How to Stretch Your Video Content to Give It the Biggest Bang for Your Buck

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Video content is often expensive to produce. It can cost thousands of dollars for just a few minutes of professional-quality video. Plus, it takes tons of time to brainstorm creative elements, structure, plan, film, and finish post-production—not to mention the time spent promoting. That means you can only make so many videos at one time without blowing your budget.

Compared to blogging, needless to say, it’s a whole different animal. Blogging only requires a computer for typing and internet access for research. To produce video, on the other hand, it takes software and multiple pieces of technology.

Instead of pumping out hundreds of videos and spending millions of dollars in the process, you should aim to stretch your content, giving you the best bang for your buck.

Repurposing content works. You just have to know where to use it and how to transform it for multiple platforms. Here’s how you can repurpose your videos for multiple scenarios to create less and sell more.

Break Down Your Video Into Blog Content

Branded content is a tricky tool to repurpose. What exactly is branded video content? Generally speaking, branded video content is video content that is meant solely for brand awareness—for instance, a video that tells the story of your company history, origin, employees, and future.

How on Earth are you supposed to transform that into content for other purposes?

While it’s not easy, it’s done by countless companies. Chances are, your branded content either:

  1. Showcases your brand, industry and what you do
  2. Solves a user problem

At least in one way, shape, or form, it likely promotes a product you sell or aids in the selling of it. For example, while the video might not directly be a product demo or directly talking about your services, it might help by “sell without selling.” For example, your video might show users a way to solve a problem by using your product/service or give insight into why your brand is making a difference in the world or improving your industry.

Brand awareness videos can help people fall in love with your company, selling them on your business without ever mentioning a hard sell.

A lot of branded video content for the sole purpose of brand awareness follows a common script that you also see in high-level copywriting: PAS.

PAS = Problem, Agitate, Solve.

Read almost any piece of online and you’ll notice this trend.

First, a piece of content will talk about a problem or user pain point. Let’s say you sell SEO, PPC, and other agency-style services. A common pain point for your clients would likely be balancing budgets and results, i.e. getting more from your PPC and SEO with less money.

The opening of your content should tap into that front-facing, lingering issue. It needs to hook the reader or viewer in, keeping them there to find out what they can do about it.

Next, you agitate. Explain why that pain point is bad, further cementing it in the reader’s mind.

Lastly, you close the deal with a solution: Your company. Your product. Your services.

Branded video content often follows this exact formula. You talk about specific challenges and then present your brand as the solution. On top of that, you are showcasing the personality behind your brand.

So, why not turn that blog-like content into actual blog content?

Turning video content into blog posts (and vice versa) could lead to a 62% increase in engagement on social platforms. Expert content repurposer Jay Baer turns his video content into blog posts weekly to capture more traffic.

Neil Patel follows this same strategy, turning his own video content into blog posts:

Neil Patel

This allows him to create incredibly valuable long-form content. And content is a top-two ranking factor. Instead of just publishing a video on YouTube, he can turn it into a new piece of content on his website, too.

With a multi-channel approach, Neil uses one piece of content on two mediums for more traffic. And since he’s created the video, he can transcribe his words verbatim into a new blog post, generating massive returns.

Brian Dean of Backlinko follows the same protocol, turning existing videos into new blog posts or adding them as new sections to an existing blog post to create better content:

Brian Dean
Drift recently turned their video series about conversational marketing into a multi-part blog post by simply re-using, transcribing, and expanding on the original video content:

Drift

With multiple videos on this series, they quickly turned them into a multi-part blog series to go along with it, stretching a few short videos into 2x the amount of content. 

You can hire a cheap third-party like Rev or Scribie to transcribe your long video content for just a few bucks. Within a few hours, you can have an entire piece of copy to edit, restructure, or incorporate into existing blog posts along with corresponding video. This is an amazing way to turn your branded videos into blog posts with the PAS formula, structuring each section based on different segments of the video.

So, what if your video only contains branding for the purpose of awareness?

Use it to tell a story!

Did your video touch on any projects that your team worked on? Any events or organizations you are involved with? Turn your brand awareness video into a story on your blog that touches on pain points in your industry and how your brand is able to thrive.

Blogging is an amazing way to drive more traffic. And the top marketing companies are repurposing their video daily into blog posts and long-form content to great success.

Turn Segments Into Viral Social Content

If you have a long piece of branded video, you’re already sitting on a gold mine. Even if you’ve only used it in one scenario—for instance, direct brand awareness—the options are almost limitless. Especially when social media comes into play.

Social media excels with short-and-sweet content. Content that gets to the point and conveys a message fast. People are scrolling quickly down a dynamically-updating timeline looking for the best content to consume.

So if you have long video content already made, you could potentially clip 20 segments from it and use them for social campaigns. Voilà! You’ve just gotten 20x the usage out of your content.

Instead of producing more videos for social, you can clip portions of content you already made.

Gary Vaynerchuk is a master at this tactic. On just about every social platform, you’ll see short video clips that he’s cut from longer interviews, podcasts, keynotes, or general video content he has already produced:

Gary Vaynerchuk

He’s literally only repurposing existing video content for social. And considering the fact that he has millions of followers on Instagram alone, you could say it’s working. He’s become famous in the social and entrepreneurial world for his engaging content.

With this strategy, you can turn a single video into dozens of shorter clips, sharing them on multiple channels from Instagram to Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and more.

Gary Vaynerchuk

You don’t need to keep producing hour-long podcasts for content, sharing them once, and calling it a day. That’s not efficient and will end up being far less cost-effective.

Instead, you can easily cut out specific segments that are inspirational, motivational, or informative based on your goals or video style. Go through your existing library of videos and re-watch them to extract any parts of it that might be engaging social bits.

Taking branded content that is just for brand awareness and for the purpose of increasing social followers or retail foot traffic also gives you the ability to create segments for social.

According to HubSpot, you should keep social videos short, too. Here’s what they suggest:

  • On Facebook: One minute or less
  • On Instagram: 30 seconds or less
  • On Twitter: 45 seconds or less

And that’s great news for you. It means you can take a single 15-minute video and potentially clip 5-10 short videos for social media sharing.

Keep it short, sweet, and to the point. Stock up on these clips and periodically share them - perhaps a few times each month.

Turn Videos into SlideShare posts

In 2012, LinkedIn acquired SlideShare for $119 million. Today, SlideShare boasts over 80 million active users, 18 million uploads, and 40 different content sharing categories. Plus, it’s one of the top 100 most-visited sites in the world.

SlideShare is currently booming. In fact, it’s capable of generating thousands of leads and a 50x return on investment when used consistently. Top SlideShare presentations are gaining hundreds of thousands of views daily:

SlideShare

Top entrepreneurs and marketing mavens are already capitalizing on this strategy. For instance, Smart Blogger expert Eugene Cheng takes this strategy to the next level by turning existing content into powerful presentations.

Spinning the content with a different angle, he turns segments of an existing content piece into a SlideShare presentation. Using this strategy, he has been able to generate 400 new email subscribers every month and millions of total views on his uploads: 

Smart Blogger stats(Image Source)

With SlideShare, you can upload your content in almost any format:

SlideShare upload
Do any of your existing videos focus on solving user problems or touch on industry pain points? Use those as the foundation for your slideshow presentation. Throw in statistics and actionable ways to accomplish those goals, and you can make SlideShare a winning tool for your business.

Use It to Create Lead Ads on Facebook

Generating leads requires content. And not just any content. Not when you’re advertising on a giant platform like Facebook that boasts over two billion monthly active users. The latest research shows that video content is the most engaging content format on Facebook.

If you want to land more high-quality sales prospects, repurpose your video content into business promotions using Facebook Lead Ads. Facebook Lead Ads are dynamic ads that allow you to capture user information directly on Facebook using custom forms in exchange for valuable content.

For instance, offering 20% off your first purchase in exchange for an email:

Facebook Lead Ads(Image Source)

With customizable forms and content types, you can create any form field that you want along with the content you offer in return. Bonfire Marketing used Lead Ads to reduce their cost per lead by 19% while simultaneously increasing their total leads by 44%. Ladder.io decreased their cost per lead by 80% using them.

Facebook Lead Ads work because they are naturally placed within the Facebook News Feed and don’t require someone to leave the Facebook experience. This makes it a perfect, mobile-friendly way to collect leads.

Instead of forcing a user to exit and open a new application to give you information, they do it in seconds on Facebook. And since Facebook added auto-fill features, all the user has to do is click a button to submit the information. Collecting leads with Lead Ads is that easy.

To set them up, use the Facebook Business Manager to create a new campaign. Select the lead generation goal from the campaign type list:

Facebook Business Manager

From here, you can choose the single video format, allowing you to upload existing video content from your library: 

Facebook Business Manager

In the form builder, you edit content like your image or video, headlines, descriptions, and button CTA:

Facebook Business Manager

Customize the form depending on what information you normally collect from leads.

So, what portion/type of your video content is best to use for lead magnet ads? Let’s find out…

Turn It Into Lead Magnet Content: Webinars

One of the most creative ways to repurpose existing video content is by turning it into webinars. And webinars are dominating the online marketing space.

The average conversion rate from a registrant to an actual viewer is 50%. Viewers who tune in watch for an average of 53 minutes depending on length. Meaning you can combine multiple videos for longer content that still keeps watchers engaged.

A ReadyTalk survey found that 20-40% of webinar attendees turn into qualified leads. For that reason, webinars rank as one of the top lead generation tools for 48% of content marketers.

Highest Conversion Rates by Source(Image Source)

One of the best ways to reuse long, branded content is to turn it into a webinar. But it only works with specific types of content.

For instance, if your content is only branded content that focuses on your company, turning it into a webinar is difficult. But if you have sections of your branded content that touch on solutions to common pain points in your niche, that’s perfect for the starting point of an on-demand webinar. You can use those shorter video segments in promotional lead ads to hook users in. Then you can re-use it online by expanding upon it for either live or static webinars.

With tech tools like WebinarJam and EverWebinar, you can run on-demand webinars as if they were live. Shopify actually uses this tactic as a lead magnet CTA on their blog:

Shopify webinar

Clicking to reserve your seat will allow you to pick an upcoming time to view the webinar as if it were live even though it’s pre-recorded video content: 

Shopify webinar registration

This gives your webinar a premium feel without forcing anyone to block out a specific hour of their schedule. They can simply watch whenever they want, meaning you don’t have to create even more content to get the job done. You can repurpose existing videos in your library as on-demand webinars.

Webinars are an amazing and proven form of lead magnet content. And with today’s tools, you don’t need to stream them live. Use pre-recorded video to develop on-demand webinars. Just take some snippets and use them in your Facebook Lead Ads.

Conclusion

Video content is challenging to produce. Everything from scripting to scheduling, shooting, and post-production can take up massive amounts of time and money. So creating a single video for a single purpose is rarely profitable.

Instead, you should actively be looking for ways to extend the lifespan of your videos. Start breaking your video content into different blog posts based on what topics they cover. This allows you to repurpose your video and generate more organic traffic with blogging.

If you’re struggling with social content, follow Gary Vaynerchuk’s example and take short snippets of long-form videos, using them with compelling headlines. You can likely increase your usage of your videos by 10x if you simply cut clips and share them.

SlideShare is currently booming with active users. To take advantage of it, all you have to do is cut still shots from your video and add text to turn them into an engaging presentation. And don’t stop there. Use videos as the main content for Facebook Lead Ads and lead magnet content like static webinars.

Video content is diverse, dynamic and reusable. Now it’s up to you to take full advantage of it and get the best bang for your buck.

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