My background is strategic marketing with private schools, however, many of these ideas can be applied to any other industry. Overall, video should be a major part of your marketing plan and content strategy. Here are five tips to help you effectively include video in your marketing mix and get the biggest bang for your investment.

  1. First Thing’s First: Develop an Overall Marketing Plan – Your marketing and communications strategy should identify your
    1) key messages
    2) programs of significance
    3) main communications vehicles
    4) audiences, and
    5) institutional/organizational/business goals.Any videos you produce should support and be a part of this overall plan. Before you spend a significant amount of your budget and time on producing a fancy video, take some time to work on your overall communications and marketing strategy/plan (if you do not already have one in writing and not just in your head).
  2. Be Fiscally Responsible: Put Video in Your Budget
    Video should play an important role in your marketing plan – and it should be built into your budget just like your other annual expenses. Get creative about slashing old and ineffective marketing expenses. You can also work with other departments to share content and help you cover the cost of video production.
  3. The (Social) Medium is the Message
    How you share your videos depends on the content, intended audience, and goal of each video. For example, if you work at an independent school, a donor thank-you video might be the perfect thing to share with your parent and alumni communities via an email and your Facebook Page, but you would not want to boost or promote it to a wider audience via social media advertising, or post it on your homepage. That being said, you should share your videos in as many sensible ways as possible (just like your other content).
  4. Give Your Videos a Long Life (AKA Get Your Money’s Worth)
    Even though you produced those videos about Upper School last year and even though they live in the Admissions section of your website, think about how you will actively share them with prospective families this year, too—as a promoted Facebook post highlighting the upcoming Open House, on your homepage, or somewhere else on your website. You can create alternate versions of the video with a slide at the end that can be updated with upcoming event details.
  5. Develop a Relationship & A Library of Footage
    It pays to develop a relationship with a video production firm that you like. Work with them every year. You will compile a valuable library of footage that will make future video production cheaper and better. The firm will also get to know your school, which means that you won’t have to spend as much of your own time involved in the production process.