Online videos are rapidly becoming the number one method of communication. Our culture rapidly is becoming more and more visual with shorter attention spans. 78% of people watch online videos every week, and 55% view online videos every day. (Hubspot).
Blogs have become Vlogs and Live Streams. Funny photos have become gifs. The public wants to watch images in motion more than anything else.
So how do you make video work for your event?
Your main job with the video is to attract and excite potential attendees so that they will come to your event. Your secondary job is to make sure they know what to expect when they get there. Brainstorm a list of the best parts of your event that you can highlight on film. What would make your target market most excited to buy tickets?
When you create a video to market your event, you want to use it to show your potential attendees what they can expect. Here are some options you can consider for making a video to advertise your event even if you’re not a film artist:
- Slideshows – You can create a PowerPoint of images that are from, about, similar to or relating to your event along with textual information (date, time, place, etc.), set it to automatic timing and save it as a video. This is as simple as video production gets, but it still provides content that stands out more than your poster will by itself and you can share it all across social media.
Avatar of user Nguyễn Lê Hoài Châu Nguyễn Lê Hoài Châu @chauhoai Photo by Nguyễn Lê Hoài Châun via Unsplash. - Make a video on your phone. Almost every phone comes with the capability to capture video content and the cameras themselves are becoming higher quality with every version that comes out.Take a tour of your event space, take a clip of your performers practicing, have your CEO personally invite people on video – but grab your phone and create content!
- Don’t get set on making a 1-minute commercial. It doesn’t even have to be a single video. You can release different clips of different aspects of your event to your attendees as you get closer to the event.You can put out mini videos with topics such as: “Today we’re doing the catering samples, doesn’t this look delicious…”; “We’re almost sold out so buy now”, “The trophies for the tournament have arrived”
Use your previous events! If you took footage at last year’s events – it could be a live feed of the event, it could be testimonials, it could be clips of special moments – use it to show people how fantastic last year was to get them pumped up about this year.
You can even show dissimilar events by saying “We brought you the raging waterslide event….we created this event last year that you loved, so get psyched up for this year’s party…”. Use the past to motivate the future. Make sure you get film at this event that you can use for next event!
- You can record your webcam footage with programs like Debut. Do interviews of attendees, sponsors, volunteers, entertainment or anyone else who’s involved in the event. Have employees talk about what part of the event they’re working on and how it’s coming together.
- Use programs like Windows Video Editor and Adobe Spark to put your clips together. They’re fairly simple to use but you can still create a reasonably polished video for your attendees.
Social media posts with video have 48% more views. (Hubspot)
Obviously, in an ideal world, you’d higher a video company to film and edit your video for you so that it would be as professional as possible. But if the budget doesn’t allow for that, you can still be creative and find ways to create video content that excited and attracts your target market to get them saying “There’s no way I’m missing that!”.