Video Marketing for Your Business – Part Three

This was originally going to be the last in a three part series on using video marketing to promote your business but looking at the topics I want to cover I have made an executive decision and expanded this to a four part series.

In Part One you learned that video marketing is no longer just the tool of Nike, Heineken or Microsoft but can be an effective arrow in your quiver of marketing implements. We also looked at inexpensive or free production tools.

In Part Two we looked at some of the basic elements of pre-production which included what to say in your video, problems that arise when the wrong location is chosen and an over view of lighting issues. If you missed either one or both of these then I would suggest you go there now so that you will fully understand what we are covering today.

In this post we will cover production and post-production and will save distribution for the last in the series.
The Back Story – For this example I am recruiting you to be the writer, producer, director, location scout, cameraman, sound recordist and editor. Oh yes, you will be the star also.

You are a massage therapist and work mainly out of your home. I chose “massage therapist” because it is gender neutral and whether the business owner is a man or a woman you have the same issues in promoting your business. If you are a prospect you want to know who is going to be laying their hands all over your body.

You have a website but you are not happy with it and it is not doing anything to draw in new customers. You are a member of a networking group and that has turned out very well with you receiving many referrals but you still have holes in your schedule that you want to fill.

You want to create a Welcome Video which go on your re-designed website. The target market for your video will be folks who are within 20 minutes driving time of your home office and are interested in affordable massage therapy.

Let’s face it, there are some red flags here for your prospect. They will be coming to a private home (which they have never been to before), either partially or completely taking off their clothes and have some one (of unknown cleanliness) rub on their body.

Is there a separate massage room within the home or will you just be in the master bedroom? Yikes, this looks like an outline of a William Friedkin film.

Of course, you as the massage therapist are also concerned about someone coming into your home who you don’t know but really, is that a concern of the prospect.  Nope.

So these are the goals of your video:

• Let them see that you are not a monster
• Inform them of your qualifications
• Explain the massage process.
• Show the massage room and table
• Touch on different massage techniques offered
• Ask them to spend some time on the website, read testimonials, follow on Twitter, like on Facebook.
• Call To Action: call for appointment.

You have written the script and it times out at about 2 1/2  minutes (wonderful) and you have chosen a Sunday morning (quiet phones) and will shoot it in your massage room. You might use a Kodak Z-i8 camera and a Audio-Technica microphone and a work light with a piece of wax paper over the front to soften the harshness of the light.

A little side note about the Zi8.  I have long searched for a little flip style camera that had an external mic input.  I was ecstatic when Kodak came out with the Zi8 and bought it immediately at about $180.  The camera received rave reviews and soared in popularity but for some reason they lowered the price to $85 so I bought another one.  Later I found out that Kodak had discontinued the camera and did not site any reason.  But there are some folks who obviously bought a bunch because they are back on Amazon for…get this…$449.  Wow!  Now I cannot recommend you buy it at this price but if you run across a used one on Craig’s List or at a garage sale, buy it.

Here is another camera that you might look at it is a Canon HF R2 Series HD Camcorder it is still a $400 camera but has an external mic input, a head phone jack and records on consumer SD cards, which I love.  I have spent too many years struggling with creased tape or a clogged head.   All set, let’s roll..

Roll ‘Em

Several takes into it things are not going well. You tried to read it and just occasionally look up to the camera but that looks stupid because this is video not radio. Memorization worked until the third sentence then your eyes were jumping around as you tried to pull the next sentence out. Bad idea.

Remember how I said it in Part Two that it was critical for you to write you own script? Here is how to create your Redneck Teleprompter. Go to an office supply store or to Sam’s Club and buy one of those huge Post-It notes easel boards. You know the kind with the sticky stuff at the top?

Using a marker write a series of bullet points in big letters which summarizes main points in your script. Because you have written the script you only need key words to jog your memory about what you want to say. Peel off your notes and stick them on the wall behind your camera. It should be just above or just to either side of the camera.

So roll the camera, look into the lens, smile and start talking. Keep as much eye contact with the camera as you can, looking only at the Post-it note when you need to pick up the next point. Don’t rush it and remember to smile and be friendly.

Do a couple of takes and take a look at what you have. If you are satisfied then move on to acquiring B-Roll footage. B-Roll are shots that you will cut to as you are describing it. In this case as you talk about Swedish Hot Stone massage you will be showing a close up of the stones being readied to use in a massage. If you are talking about the comfortable environment of the massage room you can show the aroma therapy being utilized. It’s simple, show what you are talking about.

If you are whining about being on camera and wonder if there is some other way to do this, well get over it. There are other ways of doing video without you being on camera such as screen capture and I will cover that software and techniques in another post. But for a welcome video you MUST be on camera, at least for the open and the close of the video. People want to see who they are dealing with and they have to know, like and trust you before they will spend money with you.

OK you have just wrapped your first production! Congratulations, but you are not done, it’s off to post-production now.

The Editing Process

As good pre-production helps production, good production helps post-production. There is an old saying in the biz “we will fix it in post” which really means that somebody screwed up or forgot something during the production phase and because they don’t want to take care of the problem they kick the can down the road. Your role here is to get this video completed and on your website. Can it be better, yes. Should you spend the time to make it better, no. Listen, you can keep polishing it and it will never be seen. Get it done. Ship it. Light the rocket. Launch.

Whether you own a PC or a Mac you have a free editing program on it. On a Mac it is iMovie and for PC people it is Movie Maker. Both have all the functionality that you will need to edit your video.

If this process does light a creative fire in you then there are more sophisticated programs you can get. For the PC look at the Adobe products like Adobe Premiere Pro and for the Mac it is Final Cut Pro. But for this dipping your toe in the pool period stick with the free stuff.

Opening Shot

What should the first frame of your video be? There are two camps on this. One says that you should get right to the message, no titles, no music, not even a fade up from black. These folks say that if the viewer clicked the play button then they want to hear the message right now. The other side says that this is a little break in the viewer’s browsing and not only wants to be informed but to be entertained and a little music and titles at the front end is nice.  It also sets the mood and pace of what is to come. I have done it both ways but I like the titles and music option. And it is just an opinion for I have not seen any hard data on which way gets better results.

Transitions

Even with the free software available  you can do special effects and flying transitions. Special effects, unless they are very well done and very much appropriate to the scene can come off cheap. The last thing you want is to have your viewer distracted and his focus taken off your message by some cheesy effect tumbling into view. Use only fade ups, fade outs, cuts and dissolves.

Music

Unless you want a “cease and desist” letter from a Beverly Hills law firm, do not use copyrighted music.

There is special software available that can search the internet for music being used without permission.

Over the years I have bought dozens of CD’s from one source primarily, the Music Bakery. But there are probably hundreds of websites that offer production music and sound effects. Just do a Google search for royalty free music and then search for something that fits. In the Music Bakery tracks that have a small “u” at the end mean that it is an underscore version. This is where the main instrument has been taken out of the mix allowing the talent’s voice to be heard clearly. A word of caution here; when you are cutting a project you become so familiar with it that you often don’t listen to the voice and consequently have the music up too high.

Next time we will get deeply into distribution and optimization of your video and ultimately the website it is embedded within.

I sure hope that you have enjoyed this series and please leave a comment in the box below. Also please forward this onto other business owners who are struggling with making sense out of video marketing.

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