I asked people: What’s the biggest misconception about marketing videos?
A guy eating a Double Glazed dabbed his lips thoughtfully. “Videos don’t have to have real people in ’em,” he said. “You can stick in whatever ya want.”
A woman eating a Raspberry Creme said, ‘“You don’t need fancy video cameras. Just patch something together in one of those Photoshop-software thingies.”
A family of ten were chowing down on two boxes of assorted. The youngest, who looked like she was playing hooky from nursery school, said, “You can do your own voice-over, or just stick in free music from YouTube.” She helped herself to a Maple Frosted.
The kid behind the counter recognized me and gave me the biggest Apple Fritter he could find. He said, “Shoot some pix and clips with your phone, and use that. Use the bloopers, too, they’re always the best part.”
“Hang on,” I said. I grabbed a napkin and started writing stuff down.
A woman with an eyepatch and a parrot on her shoulder said, “Folks could even hire you to draw something for them. I’ve seen your work, and it’s great!” “It’s great, it’s great!!” squawked the parrot. I bought them a Chocolate Long John and a Bavarian Creme Cracker, respectively.
I love unsolicited testimonials.
When I got home I transcribed the napkin. Here’s the list.
1. You can make your own marketing videos. You don’t need actors or fancy cameras. Just string together a series of still images and text.
2. Use your own photos, and/or create images in Canva, Photoshop, or other image-editing programs.
3. No need to hire someone to narrate your video. You’ve got a microphone. Do your own voice-over.
4. You don’t even need narration. You can “speak” to viewers using text-block images, and/or by adding text to images.
5. The YouTube Audio Library has hundreds of tracks you can use for free (some may require attribution).
6. There’s a good chance your computer came with video creation-editing software. My iMac came with iMovie.
7. You can splice together photos, illustrations, text blocks, and video clips, including those shot with your phone.
8. There are lots of copyright-free archival images out there you can use for free.
9. You need to think thru the brand message you’re trying to convey. That means writing out a script for your video. You could hire someone to help you with that.
10. The kid was right about bloopers: humor makes you likable, and helps people remember your brand.
11. Marketing videos constructed with still images give you lots of “recyclables.” You can reuse all the individual frames/images for blog and social posts.
12. A DIY marketing video based around still images can have a long shelf life. You can update it by just swapping in a new image or two. No need to reshoot scenes with actors or talking heads.
13. Do some googling. There are more make-a-video options than you may think. For example, I just googled “convert PDF to video.” There are platforms where you can convert a PDF slideshow to an MP4 video.
Speaking of videos, I’ve developed my own version of stop-motion animation.
