider.
Time-Consuming
From pre- to post-production, an excessive amount of time is required to create a video. A two-minute video has the potential of taking weeks to produce. Filming encompasses the shifting of cameras, retakes of certain scenes, changes of scenery, etc. If you are on a time crunch, it may be better to engage in other forms of content marketing.
Animated Videos
Animation describes the manipulation of pictures, whether drawn by hand or on a computer, to appear as moving images. Animated videos offer an opportunity to display creativity alongside your desired message. While they may appear intimidating, especially if you lack experience, their benefits are motivation enough to consider using them as a marketing tool.
Pros of Animated
Brand Portrayal
Animation is an excellent way to create and convey your brand image. While live action tends to focus more on your product and its affiliated message, animation allows you to display the image you want your brand to be affiliated with and the message you want your brand to convey. It offers the opportunity to create a world where you can demonstrate various abstract ideas and concepts that live action does not allow you to convey.
Complete Control
In animation, you have complete control over the world you are creating. There is no need to worry about the risks and unpredictability associated with filming, and no need for a large cast and crew.
This level of control allows you to portray large amount of information in an easier and more concise way, within a tighter production timeframe.
Less Risk
As opposed to the necessity of scriptwriters, casts, and crew for a live action video, only a small team is needed for an animated video. As fewer people are required, there is less risk of miscommunication and time delays. A streamlined communication process means more efficient decision-making, ultimately reducing the time between planning and production.
Cons of Animated
Not Real
While an animated video provides more opportunities for creativity, it loses the human-to-human connection. This reduces the relatability factor.
Consumers must use their imaginations to understand the immense amount of information being conveyed through an animated video as opposed to simply watching and absorbing the message portrayed through live action. They have to get past the potentially fantastical elements of the imagined world before they are able to understand and process your message.
Experience and Equipment
While a live action video can be created with a smartphone camera, animated videos require more experience. You need a computer and programs that can create or take existing images and get them to move in the way desired. While it is possible to learn how to do the animation yourself, the time and effort required may not be worth doing it yourself vs. outsourcing to a professional.
Time and Cost
Whether outsourced or DIY, the time needed for and cost to produce an animated video isn’t minimal. The time required to produce an animated video factors in design and drawing in addition to the length of time to animate the images. If the cost of time to create the video does not appear too great, simple animation can cost around $3,000-$7,000 per minute. The higher the quality and complexity of your video, the higher the cost.
Three Purposes of Videos
The ultimate goal of video marketing is to create a more personalized customer experience. The three primary purposes of the videos can be categorized as follows:
There are various types of video which roll up into each of these three main purposes, which we’ll cover below.
Awareness
Brand Videos
Brand videos are created to portray a certain desired image of your brand. This may be a particular vision, mission, or products and services. The intent of these videos is to build brand awareness throughout your target audience.
Meet the Team Videos
Another way to convey your business’ values, vision, and mission is through a video introducing your team members. Meet the team videos make a brand seem more personable and relatable. They help establish personal relationships and build brand loyalty.
Interviews
Interviews with experts, leaders, or influencers within your industry assist in helping establish brand authenticity and authority. These discussions educate consumers on your industry and also help them trust your brand more. The more consumers trust a brand, the more likely they are to engage with it.
Behind the Scenes Videos
Behind the scenes videos provide an exclusive insight into a process, project, or situation. They make customers feel special, like they are in on a trick. They also help a brand seem more personable, as behind the scenes videos are often less polished. They include more raw, unfiltered footage, portraying the business as more human than a perfected video does.
Engagement
Live Videos
A newer feature on many social media channels, such as Facebook and Instagram, is the option to go live. Live videos provide watchers an inside look at your company. People are more likely to engage with live videos, such as by posting comments while they watch. Live-streamed interviews, presentations, events, and more all provoke higher engagement than any other type of video — viewers typically spend up to 8.1 times longer watching live videos than watching videos-on-demand,
Vlogs
Video Blogs, or vlogs, document a person’s experiences or thoughts, often via their camera or webcam. This diary-style video chronicling humanizes a brand, as consumers feel like they can relate to the vlogger and therefore to the brand that vlogger represents.
Ideas for vlogs include asking a team member to take over your YouTube account for a day, showing your audience around the office or facility, documenting an industry sponsored event, or interviewing other team members. Your audience feels like they are getting “the inside scoop” from a real person with whom they can interact on a personal level.
Q&A Videos
Question and answer videos are both engaging and educational. Q&A videos can be crafted by interviewing other professionals in the industry, answering questions previously sent in by consumers, or answering questions being sent in by a live audience. These videos both attracts and engages the audience, which increases the potential for conversion rates.
Education
Explainer Videos
Essentially, explainer videos explain why a customer should purchase your product or service. Often these videos follow a fictitious problem experienced by someone relatable to your target audience, and explain how your product or service provides the perfect solution.
These videos are a simple, yet effective method for drawing in prospective customers who understand or are experiencing similar dilemmas to those portrayed in the video. They can also help with customer retention, solving issues for existing customers.
Demo Videos
Videos that demonstrate how your product works by showing the product’s operational process, or physically testing the product on screen, educate customers on exactly what they are buying. Through this educational experience, consumers are being subtly coaxed into purchasing the product.
Sixty-eight percent of consumers list video as their desired method for learning about new products. Demo videos thus function in both the promotional and post-purchase stages.
How-To Videos
Whether introducing something new or basic information on your business’ products, how-to videos are an excellent means of teaching consumers how to use the product. They are even a brilliant method for educating sales and service teams, who can use that knowledge to help customers.
Case Study and Customer Testimonial Videos
These videos typically feature satisfied and loyal customers. They act as a testament to the effectiveness and trustworthiness of your brand. Like any positive reference, showing real people recounting their experience with your business, and how your product or service helped them solve a business problem, increases your likelihood of acquiring new customers.
Final Thoughts
Whether live action or animated, brand- or product-centered, and about awareness, engagement, or education, the videos you create for marketing purposes should ultimately be focused on your target audience and what best applies to them. For more information, or to seek assistance in creating your own video marketing strategy, contact our experts at SpeakClear.
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