Whether you are just starting out in the world of internet marketing and are trying to generate leads OR you are a small business owner trying to figure out how to get the most ROI on your ad budget and generate revenue, one question you will likely run into is – Does it make sense for me to use video ads?
The short answer is an unequivocal YES!
According to Wyzowl statistics, 87% of businesses use video as a marketing tool (compared to 63% in 2017). 91% of marketers use video and an even more staggering 99% say that they will continue to use video going forward and invest more in them.
Video seems to excel as an educational tool to increase user understanding of products and services. But the research also shows that it is being used at all steps of the buyer journey – increasing website traffic, keeping visitors on your site longer, converting them into leads and overall helping to enhance the user experience.
So, here I am, a relative newbie at this marketing thing with no previous experience in creating or editing videos. A bit overwhelming, to say the least. What do I do?
Tool selection:
Considering my newness to this, the first decision I made was that I would not be creating original content (yet) but would go down the path of either using stock footage (without infringing on copyrights of any kind, of course) OR use videos supplied by the advertiser who I am affiliated with. That decision reduced the scope of my problem, for now. However, I still needed a way to edit the videos, to personalize them to reflect my brand and to make them unique to me. Hint: This will greatly reduce the chances of your ads being rejected by the platforms where you will be advertising like YouTube, Facebook or Instagram.
So after spending some time browsing lists and articles on Google, I came up with a set of criteria I would use to choose a tool.
- Price – Ideally the tool would be free, or at least offer a free trial where I could use the tool for a while before investing $ into a subscription.
- Ease of Use – Something with a relatively easy and intuitive interface that is easy to learn. I am willing to sacrifice bells and whistles at this stage. I am not looking to create movie quality videos here!
- Type of hardware – I needed something I could run on my laptop without hogging resources and slowing other apps down.
Once I settled on these criteria, it was a matter of trying out various tools. I tried out many tools like Wondershare Filmora, VideoStudio, Lightworks, VideoPad to name a few. In each tool, I went about importing an existing video, adding music to it (More about adding music below), adding titles, credits and then downloading it as a finished product like a MP4 or WMV file.
After a couple of days of trials, I settled on using TWO products. I will explain why below.
The first tool I chose, which has been the workhorse for me so far was Wondershare Filmora. It fit all of my criteria, the most important being the ease of use. Most functions are as almost as easy as a click, drag and drop. Large videos do take up quite a bit of memory but we are talking 10 minute plus videos which are really not ideal candidates for ads anyway. The tool is offered for free as long as you are OK to see a pretty big watermark at the bottom of the video.
I would recommend going for a paid subscription before publishing ads because the watermark makes it look unprofessional.
So… why did I choose a second tool? Well, in the course of testing these tools, it became clear to me that it WOULD be very beneficial to create original content, for branding purposes at the very least, as long as I could find a tool that fit all my criteria… especially the free part. I could use these videos to build up content on my YouTube channel and Facebook Page. Maybe, eventually I could use them for basic brand awareness ads online.. who knows ?
I came across Powtoon by sheer happenstance. My daughter’s class in middle school was using this tool for a project and she was all excited about it and was talking non stop about it. I tried it out and I saw an immediate fit for my business. I used the tool for a few weeks and am now more familiar with its rather rich feature set and am now using a paid version. But the free version will work for the purposes I laid out in the beginning.
Personalizing your videos
Obviously, you will have to edit the videos to personalize them, whether it is a stock video you borrowed OR an info graphic you created on Powtoon. The two most basic things that you will use, in my experience, are music (once again, ensure you don’t infringe on copyrights) and some basic text plus animations (for credits and intro titles or whatever you deem appropriate). Adding text is pretty simple and straightforward and so there isn’t much to say about that. But music? That’s a different story.
One of the many good things about Powtoon is that it has a pretty large searchable library of music clips that you can use. That is a big plus.
I also use other sites to source my music, sites that I discovered thru my online research (Thanks Google!). Sites like BenSound are a pretty good resource as well. They have a mixture of free and paid content. Just make sure that you credit them in your videos. Always…. always… do that. Give people credit for their content, even (and especially) when they are giving it out free of charge.
The bottom line is …. the adoption of video as a marketing tactic continues to soar and shows no signs of abating. It makes logical sense that the tools available will also continue to multiply and grow. So I am looking forward to a richer and more varied landscape of tools to choose from in the future. The one piece of advice I can give you is to actually try them.. Don’t believe the hype!