When it comes to creating videos for a small business, I typically find there are a couple of common thoughts going through the minds of most company owners.

1) Is video marketing really going to produce the results I want for my business?

2) How much time and money am I going to have to invest into creating a marketing video?

These are both very good questions and before getting into something like video marketing, you as a business owner should have a thorough understanding of exactly what you are going to get out of the process.

These uncertainties also boil down to a series of sub-questions. For instance:

• How much money is this going to cost me?
• Will I have to appear on camera?
• How do I know I’m not getting ripped off?
• How much time will this take and how much of my day is going to be interrupted?
• Will anybody actually watch my marketing video?

With all of this in mind, it’s no wonder that just about anybody would have to think twice before deciding to go forth with something as uncertain as video marketing! What it also means is that you should be as informed as possible about the video production process and know what competencies to look for when hiring a video marketer.

Here are a few things to consider.

First, successful video marketing is about a lot more than just putting together a nice flashy final product. In fact, having something that looks nice and flashy shouldn’t even be one of your primary concerns. Yes, having a professional looking final product is important but there are certainly other things you should be more concerned about. After all, if you have the absolute best looking video in the world but nobody watches it past the first ten seconds, how much value is it really delivering?

An excellent marketing video follows this process:

1) The video marketer(s) learn everything they can about your company.
2) The highly engaging script for the video is written.
3) The actual marketing video is created using visuals, voice-overs, animations and/or live footage.

Here is a summary of the process.

Learning about your business
In order to be effective, the video marketer must learn as much as they can about your business. Starting with questions like, who will the video actually be selling to? Who makes up your target market? What terminology does this demographic understand? The video script must be written in a way so that it speaks directly to these prospective customers.

Next, the video marketer must learn about your business entirely. What makes you unique? What problems do your customers come to you with? How do help them?

In order for the marketing video to be effective, it must be relevant to you and your company. This valuable information can only be obtained through in-person or phone meetings. Simply filling out a questionnaire cannot provide the video marketer with enough information to do a good job.

Writing your video script
Next, before any filming, animations or other work is done – the most important part of your video has to be created.

The sales script.

And yes that’s right – not just ‘the video script’. This highly engaging script must be designed to do two things specifically.

One without the other simply isn’t good enough. This is where many marketing videos fall apart and where business owners start to wonder if investing their time and money into a marketing video really was a good idea, because their video is not achieving either of these.

Make sure your video marketer knows how to do both of these things when inquiring about script writing.

Producing your marketing video
Finally, after a satisfactory script is agreed upon by both parties, your marketing video can start being created. The great thing about technology in today’s age is that your entire video can be created without a camera ever having to be pointed in yours, or anyone’s direction.

In fact, your entire marketing video can be created using screen capture software such as Camtasia with the image part of the video being nothing more than a colourful PowerPoint or Keynote presentation.

Of course, your video can also be a combination of this and live footage.

Overall, as long as you follow these three things, your marketing video is much more likely to be successful. The most important item to remember, is that you do not want your video to be a commercial all about you and your company. Make it about your customer instead. After all, they are coming to you because they want help solving their own problems. So let them know exactly how that is going to happen.