When was the last time you participated in an audio-only meeting? Unless someone is sick, their background is a total disaster, or they’re having a bad hair day (code for being hungover), it’s probably been a while.
Almost every meeting we do today is a video call, and that’s all because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We had to rapidly adapt to a remote working environment and suddenly become accustomed to running the day-to-day business through video.
Growth marketers had to get crafty. And so, remote video production began to take off.
When you think of remote videos, your mind goes straight to those crap-quality recorded Zoom calls marketers were publishing all over YouTube and social in the early days of the pandemic.
Look, at the time it sorta-kinda worked…but only as a temporary solution.
Remote video production has evolved. Now you’re able to produce high-quality marketing videos from anywhere. If your team is still recording marketing videos on Zoom/Microsoft Teams/Google Meet or trying to use smartphones by themselves, allow us to show you a better way.
What Is Remote Video Production?
Remote video production is the end-to-end process of creating high-quality video content when the production crew and on-camera talent are in different physical locations.
Remote video production allows you to produce professional marketing videos from anywhere in the world using just a webcam or a smartphone. A video marketing team directs the entire shoot using remote video recording software to capture the best footage possible without being in the same room.
It’s a flexible, cost-effective, and scalable solution for driving your growth marketing initiatives and meeting your audience’s growing demand for video content.
Here’s what a typical remote process looks like when you’re working with a video marketing team:
- Before the recording session, the video marketing team will test equipment, optimize the recording platform, and fine-tune lighting, framing, and sound to ensure the on-camera talent looks and sounds great.
- During the recording session, they’ll closely monitor the script—or ask questions and deliver talking points for unscripted videos. They’ll also provide feedback to help on-camera talent capture the best takes.
- After the recording session, they’ll make edit decisions and skillfully edit clips together to create cohesive and visually appealing video content with the footage that was captured remotely.
The Benefits of Producing Remote Marketing Videos
Organizations that leverage video experience significant ROI and business growth. Video is a must for any growth marketing strategy, and it’s easier than ever to pull off.
While traditional on-location video production will always have its rightful place in a video marketing strategy, sometimes these half-day or day-long shoots with an entire production crew aren’t possible or necessary.
Remote video production gives you all of the value of a professional, on-location shoot but with more flexibility.
Convenience and Cost
More organizations than ever before have remote or hybrid workforces. With teams situated all over the place, it’s difficult to get everyone in the same location for a video shoot. The effort needed to coordinate scheduling and travel causes a bit of a barrier.
With remote video production, you eliminate the logistics and costs of an on-location shoot—booking travel arrangements for your team and the entire production crew and booking a suitable venue for the shoot.
No matter how scattered your team is, a remote shoot is much easier to coordinate. And, because location doesn’t matter, you’ll be able to tap into a much bigger talent pool of video marketing experts to run your remote shoot.
Comfort and Ease
Let’s face it, sitting in front of a professional crew, formidable camera equipment, and blinding lights is a lot to deal with. This is especially true if your team isn’t used to being on camera.
Remote video production allows them to record videos from the comfort of their own home.
Even though a couple of video marketing experts will be on-screen directing them, there’s significantly less pressure than that feeling of being center-stage for an on-location shoot. This extra and important layer of comfort helps people act more like themselves on camera and deliver lines or riff on talking points with greater ease.
Fast and Scalable
Things move fast in the business world, and even faster for growth marketers. Very often you need to go from video topic idea to post-production in a ridiculously short time frame to get content out the door.
You’ll enjoy a faster turnaround time with remote video production, which is mission-critical when you have timely topics to cover. If an exciting trend is taking shape or a new product feature is announced, you’re able to immediately jump into production with your video marketing team.
Scalability is another remote video bonus.
You may only have enough budget for one big on-location video shoot per year, which limits the amount and types of marketing videos you can produce. Remote video production allows you to pepper in additional videos and extend this strategy across different mediums, including social media, email, landing pages, and YouTube.
The Best Types of Marketing Videos to Produce Remotely
As amazing as remote video production video is, that doesn’t mean that every type of marketing video is right for this production method.
Like, the “What You Do” video in the home page banner. Leave that one for an on-location shoot to ensure you have the highest-quality video possible to represent your brand in the best way possible.
But plenty of videos work well for remote video production, whether it’s due to the video format, timeliness considerations, or scheduling limitations.
Testimonials
Testimonials are some of the most valuable videos that you can produce, but they’re also some of the most difficult to capture.
It’s a big ask to get your customers to do an on-location shoot. When you record remotely, the ask is much smaller. All they need to do is tidy up their background and record with their webcam or smartphone. And again, since everyone is used to video meetings, this remote recording setup is cozy and familiar for your customers.
Testimonial videos are relatively simple to record remotely but extremely impactful to share. A 30-minute customer experience interview can be transformed into a powerful video that is then repurposed into a variety of content and shared across multiple marketing channels.
Here’s an example of one of our Superneat testimonials that we recorded remotely with multiple clients…
Podcasts
Podcasts are only growing in popularity for growth marketers. As with testimonial videos that involve your customers, scheduling on-location shoots with podcast guests isn’t ideal.
For one, you don’t want to be limited to guests who are local or a short flight away. The best podcasts bring on expert guests from a much broader global community. Unless you’re a celebrity podcast host, you’re probably not flying in guests from another state or country just to record one episode.
Because there are 4.7 million podcasts in the wild, leveraging the networks of high-caliber guests from around the world is critical for building your community and expanding audience reach. Producing podcasts remotely makes it much more probable that the guests you want on the show will say “yes.”
Thought Leadership
Many growth marketers do ample thought leadership on their blogs, but they’re missing the boat with creating videos that can be distributed on the blog and far beyond.
Thought leadership videos are the perfect medium for sharing your team’s experience and expertise. These videos feel more human and interactive than written content, so they are more effective at capturing and holding someone’s attention.
The “fast and scalable” benefit mentioned earlier is why producing thought leadership videos remotely makes a lot of sense. You need to constantly create high-quality thought leadership and you want to be able to tackle timely topics—not just evergreen topics. Remote video production gives you the flexibility to move quickly and scale content.
Demos
Demo videos are perfect for remote video production since they are walkthroughs with screen recordings. All you need to make this marketing video shine is an intro and conclusion, along with a small talking head in the corner and some occasional full-screen talking head moments.
These product demo videos are highly valuable not only as a part of your growth marketing strategy but also for sales enablement. The best part? You probably have a lot of existing demo footage to spin into demo videos. With some light scripting for a voice recording and a little editing magic, you can produce a useful demo video with minimal effort.
It’s a Neat Video Marketing Approach That Allows You to Scale
What emerged as a temporary solution during the pandemic has become an innovative approach to video marketing.
Remote video production transcends geographical limitations and optimizes resources. It offers an unbeatably comfortable environment for on-camera talent so they can give a stellar performance. This recording environment will only help create more authentic and engaging video content that your audience will love.
Maybe you were unsure what remote video production was all about before, but now you know why it’s such an indispensable solution for growth marketers. If you’re trying to be more agile and effective with your video marketing efforts, remote video production is the best way to achieve these goals.
