How much time do you think people spend watching video content every week? According to the data, in 2022, the average American spent 19 hours every week watching videos online. That’s nearly half of a traditional full-time work week, and it does not include non-digital content, like television or movies.
Video content holds peoples’ interest and attention. It’s no wonder that HubSpot calls video marketing an “increasingly powerful way to communicate your brand story, explain your value proposition, and build relationships with your customers and prospects.”
Considering all this, the obvious conclusion is that you should be using video to boost your customer engagement. But what’s the best way to create high-quality videos you can use for digital marketing or television commercials to advertise? In this article, we’ll discuss why professional video production services should be key to any customer engagement strategy for marketing, regardless of your business.
What Are Professional Video Production Services?
Anyone can make a video advertising their product or service. You can use your trusty smartphone to film a short video clip right now. You can even go old-school and use a tape-based camcorder. Nothing is stopping you.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean these videos will be good or all that effective as part of a customer engagement strategy. (They might be—for all we know, you’re the next Scorsese. The odds might not be in your favor, though.)
Solution: hire professional video production services. Professional video production means working with pros with experience at all stages of the video production cycle, from planning and pre-production to getting behind (or in front of) the camera and, finally, the editing and publication of your video to the appropriate channels.
A video production company that offers to do all of this from end to end is often called a full-service video production service. Even if you’re working with a full-service video production company, it doesn’t mean you have to use all of their services. For instance, if you think you can write a great commercial script, you can, but the service is available to you.
What Can a Full-Service Video Production Company Do?
Professional video production services can handle any, all, or some of the following parts of the video production life cycle:
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- Develop a creative concept: What are you showing off? How can you best promote your business’s goods or services?
- Write the scripts: How can you best communicate your brand’s selling points and message?
- Create the storyboards: This will visually set the stage so everyone is on the same page for the production process.
- Scout locations to shoot: They will find places to film or build a set if necessary.
- Find your on-screen talent: Video production services often have pipelines in place to help them find the perfect actors for the parts.
- Prepare the shoot: The production team will get everything ready to start recording, including lighting and sound design.
- Direct and execute the shoot(s): This includes the direction of the filming itself and all other parts, such as ensuring the catering is there and supplying and maintaining film equipment.
- Edit the video: Post-production experts will apply color correction, animation, or effects; balance the sound; and find or compose effective music to accompany the video.
- Publish and market the video: While this part might be handled by a separate marketing department, a full-service professional video production services provider can also do this.
- And more!
When done well, video production can be highly complex, so there are quite a few aspects not mentioned above, like adding subtitles for accessibility purposes in the post-production phase. In other words, if it’s part of the video production pipeline, a great professional video producer probably has someone on staff to cover that job.
So, what are the best ways to use your professional video production services partner to generate high levels of customer engagement? Let’s talk about customer engagement strategy.
Why Should Video Be a Key Part of Your Customer Engagement Strategy?
Simply put, a picture is worth a thousand words. We love text, don’t get us wrong—there’s nothing like an insightful blog post (hopefully like this one!) or a fun book. Making your way through a thrilling or poignant novel can take time, but ads just don’t have that amount of time to catch consumer interest and paint a vivid picture.
So, show the picture instead.
Think about it: what tugs at the heartstrings more quickly, reading a blog about the plight of abandoned animals or a video of a bedraggled, thin dog being rescued from the streets?
Visual content captures your audience’s attention more quickly, period. It’s arguably more effective at evoking emotion when paired with music—speaking of animals in need, who can forget the plaintive singing of Sarah McLachlan, right?—but that’s not even necessary with good visuals.
Potential customers will take note of a great video but might scroll over your text or ignore your blog posts. Great videos can drive customer engagement or be shared in a way that text simply can’t in this day and age.
Best Practices for Video Production to Drive Customer Engagement
If you want to try your hand at being the next Scorsese, you can follow these best practices as part of your in-house video production:
- Try to capture a viewer’s attention in the first couple of seconds.
- Keep your video length below a minute, if possible, for optimal bite-sized viewing.
- Boost engagement by creating content related to current events or news stories (if they’re relevant to your brand, don’t force it, or you’ll come off as awkward).
- Have a sense of humor (unless, again, you’re talking about something like sad, abandoned animals).
YouTube is the most commonly used platform for video marketing, but you can also try Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook, depending on the demographics you’re chasing.
Still, the benefits of hiring a professional video production agency, such as Pretzel Logic Productions, for your business are many and significant. From pre-production to filming to post-production, having an expert working your your behalf can give your video marketing a decided edge.
