⏩ 3 Tools to Build Video into Your Marketing Strategy the Easy Way

Video has huge reach.

You probably knew that already. But I still regularly encounter people in the world of marketing who find video difficult to work with and maybe don’t know where to begin with it. As a result, it’s kept at arm's length based on the time commitment and thinking space it requires.

But it doesn’t need to be.

In this newsletter, I want to show you a few tools which will help either you or your team to get closer to working with video. And if you just prefer planning projects, I’ve got something for you too.

In today’s newsletter:

📌 A Simple Tool To Create Videos Like You’re Genz

📌 Make Sure To Be Heard With Great Quality Audio In 1 Click

📌 With The Right Tool Planning And Briefing Your Content Is Easy

📌 Latest social media news

Before we get started, let me show how significant video is.

According to Statista, online videos have an audience reach of 92% among internet users worldwide (data as at Q4 2022).

Out of 5 billion people, that’s not insignificant.

The chart below outlines the size of the market: +5 billion people on the internet every day.

Source: Statista; 2023

Of those people, 4.8 billion use social media. So what does that look like across the top three social media platforms that use video?

Here are the number of active monthly users for TikTok (1.1B), Instagram (1.35B) and YouTube (2.7B):

Source: Statista; 2023

To be clear, these are monthly active users. People opening those apps at least once a month…minimum!

So if you’re still hesitant or video is only a small proportion of your marketing strategy, now’s the time to change that.

Here are three great tools to level up your video content with minimal effort and maximum result.

📌 Create Videos Like You’re Genz

Let’s cut straight to the chase, what you need is CapCut.

If you haven’t heard of CapCut, or thought it was just for kids to edit their dance videos on, you would be verrrry mistaken.

This is video editing made simple, but with some powerful features.

Whether you want to edit on your mobile device, desktop/ laptop or even using their online editor - CapCut gets you there.

With some incredible tools built in, CapCut is putting other more inaccessible editing software to shame.

Here’s a few things it can help you do:

• Edit video of course

• Add text to video by choosing from varied templates to retain customer attention, highlight key actions, or boost brand identity

• Use AI to automatically generate subtitles with near-perfect accuracy to make your video more accessible and compelling

• Auto-transcribe video into text in different languages to make your video more searchable, accessible, and engaging

• Remove the background from your video without needing a professional software

• Resize your video for different platforms in 1 click

Best of all? It’s free to use.

Just to give you a sense of what’s possible, here’s an outline of the tools they have available.

I would be very surprised if what you wanted wasn’t on that list.

Get this tool into the hands of your team and see what they come up with. If you only create one video a month, that’s still a lot of eyeballs on your product or service.

📌 Make Sure To Be Heard With Great Quality Audio In 1 Click

You’ve nailed the video, but your subject matter expert has recorded their audio in what seems to be a wind tunnel, or they’ve somehow got their finger over the microphone.

What do you do? Bin the whole project because asking them to re-record it would be like pulling teeth?

I will be honest with you here - there is no substitute for great audio. If I can’t hear what you’re saying, you’ve lost me.

But don’t worry some clever people over at Adobe Podcast have built a great solution. It’s their ‘Enhance’ tool.

And I’m not kidding when I say it makes voice recordings sound as if they were recorded in a professional studio.

All you need to do is

1. Upload your audio clip

2. Press enhance

3. Bask in glory (download the fixed audio file)

There have been a number of times where I have had to work with poor quality audio, and yet this tool has fixed it EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

To help this not actually happen in the first place, they even have a ‘mic check’ tool, which will evaluate whether you are close enough to the microphone, background noise and echo.

Now you have no excuse not to produce great video with superior quality audio.

But maybe you’re asking how do I pull this all together into one cohesive project…

📌 With The Right Tool Planning And Briefing Your Content Is Easy

It’s possible you’ve heard of Notion, it’s like Google Sheets but on steroids.

It’s a collaborative space for you and your team to plan your project, manage it, and track progress. This is where strategy really comes alive, because you can see it become manifest.

If you’re somebody who wants to leave the video making to your team and planning is more your thing, then this is the tool for you.

Nobody actually starts their career imagining they’ll spend most of it hunting through emails for a Word doc or PDF. And it doesn’t have to be like that.

I feel more like the pied-piper when I’m using Notion to manage my projects. So far it’s helped me to:

• Keep on top of my meeting notes

• Organise my task list and share it with the team

• Plan and manage campaign launch calendars

• Share project documents

As a general rule, I am an organised person, but there are times when I have documents, emails, notes and other items saved in multiple folders and even across devices.

Tools like these help me stay in control and not lose track, even after the much needed upcoming summer holiday break.

And now Notion comes with AI, but I will save that for another day.

⏸️ Let’s Pause

For just for a moment.

All these tools can seem daunting at first. I don’t want your day to be consumed by a never ending process of trying new tools. But I do recommend just opening them up and begin experimenting.

On average, I would say that 60 percent of a marketer's job is test and learn. We know what work’s and that becomes part of the day-to-day process.

A good CMO doesn’t set the strategy and maybe re-visit it 12 months down the line. Trends happen in our line of work and being prepared to take advantage of them is part of the course. So if you’re already semi-familiar with the tools to make it happen, you’re ahead of the competition.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with new tools even if their use isn’t apparent today, it might be by tomorrow.

📌 Social Media Update

Ordinarily in this section I provide a short update on a noteworthy announcement from the world of social media.

However I wanted to put the below video in front of you as some of the insights shared come from Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram.

Whilst the entire interview is worth your time, I will draw your attention to the 30 minute mark where they do a 'Deep Dive on Instagram Reels'. If you want to understand the consumer behaviours which Instagram deems important, check it out.

Maybe these insights will help inform how you plan your Instagram Reels strategy.