This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing consultant for pre shipment inspection companies located around the globe, and who also consults for a psd to html conversion company. 

The costs of making high quality video content have plummeted in the last ten years. Where once only large companies or extremely wealthy individuals could afford the equipment to do more than make home movies, now, a professional setup including cameras, lighting, editing software and even computer can be easily obtained for under $5,000.

This, in turn, has opened up a whole world of opportunity for video marketing by small businesses, making it possible for them to communicate with potential customers in a way previously impossible.

Best of all, with the rise of social media and video sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo, getting those videos online is not only easy but free as well.

But if you’re looking to capitalize on this new frontier, there is a lot of things to consider and be aware of before getting started. After all, video marketing, as easy as it is, isn’t as simple as pointing a camera at yourself and hitting record.

There are many things to be aware of before you get started.

1. Get the Right Equipment

Getting good equipment isn’t expensive, but it is important that you do so. A solid DSLR camera with video capability, some decent audio equipment, lighting, backdrops (including greenscreen) and editing software are important.

Most of these things can either be bought in camera stores or online. But if you don’t know what you need do your research first or ask for help. Getting the wrong thing can be an expensive mistake both financially and from a time standpoint.

2. Pick Your Outlets

You then need to pick which outlets, including video sharing and social media sites you want to post your videos to. Pick the sites that both have the community you want to reach and can best help you build your web presence.

Take the time not only to learn their communities and how the sites work, but also the technical specs for each site you plan to publish on. Different video sharing sites prefer videos at different resolutions, frame rates, audio quality, etc. Uploading the wrong type of content can cause serious problems.

Always record your video at the highest rate you can do so reliably as you can always downgrade it as necessary.

3. Focus on Short, Easy Videos

Try to keep your videos short, under five minutes is best, and focus on only one or two points at a time. You can always create other videos later to cover different topics.

When choosing what to put in your videos, focus on content that is simple to shoot and edit. Videos that require a lot of cuts and transitions take a lot of time and opens up more room for error. Keep it simple and watch as your professionalism rises and your turnaround time falls the easier you make things on yourself.

For simple video ideas, demos are always excellent as they can effectively show what a product or service does. Also, Q&A sessions are easy to do and can be very informative.

4. Don’t Forget Your Call to Action

Never forget what your videos are about: Promoting your company and making you more money.

Every video you put out should have a call to action, whether it’s to buy a product, visit your site, subscribe to your newsletter or follow you on Facebook. At the end of every video you should be answering the question “What should I do next?” for the viewer.

With YouTube, you can also use annotations to encourage people to subscribe to your channel or view a related clip.

But even without annotations, you can back up your call to action with links in the description and additional information in the video itself.

5. Track Your Metrics and Respond

Once the vidoes are online, it’s important to get organized and keep a close tab on how many views your videos get, where those viewers are coming from and how many of those viewers become customers.

One easy way to help with this is offer a special URL in your videos for viewers to go to for a discount or a special offer. You’ll be able to track who visits that URL and how many of them convert.

However, even without using such tricks, most video sharing sites build in a great number of viewer metrics by default. In YouTube’s case, this includes view count, new subscribers, how viewers discovered the video, viewer gender and audience geography.

All in all, video marketing is much more approachable than it was just a few years ago. It’s cheaper, easier and more effective than ever. However, it is still a fair amount of work and it still requires focus and discipline.

However, it’s important to note that video marketing is not a magic cure-all for your promotion problems. Think of the videos much like you would physical signs for your company, they’re designed to let people know you are there and what you do, but they can’t change what happens after the customer is in the front door.

Still, properly integrated video marketing can be a powerful tool for any small business and one that can attract a lot of new customers and significantly raise the bottom line.