How to maximize your video marketing budget

Video is one of the most powerful mediums in marketing. It can have a significant impact on conversion rates and sales (getting people to take action) — and it’s a great way to create an emotional connection with potential customers. The use of video marketing has increased significantly in the past few years and is most certainly something your company should invest in.

Ninety-three percent of marketers from a sample of 813 respondents to Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing Survey say that video marketing is an important part of their marketing strategy. What’s more, 86 percent of video marketers say video has increased traffic to their website, and 94 percent say that video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service.

Although often worth the investment, video marketing can be a considerable expense, and businesses might be hesitant to jump in. But invest in video strategically and its effectiveness cannot be ignored.

You will be relieved to know that there are ways you can give your videos some extra oomph without breaking the bank.

Research and plan

It’s essential to research and plan your video marketing strategy to manage your resources effectively and avoid costly mistakes. This is vital for those who are new to video marketing or trying to stick to an affordable budget.

It is crucial to plan out what type of videos will work best, on which platforms, and how often you should post them for your audience. Analyze popular video marketing platforms and see the best course of action for your company’s marketing strategy.

For example, one social media platform may have features best suited for your strategy that may not be available on other platforms, so you want to be sure to use what works for your company.

For a successful video marketing campaign, research your market, audience, and competitors. Understand where people spend their time online so that you can be successful at capturing their attention with your content (video or otherwise). This way, you can be smart from the start so you don’t waste resources on strategies that may miss the mark.

Stay in-house

Many companies, small businesses in particular, are beginning to realize the benefits of maintaining some jobs and tasks in-house — and not hiring outside freelancers or contractors. You may find that if you take the time to train an employee for a particular task, it can be much less expensive than outsourcing. As Thomas Smale illustrates for Entrepreneur magazine, you can save a lot of money by keeping certain tasks in-house — such as social media marketing and content.

It can be challenging to keep up with the constant demand for video marketing services, and the demand for these services is only rising with video marketing’s popularity and proven effectiveness. There will always be a need for expert professionals to do the work, but it can be costly to contract with experts if you constantly need their services. Moving these operations in-house may save you money in the long run.

Make the most of your budget

Once you decide to have video makers on your internal staff, make the most out of your budget, by finding ways to save money. Your main expenses will be on t cameras, editing software, and even actors and wardrobe expenses.

Cameras will likely be the most expensive item on your video production equipment checklist. One way to save on costs is by renting a camera instead of buying one. Once you rent or purchase a camera, you’ll need video editing software. Video editing programs can also be expensive, but you will use it, every time you create a video.

It is best to go with software loaded with useful features — fonts, music, graphics, and an easy editing interface — that is intuitive enough for beginners to use while flexible enough to support advanced tactics. As you grow with your marketing efforts, you won’t need to spend money on more advanced video editing software.

If you need actors and a wardrobe, it may be more affordable to hire people from your community. To save even more money, you can rent clothes for your actors or go shopping at thrift stores for inexpensive wardrobe options.

Use SEO to your advantage.

Video marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) go hand in hand. If you want to rank higher on video search engines such as YouTube, it’s essential to use the right keywords. Business 2 Community provides a helpful primer on how to make sure your video SEO efforts include descriptive terms for search engines that relate to your niche or business.

Make sure your video is engaging so people want to share it with others. If the video is good content, viewers may share it with their friends and relatives. This increases the number of views, which may make your video more visible to Google and YouTube.

Another way to get your videos ranked higher and more visible is by adding video file metadata such as tags for descriptions, video names, and categories. Lastly, provide video transcriptions. These efforts will help your video content appear in Google and YouTube searches.

Promote your videos

Beyond the SEO strategies, get started on social video marketing tactics as well. If you want followers for your channel or business page, then make sure that you use the right features to draw in an audience.

There are several social media platforms to promote videos online, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, as well as the leading online video platform, YouTube. Be sure to provide “follow me” or “like this video” options. When followers watch your video, they will more likely follow you and share your content on social media if a button makes it easy for them to do so.

Repurpose existing content

Yet another thing you can do to save money is to reuse some of your existing content. You may have great blog posts or webinars that are less relevant if they were published some time ago. One way to repurpose these old assets into something new is by making a video out of it and posting it on YouTube. You can also take screenshots from the older videos and use those as graphics to create blog posts. Your audience will find it helpful if you provide information in different formats such as text, images, and video.

As the SEO experts at Backlinko explain, one of the best ways that you can repurpose content is by creating an infographic. An image-based representation allows people to process information quickly and at their own pace, which may help explain concepts better than a video alone. Just make sure that if you use existing content for your video marketing efforts, it’s still relevant to your current audience.

Prioritize quality over quantity

Even the best video marketing tactics won’t work if your videos aren’t worth watching. A common mistake that many businesses commit is flooding social media with low-quality content to build an audience. Even though this “volume” strategy may seem wise, it’s not sustainable. People get turned off when their social feeds are filled with information they don’t want to see.

William Craig, entrepreneurship expert and Forbes contributor, does a great job of explaining why your content’s quality is more important — and effective to serving your marketing goals — than sheer quantity. To attract more viewers and increase your engagement rate, you must first make sure that the content on your channel or page is useful, meaningful, relevant, and above all, targeted to your audience. It’s critical that each video contains valuable insights about a particular topic. Audiences won’t share videos they don’t like and will quickly unfollow your channel or page if you post volumes of uninteresting content.

Video marketing is a powerful way to amplify your marketing efforts and reach more people. It can be an inexpensive yet highly effective digital tactic that any business can use with the right strategies in place. Businesses and marketers should not shy away from video marketing. With some money-saving tips, your ROI will be undeniable.