Business owners, especially small business owners, wear many different hats to ensure the day-to-day operations of their companies go as smoothly as possible. And as many of these businesses combine their physical and digital presence, it means learning and adopting new skill sets and services to ensure long-term success. Video marketing is one of the skill sets that has become essential in today's environment, and if you think you can't create professional quality video because you don't have any experience, think again. Animoto's Marketing Video Builder has everything you need to help you and your business standout in a video-first world.
The Marketing Video Builder was developed by Animoto, a company that has helped customers create more than 100 million videos over the past 10 years, the company claims. Based on this experience, the new platform was designed from the ground up to address the specific needs of do-it-yourself marketers so they can easily make videos to be distributed across different channels.
In an exclusive email interview with Small Business Trends, Cyndi Knapic, Head of Animoto for Business, pointed out why small businesses need video marketing, and why Marketing Video Builder is the right tool to affordably create quality videos.
Knapic said the company conducted a survey earlier this year that revealed video marketing had a direct impact for 77 percent of the professional marketers and small business owners who tried it. Moreover, 60 percent stated they would increase their investment in video in the coming year.
The need to use video is being driven by social media channels, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat and others. If a small business doesn't have a presence on any of these platforms with the right content - which more and more includes video - it will be that much harder to connect and engage with its customers.
The Marketing Video Builder has starter story boards with a drag-and-drop interface that guides you to create videos with content you already have. The platform has custom branding, voice-over, advanced text control over video clips, photo collages, timing controls and a diverse library of commercially licensed music. Although all these features may sound intimidating, the company says this is far from the case.
Voice-Over
At the touch of a button you can record voice-over segments to tell your story with spoken word.
Text Control
You can customize the size, color, font and placement of text on video clips, photos, collage blocks or titles to give your creation a professional feel. Kipanic also pointed out in the interview, “Most content on both social media and mobile devices is consumed silently so I'd also highly recommend using text in your videos to optimize for sound-off viewing, which is quite easy to do with our Marketing Video Builder.”
Commercially Licensed Music
You have access to thousands of soundtracks from a wide range of genres to give your video the right feel and to communicate with your audience.
Collages and Layouts
This feature lets you use a split screen to share videos or photos along with text to showcase several images at the same time.
Mobile Apps
The free iPhone and Android apps let you create and share videos using the pictures and video clips in your phone or tablet or watch any videos you have made.
As Knapic explained, “We've done a lot of research studying what makes good marketing videos so successful. Our team of motion designers and engineers have made it super easy to emulate the things that make these videos successful.” The platform is easy enough for small business owners without any experience to use, while at the same time delivering professional grade results good enough for a much larger brand.
Knapic explained, “The videos we deliver are of an incredibly high caliber of quality, but still financially and technically accessible for the small business customer.”
The product has already garnered testimonials from businesses large and small.
Crate and Barrell Vice President of Marketing, Suzy Cirulis described Animoto's new tool as a quick and cost effective way to create video the same day using assets the company already had. She added, “The video received similar levels of impressions, clicks and engagements as other brand awareness campaigns that we've run that took us weeks to create or that we had to outsource.”
By contrast, Nu-Era Bakery is a small business based in West Virginia. Co-owner Libby Albright explained, “We don't have the marketing budget to compete with corporate bakeries that sell in chain stores. With Animoto, for the first time, we've been able to bring our business to life through social media. Telling our story visually on social media has led to unexpected customer demand across the U.S. and we are going to expand our business to start shipping as a result.”
The platform is completely web-based, so he company says you won't need any additional software or downloads. Instead, you can make your marketing video start to finish on Animoto.com.
Availability
Marketing Video Builder is now available in three different tiers, starting with Personal at $8 per month if you pay an annual subscription. With Personal you get 720P video resolution, more than 70 design-rich video styles, and 500+ music tracks with different genres.
The next level is Professional, and you can get it for $22 per month when you pay for a year. The video resolution goes up to 1080p, and you also get the same number of video styles as Personal, but it includes more than 20 premium video styles. You can use your own logo and add music from 2,000 tracks with a re-seller license to consumers.
The Business tier comes in at $34 per month with an annual subscription and you get the same features as the Professional tier, along with an extra 1,000 music tracks, a re-seller license to businesses and three user/seats.
There's also a free 14 day trial that doesn't require a credit card so you can have two weeks to experiment without commitment.
Images: Animoto
This article, "This Animoto Marketing Video Builder Is Aimed Right at Small Businesses" was first published on Small Business Trends
No comments:
Post a Comment