Video marketing is an important part of any company’s marketing strategy. People are digitally savvy and expect businesses to produce digital content, especially video.
But when it comes to creating video, there are enough tools on the market to make your head spin — and each one does a little something different. To help you home in on a few good picks, we’re covering several video marketing tools that you can start using today.
Top video marketing tools
Lumen5
Powtoon
PremiumBeat
Words to Time
Slidely
VideoScribe
Vidyard
Lumen5 is AI-powered, cloud-based video creation software. You can use its drag-and-drop interface to create videos without extensive knowledge of video editing. Anna Caldwell, content manager at The Loop Marketing, uses Lumen5 for promoting blog content, events, and products and services.
Caldwell says the software is user-friendly and comes with style presets for quickly building professional videos. The tool is best for short videos ranging from 30 seconds to 90 seconds. The platform boasts plenty of stock video, but you can, of course, upload your own videos and images as needed.
“You can easily adjust video sizes and formats, and upload content from web pages or blog posts by entering the URL into the video builder,” Caldwell says.
On the downside, Caldwell notes that video transitions in Lumen5 are “a bit clumsy.” You can’t overlap background music with audio from the video, so it’s not ideal for vloggers who want to cut interview footage together or line up audio with video in a precise way.
In addition, the drag-and-drop interface, while simplifying some tasks, also has limitations. You’re limited to the preset layout of the theme when positioning images and text.
If you’re interested in creating animations, Powtoon could fit the bill. Bruce Hogan, CEO of SoftwarePundit, recommends Powtoon as an affordable, easy-to-use animated video maker that can be used to create basic explainer videos, marketing videos, presentations, and video ads.
“You can use their templates to create pretty much any type of video in less than 30 minutes,” Hogan says. “Simply pick a template, and then adapt each field for your business and product.”
If your video needs music, PremiumBeat is another of Hogan’s recommendations. A Shutterstock company, PremiumBeat features a large library of royalty-free music that’s organized into collections like “Snowy Vistas” and “Radio Ready Jams,” genres such as jazz and reggae, and moods like uplifting and suspenseful. “It’s great not having to worry about paying ongoing royalties,” he says.
Hogan calls out the best feature of the platform: the ability to browse by genre, mood, beats per minute (BPM), duration, and instrument. “This allows you to quickly find the best music for your video based on the musical elements you care most about.”
Hogan also recommends Words to Time, a simple and free tool that saves a significant amount of time when creating scripted videos. After you’ve written your script, enter the number of words into the tool, and it will tell you how long the script would take to read.
“With Words to Time, you don’t have to worry about manually timing your script over and over. You can add or remove from the script, reenter the new word count, and immediately know how much time you added or shaved off,” Hogan says.
Adam Hempenstall, CEO of Better Proposals, recommends Slidely for the easy creation of visual content. “It’s the ideal video marketing tool for lazy marketers. You can load up a bunch of images from your phone or laptop, throw some music in the background, and you have yourself a quick video.”
The perfect use case for Slidely? Hempenstall says this tool isn’t meant for lengthy, perfectly edited videos — it’s great for adding some spice to short-life content. “If you want to avoid spending hours in an advanced video editor just to post a cool social media post, use Slidely instead.”
If you’re looking to create whiteboard-style videos, VideoScribe video marketing software should be right up your alley. Hempenstall notes that these types of videos tend to be popular, but hiring someone to create them for you can be expensive. “This tool may not replace a crew of 10 motion designers, but it gets the job done really well — at an affordable price.”
“Vidyard is a video marketing tool you should use to host your videos to have maximum control of all your marketing stats,” says Hempenstall. Vidyard lets you see the time viewers spend on your videos, the point where they stop watching, the most viewed sections, and other useful stats. “The best part is that you can insert CTAs directly into videos, which helps increase conversion rates.”
Want the complete rundown on video marketing? Check out this complete guide we created on the topic.
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