Video content can be overwhelming & you may not know how to get started. Here are some video marketing tactics from Rebecca Saunders!

About Rebecca Saunders

Rebeccas has lived in Australia for at least ten years, but she’s originally from the UK. She has a video production company that operates globally across Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and parts of America. Although she doesn’t edit videos anymore, she runs the business and has built that up from scratch, which is super exciting. 

And she teaches people how they can DIY and how to create their video content using their phones, cameras, and webcams. For her, it’s very much around the hybrid of DIY and professional content going hand in hand. 

She’s sure that as a photographer, you are in the same space as in the video world.

Using video marketing tactics that resonates with people

If you’re going down the professional-to-professional route, there are some fundamentals that every business should consider getting done professionally. The number one thing is a professional video about why you do what you do. This showcases how you do what you do and why you do what you do. 

The impact it has on your end customer, the solution you’re solving, the problem you’re solving, those things. So whatever industry you’re in, your pain point, and why you’re solving it. 

You can get professionals to help you plan a strategy worth investing in following these outlines. That’s what makes up the first marketing piece for creating video content that showcases your business and brand well. You can throw as much money at professional videography as you have in the business at that time, which is why you can use your phone and webcam in a great way to get some of the other pieces of content. 

Recycling content

If you haven’t got the cash flow to bring someone in professionally, the next pieces of content could be creating customer testimonials or case studies and getting that vibe straight off the bat.  Given your audience as a photographer, all photography cameras don’t all do video, but you can have that in your hand. You’ve got the equipment in front of the lens; that could be easy to get people to do. 

Tell people your story and raving reviews about you. Another thing to always go for is your FAQs. You know, those frequently asked questions that people are constantly asking you, and you’ve probably got them on your website somewhere, and you send people to them. You can use that as Instagram reels or short videos. Repeat them and recycle them quarterly.

Those questions never change, but how you deliver those answers can change, so they have a human touch on stories or reels.

You can be super creative with that and all about recycling things. Sometimes as business owners and creatives, a profitable business, a sustainable business is boring underneath, and it’s quite repetitive. Sometimes you shoot yourselves in the foot because you get bored with yourself and forget that people haven’t heard those things sometimes. So, recycle, and repurpose all the stuff on repeat.

Incorporating video into your website

This comes down to those three types of content, that promotional piece where you could have a videographer come out and follow you on 1,2 or 3 shoots that are local or within a short period and capture that behind the scenes—that essence of what you’re doing, how you’re doing it. So video, in that context, is very similar to behind-the-scenes photography, you’re just using a different format to capture it.

So if you can have someone follow you around, find incredible scenes, and create the most amazing videos for people using the behind-the-scenes, then perefect. As a photographer, you’ve got to think about the next big shoots you’ve got coming up that the client will be happy with you to do a video piece of; it could be clients with a huge social media following. So they can also share a behind-the-scenes video of their photoshoot.

You know, there are ways of enticing clients to be on camera for you. That doesn’t just mean that they are singing your praises and feeling awkward. You know, it could be that behind the scenes, little clips for them could cost you a few $100 in editing as a gift as a perk. As a business owner, you get awesome content.  

How do you start with video marketing?

You can then learn about repurposing and maximizing time without cramming too much in and causing much more stress. You may also be wondering, but where do you start? If you can plan it out a little bit more, you can get someone to do a verbal testimonial on camera, so you’re not just doing the visuals. You get the audio piece as well.  

And when you can get that, you’ve got your promo video and three testimonials that you can then use and recycle. That’s your great starting point. And your FAQs, if you’ve got the time. Professionally record them and get fun and creative with them. You know, as a photographer, you have your style. Find a videographer that complements that and can showcase your style with the video medium. 

Efficient ways to repurpose video content

If you’re thinking about your typical horizontal format, like sixteen by nine, your typical video horizontal format if you think of that in three-thirds, the middle third is what you can essentially crop in on to make a vertical piece of video content.

So if you’re using your big camera, or even your phone to a point but your big camera with those high 4k resolutions, get someone to frame it right and set your camera up to frame it correctly. You can cut vertical squares and horizontals from that footage with the right editing. 

You don’t need to capture all types of videos for one project or all types of videos all the time. If you’ve got a photo shoot happening, maybe in a studio space or something quite static, think about just setting your phone up on the side and capturing a time-lapse video with a small tripod; you set it, forget it, and you leave it there, or occasionally move it around. 

Other ways to repurpose content

Same with hair and makeup, just having it almost on your checklist. You know that’s the checklist you’ve always got for the photos you’re getting for your client. Have one for you so that you remember to do it and your assistant remembers to take that stuff.

This time lapse-wise could be fantastic. Rebecca knows of a A Sydney-based photography studio that does photographs in lots of dress up. So you go in and get dolled up in the hair/makeup you want, and they take the most phenomenal behind-the-scenes video bits and make a story. They follow the same template for every single client. They’ve got a hello when they come in the door. They got a hug, looked at the outfits, saw their makeup for the first time, took the photos from behind the scenes, and then bam, three of the finished shots. And that is a cookie-cutter video that they do for every single client. 

So if you can get to a point where you could go, okay,  two or three seconds worth of video footage without it impacting you doing your job on-site, obviously, sometimes it involves having another person if you can get it to its cookie cutter for every kind and put your visual stamp on it. That’s a complete Win-Win. It becomes second nature to you to do it at the onset. 

And you get known for that video coming up in someone’s feed. So it’s the same style of photography your videos have. If you can do one of those things or the cookie cutter cut and make it templated for you to make easy or Time Lapse It and set and forget, that would be your starting point, particularly for behind-the-scenes content for sure.

Video content on an iPhone

You can get creative and find the right way of editing iPhone videos, whether that’s you editing it or giving it to somebody else, you know, filming on the cameras inside an iPhone. Technology these days blows my mind. You could film yourself, but it’s not going to be as good as what you would do professionally. This is why for years, Rebecca stuck to professional video. 

Now it’s going to stick to that level, if everyone wants this video content. Video content on an iPhone is going crazy. Social media is prioritizing it. There is absolutely no way you could keep up with the demand for a video that social media platforms and your audiences expect from you if it has to be professional all the time. It’s just not possible.  Rebecca moved into this space of teaching people how to do it themselves because if you know the basics, it can look okay for the purpose of social media content or chip paper content, right? It’s the stuff that gets seen today. And it’s there for a couple of hours, a couple of days, maybe if you’re lucky.

It’s okay to DIY

Don’t overthink it and get it to a point where you get paralysis to make the piece of content for your Instagram reel. It shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes. Capture little seconds left, right, and center throughout my day. But if it takes more than 10 minutes to do a reel, that’s still worth it.

Get out of your own way as a professional creative and know it’s okay to use DIY photography and DIY video in your socials. It is okay and fine. People are expecting it. And so, as a photographer on your website, you should have a professional video showcasing you. But customer testimonials and those little behind-the-scenes reels. No one expects you to have that behind-the-scenes professional all the time. You would be charging double to your clients to get that. 

Connecting with clients through video

The number one piece is telling that story, you’ve got two ways of doing it, and it comes back to those core three again. These three things showcase it, showing people behind the scenes of your process. You can get creative with your mood boards, talk to people by collecting images on Pinterest or Instagram or create a list of things to make your job easier. As a photographer, your processes are the little things you take for granted. 

You can start creating content without even being on-site. You can start getting creative during downtime between shoots or before and after of edited photos. The beauty of photography and video is that you need to remind your clients that we are all human, and the polished thing at the end isn’t all the fun stuff that happens on the day like that’s the final output. 

But then you can have fun and not take yourself too seriously, and it’s okay to step up and show that. And so if you can make light of that kind of stuff. It takes away the fear of your clients to start with. And you can show them what happens behind the scenes in the preparation and give them those tools. That’s what makes it exciting. They can follow the process then. 

When you’re on-site with your clients, you need to be present and deliver the service that you’ve promised them and that they’ve paid for. So if you can think about sharing your experience and expertise and the experience for them before and after the shoot, you can do that without needing to remember to film on-site.

Where to edit your videos

 If you’re doing it on your computer, you will use iMovie or PremierePro. iMovie is free, and most people use Macs in the creative space, so tale time learning which is quick, super easy, super fast, and free. Set some time aside to learn the basics so you can speed up. Plug it in, and it will automatically spit something out for you. Something great. You do have to take a little bit of time to learn it, but it’s advisable to go down the road of Premiere Pro because it will last you the test of time. There’s no point, but it’s best to learn something that will last me a long time. 

So Premiere Pro, if you’ve got a Photoshop subscription already, you can probably plug that in without much expense. Those are two if you’re doing proper videos on the computer. But in terms of iPhone footage, Instagram is a great platform, and InShot is the go-to for editing on the phone. 

Don’t compare your video with another’s 10,000th

Sometimes you think your video didn’t turn out well as you had in your head, or you don’t have time to make it perfect, so you stick to it. You don’t care, so no one else should care. Just go with it, it will get better. Chances are people won’t notice or care. 

So put it out there. Just get started, and just practice makes perfect. It’s a muscle; if you don’t keep exercising, it won’t get any stronger.

Know that you’re doing something you didn’t have the courage to do before, so even when you see other people doing it, know you’re on fire too. You’re crushing it and doing so well. Even if you didn’t necessarily watch and consume everything, know you’re showing up and putting yourself out there. That’s all anybody resonates with. 

Boring business is a profitable business. If you can make it easy for yourself, make it easy. You know business is hard. So, where you can get a win, take a win. 

Final piece of advice

The biggest takeaway is you’ve got to start. You won’t go anywhere unless you hit that record, so practice. Practice makes perfect, don’t be a sheep, and don’t stick around doing work on yourself. Play easy and post it to get started!

You can find Rebecca at www.rebeccasaunders.com There are many different downloads and freebies on there to help you on the video journey if you want to have a little look around those. And she’s very active on Instagram @therebeccasaunders.