In a moment you’re going to read some pretty compelling arguments about the benefits of investing in a full campaign of marketing video content rather than merely a single video, but first, allow me to offer some context behind why it should even be a consideration.
A wise person once asked me what my job as the Creative Director at VMG Studios was. I described it to them to the best of my ability and they responded by saying, “Your job is to make your boss look good.” It sounded cavalier, cynical, and snarky, but his follow up explanation made a lot of sense. “You make your boss look good by doing your job well, getting results, forwarding the brand and mission, and most importantly increasing revenue.”
You can come up with any number of romantic ideals to support why you do what you do but the fact remains that in business, it all comes back around to that last item mentioned: the almighty dollar. Those who spend wisely and find ways to earn more will always be successful.
Let me begin with two immutable truths:
This brings us to the heart of this article.
Producing video content as part of your marketing strategy can be a significant investment, so it’s important to make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck. In this article, we’ll show you why investing in a full video campaign rather than a single video can provide higher ROI, beyond simply dollars and cents. We’ll show you why it’s good business.
Let us be the first to say that one video is better than no video. As you know, video is the king of content, so if your business only has the budget for one marketing video, don’t let this article deter you. Sometimes, you just need to get your feet wet.
If you do have the budget for more than one video, or if you’re wondering if there is a way to optimize your one-video budget into more, consider the following benefits of a campaign.
There are several steps between a customer’s awareness of your product or service and their commitment to purchase. With 6 stages in the B2B sales funnel and 4 in the B2C sales funnel, the customer experience changes throughout their buying journey including their wants and needs.
In general, it’s usually not in your best interest to create a single marketing video that attempts to address all of those points on the sales funnel timeline. The emotion that you’re trying to tap into in the awareness phase—trying to grab a customer’s attention—can be quite different from the one you need to focus on to convince the customer to make a purchase.
Creating a single three-minute video that lightly touches on everything, while useful in an explainer video format, might not be as impactful as creating shorter, more snackable, and memorable videos for each key stop on the journey. In a video campaign, your messaging can be more concentrated and targeted to the stage of the sales funnel, and as a result, more compelling and convincing.
READ: How to Leverage Marketing Videos in Each Stage of the Sales Funnel
It’s easy to fall back on short term goals since they often seem more attainable and less risky. Long term business planning takes guts, and it’s also smart and necessary for maintaining and building a brand.
Video campaigns look beyond just raising brand awareness (short term). They are designed to guide customers through the sales funnel toward conversion (long term).
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking, “I can’t afford to pay this much right now. I’ll spend more later when things improve.” However, by delaying an upfront marketing investment, there’s a good chance business might not improve. The old saying, “It takes money to make money” may be trite but it’s still true. You can’t make money in the stock market if you don’t invest in the stock market.
Plus, as well dive into shortly, bundling your video deliverables upfront may help your business money down the road.
The goal of any marketing campaign is to drive awareness of your company or brand. The best way to do that is constantly reminding your customers of your existence, which one can achieve with a drip campaign. A drip marketing campaign is a communication strategy of smaller (often automated) messages sent to your target audience over time.
The general public has notoriously short attention spans (I’m sure you’ve all heard of the statistic of humans having a shorter attention span than a goldfish). You could make the most amazing commercial or marketing video that taps into the general zeitgeist and blows people away, until someone else does the same thing, leaving your business as a distant memory. It’s the infamous business challenge of, “What have you done for me lately?”
The key is to never leave the consumer’s field of vision for very long. Be a constant presence. Be impossible to ignore. That’s why a campaign will likely always perform better than a single piece of content. It’s spread out over time, so the consumers never get the opportunity to forget about you.
If you have a fair amount of content that you want customers to know about, it will be in your best interest to spread the information out over multiple shorter videos instead of one single longer format one.
Need proof besides humans having an average attention span of just 8 seconds?
Ask yourself this question: Are you more likely to click on a three-minute video or a thirty-second video? Probably the shorter one. Why? Thirty-second videos are easier to digest, process, and remember than a three-minute-long video.
This is what’s known as snackable content. It’s the fun-size candy bar instead of the full deal (which is preferable for video viewers, but bad for kids trick-or-treating on Halloween).
Shorter content can be consumed more passively, and people are more prone to share short content than long content. Double bonus! According to Entrepreneur, the average millennial—a very lucrative audience—is spending 5.4 hours on social media per day, and that time is largely spread out in short stints of scrolling. By creating short-form, snackable content, today’s brands are effectively engaging millennials.
Producing a greater number of videos doesn’t have to be more expensive. Earlier, we mentioned that video campaigns can often save your business money in the long run, and you’re probably wondering how that is possible. This comes into play in terms of a long-term strategy.
In our experience, on average, you can save 10 to 15% by bundling your deliverables depending on the type of content and where it is posted.
What does bundling your deliverables look like? Let me give you a scenario that we at VMG Studios orchestrated with one of our clients.
Our client had several objectives they were required to meet over the course of a year and had budgeted accordingly. They were savvy enough to know that it would take numerous videos to address those objectives, so they came to us to help figure out a plan of action.
The first thing we did was to identify the key messaging points and calls-to-action. With this information, we were able to determine at a high-level what content we needed to capture.
From scripting to shot-list generation to determining shooting locations—anything related to production—we were then able to optimize the schedule to maximize our client’s investment. We identified how many days it would take to shoot everything in the shortest period of time. This prevented us from having to bring our crew back numerous times over the course of the year (which would have racked up the bill). The production became more systematic, more assembly line, and we were able to pack the schedule and capture more content in less time.
By planning ahead and deciding to go with a video campaign rather than a single video, the client capitalized on the economies of scale through the bundling of content, ultimately, saving money.
Economies of scale aren’t limited to live-action videos, either. Businesses can bundle content together for animated videos as well. For example, if you set a design style or create specific brand characters, you can re-purpose the assets in other videos instead of having to come up with unique creative content for each new video. Having branded characters or specific design aesthetics also helps build brand awareness.
WATCH: How Much Does a Video Cost?
Producing a single video can be overwhelming, so we understand the hesitancy to dive into a full-blown campaign. However, in our 16 years in business supporting clients of all sizes, we’ve found that turning a one-off video into a campaign can pay big dividends.
Yes, it requires a lot of work upfront, but pre-planning can result in substantial savings as well as provide more targeted content to your viewers.
When considering a video marketing campaign, remember the following benefits:
If you are in the market for video content and need a partner to help you get the most out of your investment, learn more about the services we provide at VMG Studios. We can help map out a strategy that will address all your video needs at the most equitable cost, and then execute on it.
FREE DOWNLOAD: The Cost of Live-Action Videos Price Guide