Published: April 16, 2018
by Justin Difazzio
We know creating a video can be a time consuming and expensive endeavor, especially if you only use that video once. With long preparation times, days of shooting, and multiple rounds of edits, launching that video you’ve worked so hard for weeks to create can leave you feeling a little empty once it’s over. What if I told you that you shouldn’t feel that way? A finished video project should leave you feeling triumphant, full of ideas, and equipped with a fresh quiver of creativity arrows aimed at multiple new targets. One video, once shot, can easily be cut, edited, and reused to deliver solutions well after the initial project is over. What you do with it and where the assets go is only limited by your creativity. We’re happy to give you our top five ideas to get you the most return on your investment from a video marketing project.
Do the Splits
The easiest thing you can do to get more mileage out of your video is to split it up into smaller videos. If you’ve mastered your transitions in a longer video, each section could stand alone as a separate video. Shorter videos get more exposure on social media, making them ideal for catching the eye of people you may not reach with a longer format video. With videos that don’t necessarily split easily, you may have to enlist the help of whomever shot it for you. It takes far less time to recut an existing video than it does to reshoot completely. Even videos you’ve had completed for a long time can be recut if you’ve still got the assets. It’s a great way to refresh an old message or share key points with a link to where people can see the long version if they’re so inclined. With this technique, one video can become three or five or more!
Capture a Moment
A video, as you probably know, is composed of a string of frame-by-frame shots one after another. When you stop to think of it like that, I’m sure there are a few ideas that come to mind about why that might be useful. With a particularly good still shot, you can encapsulate the message of the video and use it in your print media or as a social media post. What about freshening up your website’s banner image? Or pull several great shots out and use them in your online gallery. You could take it one step further and actually get some printed as in-office artwork. Not every frame is going to be particularly useful or flattering on its own, but in thousands of shots, there’s bound to be some gold.
Share the Script
Just as the visual portion of a video can be split into still images, the audio portion can be used in other ways, too. The biggest part of your audio, the script, can be shared as one or several blog posts. Sometimes people aren’t in a place where they can watch a video, so sharing a text version makes it accessible to more people. Plus, then those particularly juicy quotes can be pulled and shared. Find a catchy phrase in the script and use it as a tagline for a future campaign. And what about the actual voice over? If it’s a separate asset than the visual portion, the audio could be taken and used for other relevant things. Having the text allows you to achieve consistent branding across many platforms by using the same precise wording in multiple places.
Bring the B-Roll!
Any good shoot will include more B-roll footage than you need. Whether it’s video of employees or equipment working, establishing shots of the facility and grounds, or something else that captured the cameraman’s eye, B-roll footage can find life outside of its assigned project. Remember those voice overs we talked about earlier? Set them over some decent B-roll and use them as a shorter version of your message. Use architectural shots to show a before-and-after comparison of a new facility or addition. You never know when something shot for an earlier project can come in handy. Might as well keep any and all of that versatile B-roll for future endeavors!
Design with Data
Is your video information-dense? Piling on the facts might be necessary in the context of your video, but too much data delivered too quickly can cause a brain blowout. Don’t let your viewers miss important facts. Cast them separately as infographics! You can share them easily on social media, on your website, and alongside your videos. Make difficult concepts easier to digest with a flashy image, graph, flow chart, or something more creative! Your design team (or a local creative agency) could have a go at making the data more palatable both visually and mentally. A great infographic can distill those heavy concepts into a imminently sharable format that could reach more people in more places more quickly.
Cross-Selling Content
Hopefully now you have a better idea of the gold mine of different content you can find in a single video. Don’t be afraid to play the video for your team, brainstorm what assets could be useful elsewhere, and experiment with the potential contained in every frame. When a new project comes up, revisit your older videos and see if anything from them stands up particularly well to the test of time. From B-roll to still images to the message itself, all of a video’s assets have future potential. You don’t need a professional to find ways of getting more mileage out of your video projects. Some of them are literally right before your eyes.