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How to Create Promotional Video Content as a Small Team

Social sites lean more on video every day. In today's marketplace, it just makes sense to learn how to create promotional video content.

Video content is the hot ticket item in the marketing world at the moment. It’s a key component of an effective e-learning strategy. Social sites lean more on video content every day. Everyone, from personal brands to massive corporations, is cashing in on the power of video marketing. In today’s marketplace, then, it just makes sense to learn how to create promotional video content.

But that doesn’t mean video marketing is easy. On the contrary, video is one of the most complex and comprehensive forms of content creation. It includes script writing, audio, and video. It also requires elaborate coordination within diverse teams composed of many individuals with different skill sets.

If you’re learning how to create promotional video content with a small or incomplete team, it’s important to approach the task thoughtfully. Here are a few general tips and strategies to help your smaller marketing team generate top-tier videos at the scale and quality level of a much larger organization.

Research, Plan, and Strategize

It’s difficult to maintain high quality and stay efficient if you don’t set the stage beforehand. That’s why you want to plan things out before you start searching for talent, writing scripts, or filming footage.

This begins with thorough research into the different steps required to create promotional video content, including things like:

  • Choosing the best topic for your video — ideally based on past performance, competitor analysis, and market research.
  • Laying out the various components ahead of time — scripts, audio, and video are all important elements that your team should research and plan out before they’re needed.
  • Identifying the tools to make your video — research the different software, filming, and editing tools available to give your understaffed team an edge.

BreadnBeyond has a great infographic that provides a comprehensive video marketing checklist. Use this to create a rock-solid strategy. This will become your North Star as you navigate the video creation process.

Capitalize on Strengths

A smaller team often has skill gaps — and that’s understandable. However, it’s wise to focus on the talents inherent within your group to minimize your shortcomings. In other words, it’s important to identify the strengths of your team and focus on those areas.

For instance, you might have a low budget but a great videographer. When that’s the case, make sure to enable your team members to maximize the quality of your visuals, even if you don’t have great equipment to film on.

Another example could be finding ways to use your equipment to create better quality aspects within production. Hire a veteran freelancer to write a better script. Use a tool like SquadCast to eliminate audio drift and give your video crystal-clear audio. Always look for those little ways you can wow your audience, even within the limitations of a smaller team.

Schedule and Stay Organized

As your smaller team starts to work on the actual video creation process, establish infrastructure elements to keep everyone on track and on the same page. This starts with a good production schedule.

A film production schedule should take into account all of the different elements involved in creating your promotional video. This can include the back-end creative talent, actors, writers, scenes, and even things like vacation days and time off. Your schedule considers all of these factors (and any others that are unique to your situation) and comes up with a method to the madness.

If your team is undersized, it’s hard to overemphasize the importance of a production schedule. It doesn’t matter if you’re making a 30-second explainer video or a 30-minute company documentary. Get everything into a single scheduling space for easy reference.

When a video is on the larger side (in length, scope, or both), you may be able to benefit by using scheduling software. Tools like StudioBinder are specifically tailored to the scheduling needs of a video production team.

Stay Simple

Videos may be complicated pieces of content, but that doesn’t mean they should feel complicated when your audience watches them. On the contrary, simplicity can help you communicate a sense of professionalism. Simple visuals and images, for instance, can make a video feel clean, neat, and elite. They provide a seamless and enjoyable user experience.

Simplicity starts with a practical look at what a video ideally should be. Take length as a good example. Brafton reports that YouTube videos should be between six and eight minutes long. Vidyard adds that mid-funnel How To videos should be between two and 10 minutes long — the shorter and more condensed the better.

If you’re trying to create a mid-funnel How To video for your company’s YouTube channel and you’re short-staffed, don’t get ambitious. Aim for a six-minute window at most. You can apply the same mindset to the kind of images you use or the complexity of a video’s script.

There are many ways a smaller video creation team can still create effective marketing collateral for their business. This starts with thorough planning and scheduling. In addition, focusing on strengths and staying simple can ensure that the final product is clean, high-quality, and targeted to address the marketing needs of your company.

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