All of my current clients have one thing in common: they all understand the power of video in their marketing and communication efforts, and all embrace it as much as they can. To me, it’s so obvious how critical that quality video content is to a company or brand’s image. That’s why it’s shocking to discover how few businesses even have a line item on their marketing budget for video. I don’t mean that they consciously decide, “For this quarter, let’s not spend anything on video.” I mean it’s not even a thought, since it’s not anywhere on their list.
Radio, check.
Print, check.
Direct mail, check.
While those are all fine ways to advertise, they are a constant expense. The content must be created by the marketing department, or — in the case of a smaller business — a graphic designer or marketing agency. Now that ad needs to run continually on radio and print, and repeated mailing sent for it to have any real impact. What kind of advertising do you create once, and get a massive amount of mileage out of it?
Video.
Granted, the cost to create the content itself is generally higher than the previous methods mentioned. However, once the video is finished, it has a huge number of applications and can be used over and over again, often at a zero cost.
Have a website? I hope so. Identify a prominent spot on the site and embed that video.
Sending an email to a potential customer? Attach the video.
Does your brand or company have a social media presence? Share the video!
Depending on the content of the video, you can also use the video in sales presentations, on a loop at job fairs or trade shows. Am I getting your creative juices flowing yet? Can you do all that with a full color page ad? How much does it cost to have that designed and run in a major publication for just one month? Chances are good you can have a professional video created for around that cost, and you would be able to get a LOT of use out of it for years.
Meanwhile, that magazine ad will be bird cage lining in a few weeks.
In the likely event you don’t have a line item for video on your marketing budget, it’s time to update that before your competition does — if they haven’t already.
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