If you’re passionate about something — truly, deeply, wildly passionate — then you’re fortunate. Some people go through their entire lives without ever feeling such extreme enthusiasm about anything at all. That passion enriches your existence: it gives you motivation to continue, to see what’s next, to experience new things. It inspires you.
Well-established businesses are often rich with this kind of passion. That level of success doesn’t emerge from nowhere, after all. It’s the product of drive and ability. Over time, though, it can recede, merely acting as a supportive element in the background — keeping spirits high when the pressure is on, but otherwise going unmentioned.
This is a real waste of potential. If you’re part of such a business, there’s a huge amount of value in finding ways to strengthen your video monetization strategy and use it to fuel the next stage of growth. In this article, we’re going to look at one of the most popular and effective ways to translate passion into profit: making video. Let’s get started:
Research your target audience
Regardless of how exactly you end up using your videos, the target audience is going to be the same group of people you seek to impress with your regular marketing — but you need fresh research for this project. Tastes vary, sometimes in unexpected ways, and you shouldn’t be making assumptions about what people will enjoy. Instead, look at what they’re already enjoying, see what your competitors are doing, and use that information to your benefit.
For instance, you might check out some relevant influencers on Twitter and discover that they regularly share corporate behind-the-scenes videos. Perhaps they’re invested in business transparency and like to see brands humanized. If so, you would do well to try making that sort of video: you’d still have plenty of room to get creative, just within a format you had every reason to think would prove appealing.
You’re ultimately looking for stories you can tell that will resonate with people. The story of a prospective customer discovering your product, or of how your company came into existence — anything can be workable if you can get the passion to come through.
Consider monetization options
How does a video benefit you monetarily? The most obvious and old-fashioned answer is that it directly promotes your brand and your products, leading to more awareness and conversions. That isn’t the only way to profit, though. There are various monetization options (particularly if you use a foundation like YouTube) that can work for you. Let’s look at just some of them:
- Bring in ad revenue. YouTube advertising may not be as lucrative as it was in previous years, but it’s still an easy way to bring in some extra money for your video monetization strategy if you’ll allow it on your videos. The best part is that you don’t really have to do anything.
- Licence stock footage. To save time, plenty of businesses will pay for stock footage to pad out their presentations. If you can produce some high-quality videos with generic applications — and you may well be able to make some from leftover footage — then you might as well list them on stock video sites.
- Get sponsorships. If your videos start getting a fair few hits, you’ll get some interest from people interested in working with you. This can involve anything from talking about a brand in your videos to simply featuring its products in the background.
- Sell video courses. Since you’re making videos on a topic (or topics) that you’re passionate about, you likely have expertise to offer, so why not make some videos to be entirely monetized? You could create a course of videos giving out useful advice, and charge people for access to it.
- Allow donations. Sure, people aren’t generally very inclined to donate to profit-driven organizations, but it can happen if you make it more like a tip process. Someone who’s watching and enjoying your videos might be happy to donate a couple of dollars to help you keep making them, for instance.
Start with a video production platform
In the long run, if everything exceeded your expectations and you had budget to spare, you might want to establish a full video-production team — but that’s hardly realistic at this point. So how do you get started with the process of creating videos? Well, you use an intuitive platform like Wibbitz. With easy functions, templates and resources, you can get people with no video production skills involved in the process.
You need to look at it as a learning experience, also. Having great tools is a boon, but it’s how you use them that really matters in the end, so focus on iteration. Create some videos, see how they work, and glean insight from the successes and failures alike. Remember that your ultimate goal is to achieve an excellent level of quality. There are many videos out there, and most of them are mediocre — which is where your passion becomes key.
Watch every video back to answer one question: does it reflect your enthusiasm and skill for the covered topic? If it doesn’t, then rework it or scrap it entirely. Just one video that truly shows passion is more valuable than a hundred videos that don’t.
Overall, then, there are three major steps you must take to being successful with video: know the audience you’re trying to reach, come up with a strong monetization plan, and use the right tool to handle the production process. In the end, though, none of them will matter if you don’t manage to convey your enthusiasm, so focus on that above everything else — and if you enjoy making videos, that will show in the results.