If you’re a company that wants to put together a video marketing strategy but you’re not sure where to begin, you might want to consider hiring a marketing agency. Working with a marketing agency can make your life easier and get you the results you desire. But a “set it and forget it” mentality is the wrong way to go.
You have to consider yourself a partner in the relationship. A video marketing agency or a digital marketing agency that produces videos can get a lot of the heavy lifting done for you, but you’ll be counted on for guidance, especially during the early stages of the project. The agency will most likely lean on you a bit, before you can lean on them.
Let’s look at a few of the ways you can make your relationship with a marketing agency prosper when it comes to video marketing.
Your agency wants to produce an amazing video for you. But they can’t do it without your direction. It starts by answering these three questions out of the gate:
Let’s look at these questions a little more closely.
If you’re not sure which type of video you’d like to share with your prospects, it’s going to be hard to provide the direction your video marketing agency will need. Types of videos to consider include:
1. Demo Videos: This type of video demonstrates how your product works. We produced this product demonstration video for a one-of-a-kind electrical connector that works underwater.
A demonstration video can also be something as simple as an unboxing of your product.
2. Brand Videos: A brand video typically showcases your company's high-level vision, mission, or products and services. Here’s a brand video we produced for North Ohio Heart/Ohio Medical Group.
The goal of a brand video is to build awareness.
3. Expert Interviews: Capturing interviews with internal experts or thought leaders in your industry is a great way to build trust and authority with your target audience.
Here’s a video we produced for Safe-T-Cover. We talked to some of their experts about the dangers of installing backflow preventers in an underground vault.
And there are many other types of videos for you to consider.
Knowing how long you want your video to be upfront will get your relationship with your agency off on the right foot. It will also help determine the price of your video.
Too many times we’ll find clients who want to cram too much information into a video and then are shocked to find out that it’s five minutes long and very expensive.
Most marketing videos should generally be two minutes or less. But the length for any particular video depends entirely on the use, channel, industry, and where it fits in the marketing and sales funnel. The earlier the stage, the shorter (and less expensive).
If your video is going to be filmed on-site, you can foster your relationship with your agency by having the answers to these questions:
Providing as much detailed information about the location is very helpful to your video marketing agency because it will not only help give them the lay of the land, but it will also help the crew determine the best places to load and unload and what they may need to move around your building.
All of these topics should be discussed very early on in the project. You’ll find that the more pre-planning that is done between your team and the team that is filming the video, the smoother the transition to production will be.
Another way to make for a strong partnership with your video marketing agency is by providing great characters. This is important because these are the people who are going to send your message. Great stories have great characters, and great characters are not afraid to show emotion.
One of my most favorite projects I worked on at Kuno Creative was a video we produced for Aramark on food insecurity at college campuses. This video not only helped Aramark achieve its goals, but it also won many awards. Why? Because of the emotion shown by the people we interviewed.
The people in the video are not only well-versed on the subject of food insecurity, but you also get the sense that they really do care about finding a solution to the problem.
Provide characters from your company who will not only tell your story — they’ll sell your story through emotion. You can do this by picking people to interview who are not only comfortable on camera, but are passionate about the video’s subject.
And when it comes to characters, think quality over quantity. Lining up too many people to interview makes it tough to keep the message focused and keep the length of the video on par. Two or three good interviews on a topic are typically enough and can save frustration during the editing process.
Your roll in selling your story doesn’t stop with the characters you choose. It’s important to help your video marketing agency understand the type of language you’d like to use.
Providing examples of videos your company has done in the past or videos that you have seen in other places can help tremendously.
But don’t be afraid to write the script yourself. It doesn’t have to be a full-fledged video script — even an outline or bullet points with key phrases you’d like to make sure are used in the video gets everyone in sync.
Great relationships are founded on good communication. And the same goes for your relationship with an agency that’s producing your video. Having a clear picture of the type of video you want is critical. And providing detailed information in the early stages of the project can save you time and frustration as the project moves from planning to production to post-production.
If you’re interested in getting started, check out our video marketing page to find other tips on how to create great videos. Or take a look at some additional examples of videos that we’ve produced for our clients.
