In the middle of a pandemic it is perhaps the right time to ask your nearest creative content agency this question: What types of cost-effective creative content can you create right now?
QUESTION: If you start building bridge and one day you run out of money, and you need to get across the bridge to survive…what do you do?
The coronavirus pandemic has hit most business very hard, there are a few types of business thriving but most are struggling. This means that many businesses have to cancel planned events and content campaigns. So what can you do to change your creative strategy to fit with the current climate?
Some businesses, especially charities are having to solely focus on coronavirus specific content. But what type of content can you produce at a cut price and still stay remain creative? Well firstly we’d suggest talking to a creative content agency, like us at Beast. As an award-winning London creative content agency would take a look at your business and be able to let you know what content to produce and even make it so you can focus all your time into your business. You will always be able to have free consultation and possibly even receive some free creative in order to be competitive and win your business. But if you want to keep your video content production in house, what can you do? Here are our suggestions for your creative content strategy:
- Use user generated content
- Valuable written content
- Illustrate stories for a personal touch
- Use graphics to further your points
- Diamonds in the rough with stock and archive footage
cost-effective creative content
Use user generated creative content
Firstly we would recommend using user generated content, the content is pretty much already made for you, so you save yourself a lot of time. Using content created by your users or fans is a great way to boost engagement and rapport with your users, especially on social media, people love it when their post is shared by their favourite brand so there’s really no negatives to it. But what could you post, well most content production agencies would tell you that reposting fan pictures with your products is a great start. You also reduce the risk of content fatigue because once you start you start reposting users content you’ll find fans becoming more active in your community to try and get featured which is a win win for your brand.
Valuable written creative content
Every business needs a blog, it’s a great way to provide value to potential clients and also show that you’re experts in your respective field, it’s also incredibly cost effective. You can hire a creative content agency to write it for you. Or you can write it yourself if you know what to do. But figuring out what to write about can be a challenge. If you were to ask a content agency they would most likely tell you to write about the benefits of your services or products or provide an insight into your business and what can work for other businesses. A few great examples of blogs that you can take a look at for inspiration are, the Beast Blog (of course) or Hubspot’s blog, as they both provide valuable insight into the life of a London Production Company and also provide tips to help with your businesses marketing.
Illustrate stories for a personal touch
We covered this slightly before in a previous article but including some form of illustration in your marketing strategy is a great way to present things with a personal touch, one thing it looks great with is when presenting a story, it allows you to illustrate your story in your own way, allowing you to add a personal touch. This is probably one of the most costly ways to add to your marketing as hiring an illustrator to create a video for you will be pricey, also once you take into account adding a voiceover to the video the cost can add up. You can negate some of the costs by doing the voiceover yourself, however its best to leave it the professionals. If you talk to a content agency they should be able to provide the whole video in a package deal which should reduce your costs.
Use motion graphics to further prove your points
Graphics are an incredibly underrated part of business, ask anyone at a creative agency and they will say having high quality graphics is a great way to make a positive first impression with a potential client. Adding them into a video can make a video look ten times better. Graphics in video are a great way to put your point across is a simple and visually pleasing way, a video that does well on this is a video from Slidebean: Startups 101 who go through the story of Zoom and how it overcame skype during the coronavirus pandemic. They use graphic overlays to show some numbers which relate to their various points, it’s a simple choice that works well to really get their point across. Again this is a really cheap way to improve your content as you can use Canva if you would like to make them yourself, however we would recommend either talking to a creative content agency and getting them to design it or get a solo freelancer to do it, as in most cases they would have more knowledge of what looks good etc.
Find diamonds in the rough with stock footage
If you don’t have the money or time to go and film your own creative content, why not consider using stock footage to create a video. It can be very cost effective as you can find plenty of free footage on the internet for you to use, or even if you do pay, it’s very affordable. Sites like Shutterstock have a massive library of videos that you can use in your videos. But how would you use them. Well it’s quite simple, you would need to firstly find footage that suites your brand, which shouldn’t be too hard as there are thousands upon thousands of videos that span many industries, if you are finding hard however perhaps get into contact with someone at a creative content agency, as they would have the know-how with stock footage and could find good content to use on your video. It’s also worthwhile to note that you should make sure the footage you choose fits the theme of the video you’re going for, again if you are working with a digital content agency then this shouldn’t be issue, as they would guide you in the right direction. But once you have that all you really need is a voiceover, which again as we mentioned in a previous point, could either be done by yourself, or by someone provided by a content agency. A current example of a campaign that uses stock footage would be the UK governments coronavirus campaign videos, while it’s not technically a marketing campaign it still uses stock footage to its advantage, they use stock footage to add some context to videos and to show people how certain things are done, such as washing your hands or keeping a distance, they also use it to show general life. Now they don’t just use stock footage as they also use footage taken from people who filmed various events, like the clap for the NHS. One final point to make would be while in the current climate using solely stock footage is a great way to create a video, it would never replace a bespoke video created by creative content agencies in London, UK like Beast, as it’s a unique high quality video created especially for your brand
So in conclusions there’s just a few ideas for cost effective content, that we ourselves use at Beast, in fact ask any creative content agency and they’ll say the same thing. Is there anything you would add? Let us know!
Answer: Give away part of your bridge and get some help to build it.