Video is changing how we think of content. It’s also changing how much video content brands need.
Producing videos at scale isn’t a strategy most marketing teams embrace. That’s because traditionally, creating a ton of video content has been impossible from both a time and budget perspective.
Fasten your seatbelts, because that’s changing. Right now.
StoryTap is a video engagement platform designed to create cost-effective video content at scale. Imagine producing hundreds of videos a year at a fraction of the cost of a standard brand video. Not only is it possible, it’s something we’re already doing for clients around the world right now.
Yes, we’re talking about ourselves here. But we have to because we’re changing video content game—and we want to explain why. And to do that, we need to start with the biggest question: Why do you need to produce videos at scale?
Video as Content 2.0
To answer that question, let’s look first at how content is changing.
Since the dawn of the Internet, “content” has always been text-based. Search engines emerged with increasingly complicated algorithms to rank and serve written content based on search queries.
Then, thanks to sophisticated cameras embedded in mobile devices and the far-reaching availability of better bandwidth, video quickly established itself as “content 2.0,” the evolutionary step forward from text-based content. Now, Google indexes video content separately so that videos appear in standard search and video-specific search results. And YouTube has become the second most powerful search engine on the planet after Google.
Today, video could be seen as the holy grail of marketing effectiveness because video is a medium customers actively prefer. Consider these statistics:
We talk about it a lot but still can’t say it enough: video content is the new king.
The Secret of Video Volume
Okay, how does video effectiveness translate into video volume?
Just like you’d never expect five posts a year to generate a ravenous social media following, creating a few videos each year won’t generate the traction you need to capitalize on those powerful marketing statistics. And, in fact, social media is one reason why.
Because social media is now a regular part of our daily lives, it has conditioned us as consumers to expect a large volume of content from everyone—and every brand—we follow. This has a halo effect for all content on any platform, whether it’s social or your website or a company blog. Consumers want more content…specifically videos. And, as we’ve already discussed, search engines know this. (That’s also why the content ecosystem is evolving a whole new marketing tactic: video SEO.)
This means producing video at scale is the only way to embrace the video content revolution that’s knocking at our door.
The Rule of 300
Let’s get down to brass tacks. When we say “video at scale,” exactly how many videos are we talking about?
To capitalize on the power of video, we tell our customers that they should start at 300 videos per year. That’s 25 videos per month.
Deep breath. Because if you’re like the marketing teams we work with, that number can seem overwhelming. And we get it. Up to this point, brand videos have been like rare Earth metals: expensive, hard to produce, and very, very precious. But our platform delivers video at scale by generating high-value, high-quality, curated, and cost-effective videos at scale to help your brand take advantage of powerful video-based marketing.
In fact, measuring your results is one of the reasons we recommend starting at 300 videos a year. Twenty-five videos a month gives you a better chance of generating statistically-relevant and measurable results from your videos. That way at the end of the year, you and your team can clearly see video’s impact on your marketing efforts.
What Do You Do with All that Video?
Good question. And there are plenty of great answers.
Producing video at scale with a video engagement platform gives you unprecedented flexibility in the types of videos you can create. Remember, we’re suggesting you create 25 videos per month, but they don’t have to be all the same kind. Depending on your marketing goals and business needs, you can easily create all types of videos, from user-generated product reviews by your brand fans to customer service troubleshooting guides. Let’s look at a few strategic considerations:
- Videos by geography – If your brand reaches multiple cities, states, regions, and/or countries, think about creating videos that reflect that. For instance, if a potential customer located in Vancouver is searching for sunscreen product reviews, they’ll find reviews from locals to be more relatable than reviews from users in, say, Winnipeg.
- Videos by demographic – Demographics can also be a consideration, especially if your products have any type of demographic-focus. If you’re a university that attracts both traditional and non-traditional students, generating alumni videos that can be sorted by demographic can help older prospective students determine if your institution is a good fit for their needs.
- Videos by category or product line – If you sell products in multiple categories or product lines, these also become good buckets for video creation. A bank might divide their video creation to address their banking services, loan products, and investment offerings.
- User videos – Videos that showcase real customers talking about your products are particularly effective. A video engagement platform like StoryTap can make it easy to invite users to create compelling and focused product reviews, tutorials, demos, and more.
- Expert videos – Many brands have internal SMEs (subject matter experts) that have a ton of expertise to share about your products. These types of videos do double duty by sharing valuable information and enhancing your brand.
- Brand videos – And finally, you can create in-house brand videos that tell your story in multiple—and more budget-friendly—ways.
Once you get comfortable with the idea, the question isn’t what do you do with all that video, but rather what can you do?
How much will that cost?
When it comes to budget, here’s where a video engagement platform can really demonstrate its value.
The estimate for producing a traditional brand video varies on a lot of factors. But on average, a basic outsourced video starts at $1,200 while “premium” videos can cost upward of $50,000. In-house production is still costly, ringing in at $5,000 for equipment alone. And none of these estimates factor in time for video concepting, scripting and storyboarding, production, and post-production editing.
In working with StoryTap, some customers have seen a decrease in production costs by up to 93% compared to traditional video production.
How does StoryTap help?
StoryTap is a video platform that helps brands generate libraries of high-value video content monthly at a lower cost than traditional video production. We do this a number of ways including all-in-one video recording and submission, brand prompts to ensure your creators can tell their stories effectively (but still authentically), built-in rights management, human content curation, social sharing features, and video SEO.
If you’re ready to learn more, we’d love to talk with you. Reach out to schedule a demo today.
