Video marketing is where it’s at! Just look around you. Everywhere you turn, people are staring at their phones. Even when they have company to talk to, they still stare at their phones. As a business owner, you can’t afford to pass up this golden opportunity called video marketing. With apps like TikTok constantly streaming short, vertical videos to the masses, you’ve got to take advantage of this form of information transfer by tapping into video marketing. Now, when I say short form, vertical videos, I’m talking about videos that have the format of a video recorded with a cell phone held in one hand. There are a number of reasons why this format is crucial to the success of your video ads.

Convenience and comfort are a major reason why short, vertical videos greatly increase the success of your video marketing. Most of us are constantly on the go and don’t want to walk around holding our phone with two hands in order to view landscape (sideways) videos. It’s simply not comfortable and strains the wrist. Plus, virtually every other app we use is in portrait (vertical) format. Therefore, as a marketer or business owner, we would rather present our video ads to consumers in the same format as everything else the individual is viewing or interacting with. This helps the user flow from whatever they’re doing, straight into watching your video ad without the added effort of turning their phone sideways in order to fully view it. After all, why would we want to make it tough for potential customers to watch our video ad?

Now let’s consider the look of your video. Some marketers believe that video ads should have the exact same look as a video recorded with a cell phone in order to “fool” the viewer into thinking it is just another amateur video. That way they don’t get immediately turned off by a flashy video, and automatically swipe off the video due to the red flag of an advertisement. While we do agree that there is some truth and merit to this school of thought, at Stories and Stills, we believe that a business should always put their best foot forward. And if a video marketing ad is the foot of a business, then that video ad should represent the business the best it can. This means producing a video that looks great and stands out, while also being in the same convenient format as the rest of the apps and videos consumers are viewing.

So how does Stories and Stills produce short form, vertical videos that look amazing, without recording with a cell phone? To accomplish this, we use special brackets called camera cages that allow us to mount our professional video cameras vertically. This mean we get the same outstanding quality from our video cameras, while still producing a video that can be viewed in portrait mode (vertically) on a cell phone. Now, this does make framing a video somewhat challenging. After all, there’s a reason why videos are filmed in landscape (horizontal). It allows the camera to capture more relevant footage, by providing a wider viewing angle. Nevertheless, we’re filming for cell phone users, which means we have to do our best to squeeze the most important footage into the vertical viewing angle.

Don’t fight the fact that everyone is constantly on their cell phones. Cater to the convenience of vertical video for video marketing on mobile phones. Utilize Stories and Stills to help your company put out amazing vertical videos that will stop consumers in their tracks.