From a creative perspective, it’s very hard to make a good live-action or animated video without the right tools. You can use a camcorder and a skateboard instead of an Arri Alexa and a dolly track, but the final product will suffer for these compromises. But as a production and video marketing company, we can tell you that the right tools are just as important when it comes to getting your advert or explainer seen by your target audience. If a video is uploaded on your website and no one bothers to watch it, then unfortunately you’ve just wasted several thousand pounds.
So which tools can make a difference to your video marketing campaigns?
Here are ten of the best.
HapYak
Interactive video is much-hyped, and for good reason. It forces the viewer to take an active, participatory role in the experience, rather than passively observing your sales pitch or product demonstration. When you can get people to involve themselves, you get them invested.
So HapYak – which offers an easy, intuitive means of adding interactivity to your videos, complete with an integrated analytics function – is a must-have for anyone looking to get the most out of this content. Creating and modifying templates is really simple, meaning you can add supplementary information or decision-making elements with relative ease.
Unruly
Unruly describes itself as an ‘outstream video SSP’, which is fancy marketer speak for ‘they help your video ads get seen by a bunch of people all over the world.’ Using sophisticated targeting tools, it expands the audience of your content and it comes with a pretty sophisticated reporting tool. The platform has a very good track record when it comes to making video go viral, and it works with over 84% of Ad Age’s top 100 firms.
Google Rich Media Gallery
Google don’t play, son. The Rich Media Gallery highlights the best creative video campaigns on the web – and lets you create your own with its free professional HTML-5 authoring tool. Complete newbies will also be able to take advantage of the Academy for Ads, which offers a crash course in Google’s tools.
Rev.com
Okay, so video’s more effective than text. But not everyone prefers to consume content in this way: some people pass a long car journey by watching a movie on their iPad, and others like to read a book. Having transcripts readily available can be an excellent way to hook a viewer who might otherwise have pre-emptively disengaged from your video.
TubeMogul
One of the biggest names in demand-side advertising, TubeMogul offers a full suite of video promotion and branding services across mobile, desktop, and TV. It’s probably one of the more comprehensive tools out there, allowing you to plan, execute, and optimise programmatic campaigns across multiple channels – and its analytics tool allows you to look at what’s working, what isn’t, and make continuous improvements.
VidIQ
Know your enemy and know yourself, as the great Sun Tzu once said.
VidIQ is a YouTube-certified Chrome extension that gives you deep insights into competitor behaviour. If a search term is trending upwards or waning in popularity, it’ll let you know. It also lets you see tags for all videos on YouTube, and it comes with a nifty on-screen widget that displays stats for each clip.
TubeBuddy
As another analytics-based Chrome extension, TubeBuddy has a lot of overlap with VidIQ, providing behind the scenes data on channels and the videos therein. It’s also YouTube-certified, and completely free. So that’s pretty neat.
Famebit
Famebit matches YouTube content creators to brands looking for promotion. This is very useful if you want to simplify the process of finding product sponsors, but be careful who you associate with. Famous YouTubers are milkshake ducking at lightspeed these days, so your brand could well end up being associated with a PewDiePie or Logan Paul-style fiasco (there’s a sentence that would have made no sense fifteen years ago).
After all, famous YouTubers are usually young people, and young people eat laundry detergent for attention. They are capable of pretty much anything, and especially anything dumb.
Tubular Insights
Tubular Insights’ thoughtful, brilliant blog is doubtless designed to convince you to avail yourself of their services; alas, not everyone shares our pure motives. But when content marketing is done this well, you don’t really mind. Ranging across a number of topics and platforms – from Cooking Panda to Superbowl trailers; from YouTube to Instagram – the Tubular Insights blog is an essential tool for anyone wanting to keep up to date with the goings-on in video marketing. The analytics suite is pretty handy too: allowing you to easily discover viewing habits, industry trends, and influencers within a single centralised system.
Google Keyword Planner
Finally, it’s not strictly a video tool, but don’t underestimate Google’s keyword planner. To get your video seen, you need to first get it in front of the right people. Identifying relevant search terms is a great way to do exactly that.
We can make your video, and we can get it noticed. Talk to our CEO to discuss your brief.