7 Tips For Choosing A Video Marketing Company

Want to give your brand more personality? Launch a video marketing campaign.

There’s no easier way to show your authenticity as a business leader or brand than using video. Take a look at these 7 tips for choosing the right video marketing company to create your campaign.

1. What’s the Endgame?

Before you start interviewing video marketing companies, it’s important to have a clear understanding of your needs. It’s not the video marketer’s job to explain to you why your business needs video marketing.

Having your own agenda is the best way to make sure you’re getting value. If you rely on the video marketing company to make all the decisions for you, you’re giving up control over your business objectives.

Have a short term and long term goal for your video marketing campaign. A good short term goal is ‘finding our brand voice’ not ‘creating a viral video.’

Video marketing falls under a larger umbrella called content marketing.

Content marketing is a long game.

The chances of instant viral success are few and very far between. You’ll want to commit at least a few years to your video marketing strategy before you can expect measurable results.

These are the results that help you make decisions about future marketing spend or content strategy.

2. Avoid Big Promises

When hiring a video marketing company, pay attention to their promises. Are they focused on results or strategy?

Avoid doing business with video marketing agencies that promise results. There’s no ethical way to ensure instant views or engagement on a video.

Any agency that says there is might be dealing in black hat marketing strategies like buying views or followers. These practices won’t connect you with your customers and could get your account flagged by the platform you’re using.

Another reason for their exaggerated promises might be inexperience. Make sure you’re doing business with a video marketing company that understands how to play the long game because they’ve done it for other clients several times over.

Hire a company that combines corporate video production with strategy. Experienced video marketing companies understand that the only thing within their control is how they produce content.

The reaction of the audience will be fickle at best during the first year.

3. They Talk Like Partners

A good video marketing company doesn’t just offer a menu of services for you to choose from. They communicate with you as your partner.

It’s the two of you going up against the content creation void in hopes of emerging victorious. Good content producers see your success as their success.

Guard against doing business with a video marketer that isn’t bringing ideas and best practices to the table. A shared vision is the best way to go when launching a campaign for the first time.

You know your brand best, but the video marketer knows the industry and tools that can launch your vision into actionable steps.

4. Affordability

One way to weed out video marketing companies is by using price. It might not be helpful for you to hire a video marketing company at all if you’re spending more than you would for in-house staff.

Sometimes, you can find a content creator who can do more than just shoot video. You might get lucky and find a person that also knows graphic design, animation and editing.

This is a major cost savings. Of course, this kind of luck depends on your local talent pool.

You’ll have stronger talent options in major metropolitan areas where the advertising industry is booming. This creates a talent pool that uses diverse skills in order to remain competitive.

5. How Do They Track Progress?

How will your video marketing company track campaign progress? Discuss how your video marketing company tracks analytics and how you’ll have access to this data.

It’s not enough to have the measurement reporting, they should be easy for you to review.

Request to see sample reports from other campaigns they’ve worked on. Real-life examples help you see trends in other industries so you’ll know what to expect.

Ask what actions the video marketing agency took during downturns. Was there anything within the content that led to changes in viewer engagement or click-throughs?

How long did the campaign run before there was an uptick or downturn in its progress? These questions reveal how attentive the video marketing company is to its customer’s needs.

6. Decide the Creative Lead

There are some company’s that provide brilliant creative ideas alongside strategy. But this isn’t the norm.

You won’t always have the opportunity to sit back and allow your video marketing company to do all the work. Decide during your first meeting who will serve as the creative lead.

Will, your team write the scripts for each video or will the video marketing agency provide them for you?

Who has the authority to make creative changes?

Make sure there’s flexibility just in case the creative isn’t what you want. No video marketing agency, no matter how creative, should distribute content without your final approval.

7. Change Management

Another important thing to discuss when hiring a video marketing company is change management. Some video marketing agencies are too small to hire an account manager strictly for your campaign.

This can mean you’re communicating with more than one person making changes and requests more difficult to manage. Ask about your video marketing company’s change management strategy so you can manage your expectations.

They might limit the number of revisions or changes per customer to make their projects more manageable. Knowing this in advance helps both parties avoid conflict.

How to Hire the Right Video Marketing Company

Your video marketing company needs a diverse set of tools in order to be successful with your campaign. Ask about their analytics and tracking resources so you’ll have a clear idea of how to monitor campaign progress.

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