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It is amazing to watch how quickly technological and social advances change our culture. It was not too long ago when having a website and being on social media were the “things to do” to succeed online.

As we shared in a recent blog post, the attention span of the average adult is only 8.25 seconds! This is evident in how people now spend the majority of their time – quickly scrolling over images in their Instagram feed, swiping through FlipBoard, and turning to their phone during TV commercials.

We are visual. For most, we prefer images, infographics and of course video over reading long paragraphs of text. We want our information, and we want it quickly.

And I don’t blame anyone.

This is why social media platforms have made large shifts in their focus, giving higher priority to images and video content.

This is also why video is growing in popularity on websites. In our recent blog post, Why 2017 is the Year for Video Marketing, we shared that websites that contain video have on average an extra dwell time of 2+ minutes!

Websites that contain video have on average an extra dwell time of 2+ minutes!

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Think about that for a moment. If the average dwell time on your website is currently 1.5 minutes, adding videos may boost that up to 3.5 minutes or more!

The reason for the growth is simple. People are more willing to watch a short video describing your product, service or even company culture than they are to read long sections of text. This does not mean that text is not important – it is. However, what is more important is a balance of both video and text.

We would love the opportunity to help you brainstorm the best use of video for any of your digital efforts. Just shoot us a quick note at hello@sulastudios.com, or fill out the form below. We would love to treat you to coffee and strategize about the best methods to help you reach your goals.

– Justin Farrell

 

What to connect? Let us know!

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The post Should I have video on my website? appeared first on Sula Studios | Phoenix, Arizona Video Production - Videographers & Cinematographers.

Video took huge leaps in 2016. It was amazing to watch how new social media platforms with a core focus on video became successful overnight, and how existing platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram deeply integrated video into their framework.

We also followed the statistics that showed video being used more frequently every day, especially by mobile users.

Everything that happened in 2016 is leading up to 2017 being an important year for video marketing.

HighQ created the following infographic that illustrates why 2017 will be the year of video marketing. Take a look below to see how successful videos are in social media and learn about the rise of mobile use of video.

If you don’t have a plan for video marketing in 2017, you are missing out. We would love to help you strategize to build a plan and work through the execution of it this following year. Just shoot us an email at hello@sulastudios.com for a free consultation!

The post Why 2017 is the Year for Video Marketing [infographic] appeared first on Sula Studios | Phoenix, Arizona Video Production - Videographers & Cinematographers.

The Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale, AZ is truly a remarkable setting for any wedding. We have enjoyed every opportunity we have to work with The Phoenician and were so excited when they asked us to create a promotional video specifically for weddings. We decided to highlight the beautiful location, excellent service and wonderful guest experience offered at this luxury resort.

If you are looking for an amazing wedding venue, be sure to check out the below video and consider The Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale, AZ.

You can learn more about The Phoenician Resort by visiting their website at http://www.thephoenician.com.

The post Wedding Promotional Video // The Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale, AZ appeared first on Sula Studios | Phoenix, Arizona Video Production - Videographers & Cinematographers.

With more than 300 million daily active users, Instagram quickly became a global giant, with over 95 million photos & videos added daily!

Instagram quickly became a global giant, with over 95 million photos & videos added daily!

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Instagram, who is owned by Facebook, is becoming more popular by the day, outpacing other know social sites like Twitter, Vine, and Snapchat.

I am often asked two questions:

1. Should I use Instagram?

Yes, the stats above should easily convince you of the need to be active on Instagram. It is a quickly growing platform with more users signing up and actively using it every single day.

2. Should I use video on Instagram?

The use of pictures and video is the primary reason for the success of Instagram. We live in a visual culture. People want to interact with imagery and video more than they want to read text.

But video takes the game one step further than imagery can. Video allows the viewer the opportunity to stop scrolling and focus on just your brand for up to 60 seconds. This time is extremely valuable!

Video allows you to provide more detail about your product / service, give some behind the scenes action to build your brand values and allows you the opportunity to connect on a personal level with your audience.

Yes, Instagram videos are short, but that is okay. People’s attention spans on social media are typically pretty short. You can upload a maximum video length of 60 seconds on Instagram – yet you can still do a lot in that 60-second timeframe!

Due to the condensed time, it is even more valuable to adequately consider the strategy behind the video to make the best use of the time and to capture the viewer’s attention out of the gate.

We would love to provide you a FREE evaluation of your current Instagram feed and recommendations for the best use of video in your social strategy with Instagram moving forward. Shoot us an email at hello@sulastudios.com –  we would love to help!

– Justin Farrell

Take a look at some samples of the best branded videos on Instagram recently:

A video posted by Ben & Jerry’s (@benandjerrys) on Oct 28, 2016 at 10:51am PDT

Who said #vegan food had to be boring? Take a look at this stunning spiral vegetable tart! Visit homemadebyyou.co.uk and search ‘Vegetable Tart’ for the RECIPE.

A video posted by Sainsbury’s (@sainsburys) on Oct 19, 2016 at 8:11am PDT

The post Should I Use Video On Instagram? appeared first on Sula Studios | Phoenix, Arizona Video Production - Videographers & Cinematographers.

As businesses and brands begin to grow, it can become overwhelming to keep up!

You are hiring new employees.
You are launching new products.
You are improving communication to your customers.

All of this requires a lot of work! And, often, it requires the same work over and over.

Most of this repetitive work can be reduced to practically nothing by introducing training videos into your workflow!

Do you notice your customer support is routinely answering the same questions over and over, whether on the phone or by email, to your client base? This confusion can be due to a lack of information that can be easily at your customer’s fingertips. Consider adding training videos to help your customers understand how to use your product or service more smoothly.

Even better, be proactive. As you are considering adding a new product to your shelf, create training videos that help your prospective customers understand the features of that new product and how it will impact their lives. These videos can help increase your sales!

Lastly, any growing team knows the pain of new employee training and training your current team on new systems, processes, or policies that are put in place. Training videos are the prescription to eliminate this pain! Training videos will help you streamline new employee onboarding, and provide a seamless avenue to train your existing team on new information they need.

Below are a couple of training videos Sula Studios put together to help Ecotality reduce some of the same tensions discussed above.

Are you experiencing any of the above pain points? If so, we would love to help you as well!

Whether you know exactly what you need, or you want help brainstorming the best options for you, let us know. We would love to connect on the phone, over email or in person to build the perfect solutions for you!

– Justin Farrell

The post The Power Of Training Videos appeared first on Sula Studios | Phoenix, Arizona Video Production - Videographers & Cinematographers.

As we talked about in our recent blog post, 2017 is right around the corner!

Sure, we still have a couple of months left of 2016, but let’s be honest, those are filled with holiday celebrations, vacations and time with family. Before we all know it, we will be counting down the seconds to the new year!

Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, it is still October, but with all of the busy-ness of the remaining months of the year, it is important to start preparing now to kick off the new year with a bang.

January is a great month push your product or service hard, as many people do not properly plan for the holidays and time out of the office. Once they get back in the office in January, it takes a few weeks to ramp up their efforts to promote themselves or their products/services correctly.

If you begin preparing NOW, you can beat out your competition in early January!

If you begin preparing NOW, you can beat out your competition in early January!

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What is your plan for the new year? What marketing strategies are you working on to hit January powerfully?

Do you have a new product or service you are rolling out?

Do you have new trainings or vlogs you need to capture?

As you are thinking through your strategies for January, do not forget video! Video is a great tool to help you raise awareness, promote new products/services, automate your systems, and reach prospective customers.

We would love to help you! Shoot us a note at hello@sulastudios.com, and we would love to setup some time in person over coffee/lunch, or over the phone to help you think through your strategies for the first of the year!

Don’t wait – it will be here before you know it. And, by planning now, you can rest peacefully during the holidays, as you know you are already well prepared for January.

– Justin Farrell

Connect with me:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Instagram

The post How to Start 2017 Strong with Video appeared first on Sula Studios | Phoenix, Arizona Video Production - Videographers & Cinematographers.

“We created Stewardship to take a stand against financial injustice—to be a group of companies that can educate and guide people through mortgages, insurance, financial planning, and investments.” – Grant Botma, Stewardship

The above statement from Grant is a prime reason for why we love working alongside Stewardship. They genuinely care about their customers and desire the best possible outcome for their clients.

When Grant came to us with the idea of creating a video that would explain the difference between working with a mortgage broker vs. a bank, we were excited about the challenge and decided to highlight the three top differences below:

• An easier loan process
• More loan options
• Lowest rates and fees possible

This informative and engaging video is part of an overall marketing strategy Stewardship is building using content marketing, social media marketing, and digital advertisements.

Click below to see the video used in a recent blog post Stewardship published: http://moneywellrooted.com/2016/09/20/mortgage-broker-3-reasons/

Thank you, Stewardship, for the opportunity to help with this project. We love working with you!

If you have any marketing strategies or videos in mind – we would love to help you think through the best approach to video for those! Contact us today at hello@sulastudios.com.

– Justin Farrell

The post Stewardship Mortgage | Mortgage Broker vs Bank appeared first on Sula Studios | Phoenix, Arizona Video Production - Videographers & Cinematographers.

October is a big month for the dreaded word – BUDGETS. Budgets are time-consuming but highly recommended, because if you don’t have a plan for your money, your money won’t do anything to help you.

Budgets challenge you to think through your goals for the next set period of time (often 12 months), develop a plan to reach those goals, and provide an executable plan using the funds you have set aside to accomplish those goals.

GOALS

The first step in building your video budget is to establish your goals for 2017. I encourage you to set aside a couple hours at a location with no distractions to really dream and strategize where you want to go in 2017. Leave the computer at home, bring a pencil and some paper and handwrite out your goals.

Think through these questions:

1. Am I satisfied with where we are currently at as an organization?
2. How can I improve the customer experience with my brand next year?
3. How can I help my customers more in 2017?
4. How can I love my team more in 2017?
5. How much do I want to grow over the next 12 months?

A great video strategy can help you accomplish all of the above!

STRATEGY

Once you have written out your goals, the next important step is to establish your strategy for how you are going to reach those goals. Without a strategy or plan, your goals will be just goals. They will never come to fruition. Each goal to should have 3-5 actionable items written out to help you reach that goal.

As you create those action items, remember: your strategy needs to include video. Video will be one of the top five marketing avenues for growth in 2017 for all businesses. No matter who you are or what you do, video is necessary in marketing. Because of this, iIt is important to properly plan for how video will fit into your strategy.

Video will be one of the top five marketing avenues for growth in 2017 for all businesses.

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There are two expenses related to video that need to be built into your budget – video production and video promotion.

Video production is the cost associated with planning, producing and editing your video. This is what will bring the video from an idea into reality. Each style of video has a different cost associated with it. Some styles require a lot more time than others. Below are some examples:
Customer/client testimonials
Company story
Product overview
Explainer videos
Training videos
Event highlights
Life change stories
and more!

We would love to quote out any projects for you to help give you financial numbers to plan for in 2017! Contact us at hello@sulastudios.com.

Video promotion is the next important key. Once you have your video, you must implement the proper promotion strategy to get the video in front of you current and prospective customers. This can be done via email marketing, social boosting, digital ads, and many other channels. If you need help thinking through video promotion, we would love to help here as well! Contact us at hello@sulastudios.com.

MARGIN

It is important to add some margin to your financial estimations for 2017. As the next 12 months begin to unravel, new ideas may come to mind or road blocks may appear that could cause strain on your video budget. In order to prevent this, build some margin into your budget so you have a safety net when these things happen. Control the stress, don’t let the stress control you. A starting point is to simply add 15% to your budget as a safety net.

EXECUTION

Once you have taken the time to thoughtfully analyze the above, now is the time to compile your video budget. Break your budget down by month, as this will help you plan more accurately throughout the year.

Sula Studios would love the opportunity to help you think through all of the above and build a full plan for your 2017 goals. Contact us today at hello@sulastudios.com to setup a time to discuss your 2017 plan!

– Justin Farrell

The post Planning Your 2017 Video Budget appeared first on Sula Studios | Phoenix, Arizona Video Production - Videographers & Cinematographers.

There’s nothing better than partnering with a company for so long you are as invested in their success as they are. That’s the story behind our relationship with Retailer Web Services (RWS).

Jennie Gilbert & Jim Kane are the dynamic brother/sister duo behind RWS. We captured Jennie’s wedding several years ago, and since then we have had the honor of working together in creating captivating videos for their company.

RWS creates powerful and effective technology for independent retailers. Their technology gives small business retailers who own and operate appliance, furniture, & mattress stores the ability to compete with the big box stores. And not only do they create the technology, they truly care about their clients, build relationships with them, and work hard to develop new tools which allow them to stay ahead of their competition.

RWS recently created a new tool called WebFronts Review which allows business owners to see all of their reviews in one place. More than that, they can also respond to the reviews, ask for a review, or share a review within the same platform. It’s truly remarkable, so when they asked us to create some videos to highlight this new software, we couldn’t have been more excited.

We sat down with Jennie and after listening to the goals for these videos and determined the best approach for each one. We decided the first video should be all motion graphics with voiceover and music, and we collaborated with Jennie in writing the script. For the second video, we decided it’d be great to hear from Erik Qualman, a digital marketing expert, as well as current RWS clients who are excited about the release of WebFronts Review.

I think together these videos do a great job of showcasing why WebFronts Review is so important and how it helps these independent retailers manage their online reputation.

– Krisanna Mowen

We’d love to help you too!
If you are interested in some videos to help clarify the service or product you offer, we’d love to help. First, we’ll sit down with you and listen to your needs and what you hope to accomplish in producing the video/s. Then we work hard to determine the best approach, write the script/outline, animate the graphics, edit the footage and everything else that goes into making these videos happen. That way you can focus on what you do best and use the video/s we create to grow your business and your audience. Contact us today at hello@sulastudios.com!

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