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Production Stage 2 (Shooting)
In this week’s installment of producing a promotional video, we will go over the techniques of shooting the photos and the optional video clips. If you haven’t read the previous posts of this serialized tutorial, please read blog posts dated March 16, 2020, Video Marketing for Small Business and March 22, 2020, Pre-Production.

Production Stage 1.
As I stated in a previous post this is a simplified way for an entrepreneur with little or no photographic or video background to create a promotional video. You can use your smart-phone to shoot images and video clips. My first recommendation is that you take a lot of images so that when you start editing you have a very large selection of photos to choose from. Try taking shots from different angles and distances. Today, with digital technology you can take ten images for each picture needed. In the post-production phase, it’s better to have an abundance of images to choose from.

Establishing Shot
The first picture in your photo essay is the establishing shot which is a wide-angle view of the subject that sets the scene. An example would be the front of a retail establishment with distinctive identifying features. For you Seinfeld Show fans you may remember at the beginning of each episode the first image you saw was either the front of the coffee shop or the apartment house where Jerry lived. This told the viewers where the first scene was going to take place.

The body of your offer
Show the products or services that you are offering the prospective customer. Consumers relate to realistic photographs. This is where you will insert a persuasive text which we will cover next week in stage 3. You should have many visuals that will draw and maintain attention.

Closing Shot
This is the last shot in your gallery of photos and should be strong enough to support your comments to close the deal.
When shooting take a variety of pictures wide-angle, medium distance, close-ups, and action shots.

If you have any marketing questions, please feel free to contact me at Keystone Business Brokers.
Nick Santarone, Marketing Director, nick@kbizbrokers.com

Next week’s topic is post-production (Stage 3)

This is a link to a video that was produced for a local restaurant by my advertising students at Penn State University, Abington PA.                           https://vimeo.com/100336918

The Pre-Production Stage 1
In this week’s installment of creating a promotional video (commercial), I will cover the first of the three steps of video production. This tutorial will take the stages of production using simple tools such as a smart-phone camera and your business computer. The three Stages of Production are 1. Pre-Production (Planning), 2. Production (Shooting Video), 3. Post-production (Editing).This week I will cover stage 1.
These videos will consist primarily of photos and possibly some short video clips.

Pre-Production — The planning stage of your shoot occurs before the camera starts rolling. By creating a plan, and figuring out the budget ahead of time, your video will be free of unnecessary worry.

Define Goals (Strategy) — Goals are general statements about the direction that you would like to take your business. Example: 1. Expanding into a new market, 2. Reaching a new customer base, 3. New product or service.
You can use these general goals, supported by specific objectives, as a platform for creating a marketing action plan that targets the growth of the business.

Objectives (Tactics) — Once your goals are set, refine them with measurable, concretely defined objectives. These are the steps that you will take to meet your goals.
Example: Each goal should have a set of associated objectives that allow you to logically and effectively work toward the growth you need.

Audience (Target Market) — In advertising, a target audience, is a specific group of people within the target market at which a product or marketing message of a product is aimed. The target market and the marketing mix variables consist of Product, Place (distribution), Promotion, Price. These are the four elements of a marketing mix strategy that determine the success of a product in the marketplace,

Outline (Pre-script) — Break it into transitions. Prepare an outline of the points you want to make. If you’re promoting a business, your outline may consist of identifying the mission, background, products or services provided, how you can help solve your audience’s problems or meet their needs, testimonials from satisfied customers, costs, distinctions between your products and the competition, and any other factors that will convince your target audience to patronize your company.

Goals and Objectives —Describe what you expect the ad campaign to accomplish. Be specific and tailor statements to the focus of the campaign. For a sales ad campaign, set a goal of increasing sales by 10 percent within six months.

Script — Make sure your commercial’s script times out to 30 to 50 seconds (interest wanes at 54 seconds). Use short sentences that grab your potential customer’s attention. You’ve got a very limited time frame to capture your audience and you need to get your message across quickly. Don’t get wrapped up in long sentences. Keep them short and punchy. Your audio should also tell the customer what your advertising confirming what they are viewing.

Storyboard & Shot-list — I have combined both the storyboard and shot-list into one form. The storyboard follows the chronology of the script in a pictorial form. It helps you visualize the sequences of your video. You can use pencil sketches in the form when creating the chronology.
The shot-list is under the sketch boxes on the form. The shots are determined by what action is happening within a given scene and how to best capture that action.

You can download the forms previously listed in this blog from Dropbox. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/p62v52g4pf31y0s/AADlql9m66CnvWoUxyzAsEeIa?dl=0

If you have any marketing questions, please feel free to contact me at Keystone Business Brokers.
Nick Santarone, Marketing Director nick@kbizbrokers.com

Next week’s blog will discuss stage 2 producing the video.

Video Marketing for Small Business
The internet has democratized advertising strategy making it cost-effective. In the past, only large companies could afford the huge expenditures charged by advertising agencies and mass media such as television commercials and print ads. Today, small business has access to digital marketing on their websites and through the many social media sites.

Approximately 90% of individuals have internet access and most people are computer literate. If you’re a B2B marketer it’s safe to assume that practically all of your viewers have computer skills. The best way to engage your customers is to tell your story by using an entertaining video.
Videos also can be used for presentations to clients, trade shows, training, and direct email marketing. Your viewers can watch your videos 24-7. Marketing research has shown that consumers are more likely to make purchases after viewing a recording as opposed to print ads.

There are various levels of producing promotional videos, ranging from a simple slide show to a full-blown commercial using actors. During the next few weeks, I will go through the process of creating a business video using very basic methods that most people have the skills to produce.

If you have any marketing questions, please feel free to contact me at Keystone Business Brokers.
Nick Santarone, Marketing Director,  nick@kbizbrokers.com

“5 Steps To LinkedIn Advertising Greatness.”

Yesterday, I viewed an excellent Youtube video on LinkedIn Advertising. This blog post is a brief synopsis of the video-cast. Below, please find the link to the YouTube video.
Presenter: John Linka with Ignite Visibility
Youtube link: https://youtu.be/-cfMv5hGZYk

Thinking about advertising on LinkedIn, but you have no idea if it’s good or not for your business.

LinkedIn advertising is a great place to be. LinkedIn is used for personal branding, posting, and getting exposure, but also the advertising can be great as well, but you need to know how to use it.

There is a benefit to advertising on LinkedIn. It’s important to know that over 75% of the population on LinkedIn makes $50,000 a year or more. LinkedIn has an excellent demographic with amazing targeting abilities.

Step 1. Sign up for the campaign manager.
The campaign manager will provide you with a dashboard that will give you a look at clicks and interactions of your ads. Also, it will show you the demographics of your advertising audience.

Step 2. Choosing an ad format.
The Ad format is sponsored content that posted it through a LinkedIn business page.

You can use a LinkedIn lead generation form that will pull the information from LinkedIn and be submitted directly to you. This is a seamless and easy process to capture a prospect’s information.

LinkedIn can do video ads through sponsored content allowing you to get way more views on your video content.

The second format is sponsored InMail you can send an InMail to somebody as an advertisement.

Another option is standard text ads so you can have a text ad that shows on the right-hand side of the page on LinkedIn.

Step 3. Ad creation.
If you do not have the correct ad format you’re going to get terrible ROAS (return on ad spend).

Recommendation: You get the attention of your audience and then nurture them through your lead generation process.

LinkedIn gives you the ability to choose your selection criteria. You can choose to select people to advertise by location, the company where they work. Within the specific company, you can advertise to them using their title specifically CMO, director of marketing, and marketing managers.

Step 4. Re-Marketing
Introducing re-marketing as part of LinkedIn that is going to make it a platform that a lot more people are going to be using so definitely give LinkedIn a try don’t quit on it yet. I believe in almost all cases if you put in enough time you can make a channel work for you.

Step 5. Your budget.
LinkedIn has a couple of different ways of budgeting. You can do cost per click, cost per send, and in your mail option cost per impression. Pick the one that’s the best for your business. In most cases, you will be choosing the cost per click or the cost per send.

Interesting stats to think about.
80% of b2b social media marketing leads come from LinkedIn. Also, 92% of b2b marketers use the LinkedIn platform over other platforms.

You can create a great lead generation channel on LinkedIn so keep at it.