How should you approach the planning and execution of the project? How many team members will you need to accomplish your goals? What should the budget look like? These are complex questions that will be discussed in detail in future blog posts.

Let’s start with some of the fundamentals that hold true in the majority of video production scenarios:

1. Script. Writing is the cheapest, most flexible way to hammer out the ideas and come to creative consensus for a business video. Write a great script for the Narrator or Voice Over, and time it out for a manageable total running time. This serves as a guide for the rest of the video production, saving time, money, and confusion down the line.

2. Storyboards. You don’t have to be Da Vinci, but you can use software, stock iconography, photos, or rough sketches, to impart the basic visual concept behind the video production that you envision. The boards should be timed to match the script.

3. Video Production, or Motion Graphics? As you develop the creative concepts and rough storyboards, one of the first questions to answer is how much of your presentation should be done with live video production, and how much should be motion graphics or 3D design. Does the personality of the brand call for the warm, personal touch of live video, or for the cool, visually stunning appeal of slick motion graphics and 3D? Can this particular story be told better using one medium or the other, or a blend of both? There are different procedures and expenses involved depending on the media that will be used to tell the story.

As you answer these starting questions with your internal marketing team, you can work with your video producer to achieve your vision without wasted budget. A lot of the cost of business video production stems from incomplete pre-production planning. Nobody wants time or budget overages, and they can be avoided completely by starting with a sound blueprint for the production.

-The Ace

Experienced video producers have seen a lot of success stories with online video, but they’ve also seen plenty of lackluster efforts. There are some common mistakes that can make it difficult to get the best results from your video.

Let’s talk about three of the top rules of video marketing, and why they are so important:

1. Keep it concise!

This is the most important rule, and the most commonly violated rule, of online media. Many sales and marketing professionals reflexively want to go into detail about the features and benefits of their offering, and to cover all the bases in their video. This  leads to long, drawn out videos, that throw the kitchen sink at the poor viewer in hopes that something will stick. The result is, frankly, a boring video that is fun for the company executives to watch, but torture for the average viewer (who rarely makes it to the end). For many web visitors, the first thing they  do when the video loads is look at the total running time. If it’s several minutes or more, they will often abandon it. My research and experience indicates that 1 to 1.5 minutes is the ideal running time for a typical web marketing video.

2. Keep it elegant!

The definition of elegance may be a bit subjective, but there are some common traits of videos that people would consider elegant. The video avoids unnecessary flash or eye candy. If it doesn’t serve the message directly, it’s not included. The style and color palette matches the rest of the company’s branding. The audio is thick and clear, with a compelling voice and subdued music. Stock photography is limited. Animations are smooth and seamless. The script avoids hyperbole, buzz words, and marketing sloganeering. The presentation feels honest, rather than cheesy and self-serving.

3. Focus on Benefits and Call-to-Action!

In most cases, the goal of the video should not be to close the sale, but to make your viewer hunger for more information, which they can easily get by following your call to action. Tease the viewer with your most compelling, high-level benefits. Don’t get into details, features, and specifications. Save that for later, after the prospect has already decided she’s interested in learning more. This goes hand-in-hand with being concise, but there’s a lot more to it than just being brief. Unlike print, video is presented in a linear way, and the viewer can’t skip around to the sections they are interested in. You must start with a specific call-to-action in mind, and reverse engineer the path that leads the viewer to taking that action, while eliminating all non-essential content.

In previous eras, there was a limited selection of methods available to sell a product or build a brand name. You had the choice of radio, television, print ads, and public signage. These mediums were constrained by physical space or time allotment, and consumers were only exposed to the messaging of the highest bidders.

Back in those days, national advertising was solely the domain of large, powerful companies with massive ad budgets.

Of course, the internet changed all that. In the space of a few years, even small mom and pop outfits had a website where they could showcase their products and services globally at a very low cost.

Maintaining a presence on the internet had such a low barrier to entry that it became a de facto requirement for any serious business. We’re at a point now where it’s unheard of for a business to try and operate without a website.

Enter the digital arms race.

As the number of business websites exponentially increased, it became necessary to build better sites to stay competitive. Many improvements in user experience and design have been implemented over the years, with the most savvy marketers leading the charge. These marketers have the difficult task of cutting through the clutter, without relying on gimmickry or unnecessary flashiness.

One of the most fundamental changes to the web in the past 5 years has been the incredible growth in popularity of online video. While sites like YouTube represent a huge percentage of online video traffic, it doesn’t stop there. Web users have become accustomed to having information presented in a visually engaging and entertaining way. When faced with the choice of reading through pages of marketing copy, or watching a one-minute video summary, viewers overwhelming choose the video.

Successful business have responded to the market. It is becoming difficult to find profitable companies that don’t include multimedia and video on their websites. Viewers increasingly expect it.

But, is that the main reason you should produce a marketing video – because everyone else is doing it? No!

The reason you should produce a marketing video now is because it works, plain and simple. Video attracts more viewers to your site. Video retains site visitors for longer. Video distills your marketing message into an easily digestible and entertaining package. You are no longer asking your visitors to suffer through pages of text in order to learn about your company – you are making it easy for them to get their information in their preferred medium, rather than using the medium that costs the least.

When you give your site visitors what they want, they are much more likely to become a customer of your company.

In future articles, we will go into more detail about the empirical evidence in support of using video for advertising and marketing. Suffice to say, every major study that’s been conducted on the topic reveals the strong preference for online video and animated graphics, over static pages with copy and photos. The success rates speak for themselves.

You don’t need to spend the time and money researching what does and doesn’t work in web marketing – the big companies have already done that for us. Their conclusions are obvious. They would not be allocating their budgets to online video at the record pace they have been unless they knew that it would continue to bring great results!

A well-crafted sales or marketing video will return your investment in many different ways. There are good reasons that video is becoming a preferred way for businesses all over the world to talk to prospects and customers.

One of the most important reasons to use video is to maintain message consistency across many channels. If you use an outside sales force, it can be advantageous for them to open their presentations with a video. This way, you can be sure that the key information is being delivered in the same way every time. Humans are prone to error: forgetting key points, changing the order of the presentation, etc. The sales video will ensure that your most polished sales presentation is given every time. After the video, the meeting can proceed in a more informal manner without worrying that an important selling point was forgotten.

Your sales video encapsulates all the ingredients that turn prospects into buyers. It will showcase the important benefits of your product or service in a thoughtful, carefully planned way that guides the viewer to a definite call to action. When your salespeople show the video, it will trigger a question and answer session with their audience that gets right into the buying questions. The salesperson no longer has to spend most of the meeting trying to slowly raise buying temperature – after the video, it’s hot, and he can get to work on closing the deal.

Finally, you can inexpensively duplicate DVDs or flash drives that can be left behind at meetings. If one of the decision-makers was unable to attend the presentation, for example, you can leave a DVD with them. This way, you can be sure that they get the same important value proposition that everyone else sees. You don’t have to rely on the memory of a busy manager to relay the contents of your presentation to his colleagues.

Using a video to open your presentation will establish your company’s professionalism from the very beginning. It will enforce key sales points in the same way every time. It eliminates the problems of nervousness or interruptions that can throw a presenter off her game. And, it allows the salesperson to leave behind collateral that can sway other decision makers, instead of a handful of brochures that can easily get lost among the paper clutter in the office.

Video SEO: YouTube is the world’s #2 search engine

Product Demos: Show your product in its best light, every time

Outside Sales: Open your presentations with a video, and leave copies behind

Website Video: Place a video on your website’s home page to engage visitors

Trade Shows: Show your video on HD Displays at your trade show booth

Direct Mail: CD or DVD mailers are the digital alternative to standard print collateral

Video Kiosks: A growing number of public kiosks serve as valuable display points

Reception Area: Greet your office visitors with multimedia in the reception lounge

DVD Handouts: Create attractive DVDs at low cost for personal handouts

Flash Drives: Distribute your video loaded on a USB drive

Press Releases: Including a video in your PR increases free publicity

Web Advertising: Use your video in banner ads on your prospects’ favorite sites

Partners and Distributors: Give your channel partners the best tools to sell for you

Social Media: Web users are much more likely to share video than other media

Sales Training: Ensure consistent messaging and better results from new salespeople

Globalization: Your video can be translated to any language, broadening your reach

Syndication: There are many sites like YouTube where your video gets free exposure