How to use stock video in your next marketing campaign

Your customers are hungry for video content. And their need for food increases every year. With video-based social media apps like Instagram and TikTok taking a step ahead of traditional social media, the need for a consistent video presence is more important than ever for your brand.

But how can you track the daily posts, ads, challenges, and stories your customers want?

Full disclosure: This article was sponsored by Videovo

There are a number of clever ways to create more quality video content without breaking your budget. Stock video is often overlooked.

Stock video is incredibly diverse. There are millions of clips up for grabs, many of them in HD and 4K quality. Just about anything you can imagine exists in stock video and free video libraries, so you can easily find clips that match your brand identity.

Once you’ve purchased a clip, it’s yours. You can tweak, modify and reuse it indefinitely – there’s a lot of value you can squeeze out of just one clip. And if you build a library of stock videos that resonate with your brand, you’ll have the fuel to create tons of content without a single day of production.

Below, we’ll walk you through a few ways to get the most out of stock videos for your next marketing campaign.

Create dynamic video ads

Stock video allows you to create dynamic ads (one of the latest marketing trends) without increasing your budget.

Dynamic ads change depending on who is watching. This targeted advertising approach localizes content for a specific region or even a specific viewer.

Creating these ads takes a lot of extra production and planning, but not if you’re using stock footage. For example, you can merge stock footage into your ad to change the geographic location. You can include people snowboarding for Midwestern audiences and people surfing for California viewers.

You can also change the demographics by targeting older audiences and younger viewers using different footage.

Dynamic Ads Dramatically Increase ROIand with stock videos, you can produce them at a much lower cost.

Create bespoke micro-moments

Micro-moments are fast-paced, inspirational videos that inspire consumers to take action. Usually, this moment is fleeting, as people quickly scroll through social media. You don’t have time to pitch your brand and showcase your product or service. Instead, you need to elicit an emotional response and inspire action in less than 15 seconds.

Creating tiny music videos that captivate audiences doesn’t come cheap. But stock video makes it much simpler and more profitable.

You can stop scrollers in their tracks with colorful vistas, emotional faces, humor and movement using video clips. Once you’ve hooked the viewer, give a quick CTA or let your logo do the work like Allstate does in this micro ad.

An effective way to interact with micro-moments is to create multiple short ads on the same topic. It conditions your viewers to remember your brand just by glancing at your video for a few seconds. With stock video, you can do that easily. A 2 minute stock video can be cut and edited into 6 micro ads, all with the same look and theme.

Improve authenticity and inclusiveness

Demonstrating a commitment to diversity is important for today’s consumers. But it’s not cost-effective to represent a range of demographics in your ads, especially if you need to hire actors.

With stock video, you can ensure your ads are inclusive without increasing production time or costs. And don’t worry, stock videos of smiley faces aren’t cheesy anymore like they used to be. Choose from high quality clips of professional actors or real life interactions to make your videos authentic and engaging.

Get creative with stock footage

The demand for video content isn’t going to drop anytime soon. As a marketer, you need to get creative in order to produce more video content without increasing your budget. Stock video is a great way to do this.

Once you’ve collected videos that represent your brand, get creative in the editing room to customize them. Try using effects, voiceovers, on-screen text, and music to turn the footage into something unique.

By using stock footage, a skilled editor can produce more content than an entire video production team.

Full disclosure: This article was sponsored by Videovo