Insights Into Cost Effective Video Marketing For International Markets

This article is part of Video Marketing 101. You will find the links to the other articles in this series at the bottom of this post. Stay tuned for future ones.

Video marketing is fast becoming a necessity for businesses online. The trend is not going to stop.

The main reason is because video marketing, when well done, pulls better responses. So more and more businesses are using video marketing to promote their services.

Videos are being used on websites much more productively than in the past. They are cheaper to produce, faster to make, and easier to put online.

Video marketing can also be a very important part of your international internet marketing plan.

Remember, all of the standard good practices in cross cultural communication and international marketing still apply here as well.

Video marketing is just another marketing channel.

We will look into cross cultural communication used in video marketing in the near future here at Get International Clients. First let’s run through the basics of video marketing.

And today we are reviewing how online video marketing has become more affordable to everyone.

Videos Have Staying Power

Email storage space in increasing at rates that astound anyone who had an email account 5 years ago. Price is no reason to delete anything, including videos. With this seemingly bottomless storage space, video now has an almost limitless storage life.

The only reasons why people do not do any video marketing today are:

• They don’t believe it will work for their market.
• The cost is too high for them.
• They don’t take the time to do it.

There is no market that can’t effectively use video. At the very least, video marketing gives you better exposure through video testimonials.

Where Is The Expensive In Video Marketing?

Creating the video does have to cost you anything. Even those people with little creative talent can learn to put up a basic video today.

The equipment you need to create the videos is where the expense lies. You need to buy both hardware and software.

There are different options available to you, at different price scales. Of course, to get the best out of video marketing you need to spend some money. It is up to you to look at what you can afford, and the video marketing options this gives you.

The Camera

A good starter camera is going to cost less that $2,000. You can even start off with a much smaller budget. The choice is large. A good camera will probably come with video editing software included.

The Software

To be honest, buy any new PC today and you will probably have acceptable starting level video editing software included.

Better video software is great for video marketing. And you will probably want to look into them if you want to use video marketing seriously.

There is a wide range of video software out there, with all sorts of options to choose from. It all depends what type of video marketing you want to do. You might want to spend the money to get better software than the free options available to you.

Just like many products, you will find test versions of most software. Download them off the internet for a 30 day trial and see if they fit your needs. Use this option to try your hand at video editing to become familiar with it.

Keep Track Of Cost Per Finished Minute

In order to get a good idea of how expensive video marketing is and whether it is an option for you, you need to look at your cost per finished minute of video.

When video was only made on cassettes the cost used to average between $1500 - $2000 per finished minute of video. A finished minute means that a completed video 10 minutes long would cost between $15,000 and $20,000.

This range of costs stopped most people from considering video marketing in the past. Today things are much cheaper. And they can be very cheap. This is why video marketing is becoming so popular. A large majority of businesses can afford to invest in this excellent marketing tool.

Making It Quick

You can cut costs by reducing the time it takes you to make the video.

As a true beginner, if you simply place your video camera on a tripod and speak in front of the camera, you can have a video up in minutes.

Most new portable computers have a video camera built into the frame. Simply speaking to the camera will only cost you the time that it takes to say your dialog.

You will need practice. Everyone does. Before long you will create videos at an acceptable quality level. This may not be appropriate for your business. But it is an option. There are many different channels to broadcast your marketing video. You can start with the appropriate channel for your video.

Use Existing Video Footage

There are more options available to you if you have a small budget.

• You can buy existing video footage to use in your own videos.
• You can use your own video footage. Prior sales meetings, training or orientation programs and public events that have already been recorded are an excellent starting point.

If you don’t have any of these, think strategically.

Look for things you can record and incorporate easily into future videos. For example, record all future training and orientation programs so new employees can have access to them.

You can then use parts of the same videos for different marketing videos.

Edit For Reuse

A video is easy to edit. That’s what video software does for you. The more sophisticated the video software, the more things you can do with it.

As a company developing internationally, you should look into making multiple language versions of one video by dubbing over the voice.

If the person speaking is famous, or your company CEO for example, you can keep their original voice. Subtitles are simple to create and to add on top of a video.

Video can be adapted to foreign markets using a voice over or using a running text translation. You can easily leverage this in your international marketing programs by including a language specific link in your advertising, newsletter or ezines.

If you have an audience that has already signed up for some form of communication from you, adding a link to a video with different languages available can be a powerful international branding tool.

This is a good way to increase your time with international readers. You can boost your international business if your video is well done.

Video Marketing Helps Increase Your Sales

Both audio and video are proven tools to get better sales results in many cases.

If you think video will get you better results from your international market, then make sure you take full advantage of what video can offer you.

• Start with short marketing videos.
• Create one International English version for your Export Marketing and broad International Marketing.
• Adapt your marketing video to one culture at a time.
• Implement on a small scale first.
• Test results and improve your videos.

Use foreign language marketing videos as part of your international internet marketing plan to target a foreign audience and open a whole new part of the world to your products.

Study your foreign target market’s cultural behavior profiles to determine the best way to use video marketing.

We are going through the series of 5 different cultural behavior profiles this month in the weekly Get International Clients Newsletter. Sign up and find out how you can use this to improve your international marketing.

Here are the other articles in this Video Marketing Series:

• Where Is Video Marketing Effective?
• When Do You Need Video Marketing?