How It’s Made: Video

Video is a critical part of any marketing strategy. The good news is that it’s easier to make high quality videos than ever before, even on a basic computer.

In addition to software you can get for free (or at least a free 30 day trial) all you need is a headset microphone and you’re good to go.

Or, you can skip the software all together and have somebody else build it for you

First, you need a script.

Here’s the easy way to get one – find a sales video from your favorite media expert, or even a competitor in your niche. Get their video transcribed, now edit to match your own style and market. There’s no sense reinventing the wheel.

Now you need an audio recording. Audacity is a great free program to record from your computer, and you can get pretty good sound out of any halfway decent headset microphone.

Just edit out any mistakes, and you’ve got the first half of your video.

For the visual portion, start with a “read-along” style video. I’m sure you’ve seen these, where the words appear on the screen in time with the voice.

Don’t worry, you can get somebody on odesk to make a powerpoint slide show for a couple bucks an hour.

Now you need to combine the audio with the visuals – you can do it in camtasia studio, or you can go the outsource route with this.

In powerpoint, go to file > Save & Send > Create a Video. Set it to two seconds or so per slide and make a video.

Now import that along with your audio file in camtasia, and edit the video track (lock the audio) so that the slide transitions when you get to the next set of words. (You can see why you’d want to outsource this)

Now have camtasia render it for the web, put it on s3, and you’ve got yourself a (basic) sales video.

While it’s not going to win any emmy’s, it’s a great starting point, and you can easily make changes to test, for example adding graphical elements or testing different headlines, etc.