5 Tools for Creating SMB Video Promotions

As small business marketers search for new ways to capture the attention of potential customers, they’re beginning to take a closer look at online video promotions. Cheaper than TV advertising and more eye-catching than static banner ads, video promotions have been growing in popularity over the past few years.

Digital video ad spending is expected to attract $5.72 billion this year, up from just $2 billion in 2011. Online videos tend to have a higher impact than TV ads, according to research by Nielsen, and they’re certainly much cheaper to promote. The real challenge for SMBs is finding ways to create the types of localized online marketing videos that their potential customers are actually likely to watch.

Here are five tools that SMBs can use to create localized video promotions for online consumption.

1. Sightly: Leverage local video advertising.
A partner of Google and YouTube, Sightly has developed a video platform for local businesses that are interested in getting discovered by customers on their smartphones. Using Sightly, merchants can create short promo videos that provide customers with a way to see inside their stores. Sightly inserts localized content into these video ads and enables them for viewing on multiple ad networks and screen sizes. The company also offers TargetView, a new product that allows SMB marketing teams to deliver localized video content on Google Display, YouTube, and social media, with ads that cater to the real-time location of customers using IP and GPS information.

2. Animoto: Drive website traffic with professional-quality videos.
Animoto is a video creation service that gives merchants a straightforward way to produce professional-quality videos for both online and mobile consumption. Animoto users upload their own pictures and video clips, choose a “style,” and add any text or music. The company then turns those elements into professional videos that businesses can add to their websites, email campaigns, and social media posts. By including a call-to-action at the end of each video, businesses can direct viewers to their websites. Videos are accessible on desktops, smartphones, and tablets, and they can be developed to include custom branding elements.

3. Dex Media: Impress customers with a personal pitch.
A full-service media company for small and medium-size businesses, Dex Media provides its clients with the ability to create custom videos. Dex creates its videos with the help of its own filmmakers and production teams, who work with merchants to create 60-second videos that highlight their products, services, and staff. Businesses can distribute their own videos on their websites using an embeddable player provided by Dex, or they can rely on the vendor to distribute their videos to “high-traffic sites” that include YouTube, Superpages.com, DexKnows.com, and the Advertising.com network.

4. SpotMixer: Create video ads to run online.
SpotMixer provides businesses with DIY tools to create video ads to run online or on TV. Small and mid-size businesses that use SpotMixer’s platform to make their own online video ads can select from 200+ video templates and then add custom effects like images and video clips. Once a video has been created, SpotMixer handles the distribution. Merchants define their target audiences and set maximum daily budgets, and SpotMixer matches their online ads up with sites across its ad network. Video ads are played as pre-roll, mid-roll, or click-to-play ads, and businesses are able to monitor the results with SpotMixer’s online reports. SpotMixer provides video downloads and video hosting services, as well.

5. Moovd: Quickly create moving-text marketing videos.
Moovd is a video-making tool for businesses. Rather than shooting video with expensive cameras and editing the footage with online tools, Moovd provides merchants with a way to create videos from basic written scripts. The text that a business writes (up to 400 characters) is animated and turned into a moving-text video. Moovd videos can include whichever music, logos, themes, and calls-to-action a business selects. Aimed at SMBs/SMEs, Moovd provides businesses with professional quality videos that they can use for online advertising or digital signage.

Know of other platforms that businesses can use to create video promotions? Leave a description in the comments.

Stephanie Miles is a senior editor at Street Fight.