Production often accounts for a hefty portion of a video’s development budget, but you can make your efforts stretch far beyond your original goals if you’re strategic. While there are many ways a video production team can help you get the most out of your marketing budget, one sure-fire way to extend your resources is to make sure you’re leveraging your video content for the most impact.
You can do this by optimizing your video for different platforms, repurposing your video content, and thinking unconventionally.
Optimizing for different platforms
When you’re pursuing video production, most of the time you have a specific purpose for your video—that could be an advocacy campaign, a captive audience screening at an event, web banners, or TV advertisements just to name a few. Expanding your reach by posting the same video in multiple places is a great idea, but you’ll need to make changes to the video depending on what is required by the platform. Even seemingly small tweaks can make a big difference.
The resolution, aspect ratio, file type, and bitrate are all factors that need to be considered based on your video’s use. Drilling down even further, when it comes to social media sites you have to consider what each platform favors in terms of video content. For example, let’s look at aspect ratio. Traditional horizontal videos with a 16:9 aspect ratio work well on Facebook and YouTube, while 1:1 square videos are best for Instagram feed posts. Facebook and Instagram stories, as well as TikToks, need to have a vertical 9:16 aspect ratio. Ensuring social media videos fit the preferred specs will help them perform well in the algorithm and increase your return on ad spend (ROAS).
Repurposing footage
From your primary video, you can create secondary content with some additional editing. For example, you can take your 90-second advocacy video and break it into 15-second snippets that can be shared on social media to engage the audience to learn more. Beyond that, you could create 6-second YouTube pre-roll ads, follow-up videos to send via email, or even just a variation of the same videos that target your diverse stakeholders. All of a sudden, you have a library of video content to take advantage of in your marketing campaign.
However, it’s more than having the video editor wave a magic wand and produce more content. You don’t create more content for content’s sake—you have to begin with the end in mind. Work with your video marketing team in preproduction to consider what’s possible before you start filming. With forethought, you can plan to capture specific, concise soundbites that are easily pulled from interviews; ensure proper language is used to appeal to specific viewers; and have participants deliver variants of specific phrases to give your team flexibility in the edit.
Think unconventionally
What wraparound content would be beneficial to your campaign and how can you create it with assets captured during your video production process? The possibilities are truly endless: waiting room and retail endcap screens, gas pump ads, email signature lines, presentations, and more.
As we mentioned above, this could include editing a follow-up video that can be sent to attendees at the conclusion of an event. Video sequencing is another common way to keep audiences engaged. For example, you might release a narrative video that talks about a problem your audience is facing, then viewers who watch over 30% of the video are served a video highlighting your product or service as the solution.
Continuing to generate ideas beyond your initial plans for a video could lead to innovative and (most importantly) effective uses for your already filmed video content, but you have to be willing to think outside the box!
The name of the game is to create deeper, more meaningful connections with your audience by providing valuable video content. Get creative and know that planning is integral when it comes to leveraging your video content for the most impact. A strategically focused video team can help you use your resources efficiently.