If your brand isn’t using video for marketing yet, it’s definitely time to get on top of the trend. As much as 60% of businesses are now using video as a marketing tool, and 50% of marketers who use video have been doing so for at least a year. Some brands are putting out videos several times a week, and a few are even putting new ones out daily.
Video content can help you do everything from raise awareness and engage with your audience to build trust and drive sales. And while you can post video to platforms like Instagram and Facebook, YouTube has the best ROI.
Knowing you need a presence on YouTube is only part of the battle, though. Actually being able to create video content is tough, especially if you don’t have an in-house team at the ready. (P.S. You’re not alone there – 17% of marketers have to completely outsource video creation, and nearly half of marketers use some sort of software or tool for making videos. Few people are bona fide videographers!) Luckily, these six tools and services will help you stay competitive.
Kaizen Ad
If you already have existing photo and video content that you need converted into ads for YouTube, Kaizen Ad can help. Bonus: Their ads are optimized for mobile, so you won’t be excluding that entire segment of viewers.
Instead of using templates, actual designers will take your collateral and turn it into YouTube video ads. In less than a week, you can have multi-format ads at your fingertips, ready to run on YouTube. And if you don’t like what you see at first, you can ask for up to two rounds of modifications.
The process is simple. You’ll explain what you want to a Customer Success Manager, and then a creative brief will be created. Creative professionals, called Optimizers, are assigned to your brief based on their background, and in one week, you’ll receive the video and submit any modification requests to the Optimizers.
Tongal
With Tongal, you can connect with other Creators to share your ideas and get inspired. Who are the Creators in the community? They’re animators, editors, directors and writers – basically, every type of talent you need to create compelling video content for YouTube (and other social media sites, like Instagram, too).
By subscribing to Tongal, you’ll have unlimited access to a creative team, plus online tools to improve your workflow. After letting Tongal know your most urgent creative need (for example, maybe you need an animator for a video), they’ll create a brief for the community. Then, creatives will pitch you their vision by doing something like submitting a treatment or showing you a relevant piece from their portfolio. You can greenlight the creator(s) you like best.
Genero
Genero is aimed at marketers and marketing teams, offering a Professional creative network, a software platform and efficient workflow tools. Genero helps you scale your creative resources without hiring more in-house personnel or increasing your overhead by too much, and their efficient management tools let you oversee the entire process, from the brief to production.
The creatives who are part of Genero are located around the world and are proficient in creative, marketing and/or production. Like with Tongal, you’ll upload your creative brief to Genero and receive pitches, which you can choose based on the one(s) you like best. Your in-house team can then work with those you’ve partnered with through Genero to create the most compelling YouTube content you’ve put out yet.
Thanks to platform partnerships with YouTube and other social and streaming brands, your videos will always follow the necessary best practices, too.
SmartShoot
If you know that you need to create YouTube content but you don’t have an in-house or freelance photographer and/or videographer to depend on, SmartShoot may be the solution you’re looking for. You can get customized images and videos created specifically for your brand and with your guidelines in mind.
Through SmartShoot, you can connect with photographers and filmmakers around the world. And the content you receive is scalable, too – web-based tools mean you can collaborate, monitor, edit and download everything, and you’ll also be able to keep it safe with cloud storage.
With SmartShoot, you actually have two options. The first is to use their service to handle the entire photo and/or video creation process for you. The second is to use their tools with your own photographers or videographers.
VidMob
VidMob helps you create better ads so that your budget can go further and you can get better results. What VidMob has that other platforms don’t have (or that they at least don’t put front and center) are excellent monitoring tools. You’ll be able to check your creative health score to see how your own ads are performing and how you compare to the competition. You can then use those insights to change ads that are mid-campaign to quickly improve the results.
The Agile Creative Studio is where your best recommendations will live. You’ll be able to get actionable insights that give you suggestions for improving your ads in the moment and get the boost you want right away.
Creadits
Access creative talent from around the world with Creadits. Their strategists, directors and producers will take your concept and turn it into a YouTube ad that will deliver results. The best part is that Creadits has some of the most well-rounded teams of any service on this list. They go far beyond photographers and videographers to bring you professionals experienced in:
- 3D animation
- Cinematics
- Concept art
- Copywriting
- HTML5 playable ads
- Live shooting
- Localization
- Motion graphics
- Storyboarding
- Voiceovers
They don’t have standard plans to choose from. Instead, they customize plans per client based on how many ideations and assets are needed.
Are you ready to elevate your fantastic YouTube content even more? We have a lot of help on our blog, including how to boost channel subscribers and engagement using giveaways, tips for analyzing the most important YouTube metrics and how to increase your subscriber number.