How To Transform Static Images Into Marketing Videos
By: Pierre Debois
Tags: Video Marketing, Marketing, Photography, Small Business Marketing, Business

How To Transform Static Images Into Marketing Videos

Images of your product or services may be great, but stitching them together to form videos is even greater. Here are a few ideas on how to do it. Pierre DeBois Jun 29·7 min read

Creating a video is often not programming, but requires a programmer’s patience in setting up image files to easily access them to create videos and import images in the editors. (Image source: WOCInTech)

Images of your product or services may be great, but videos are even greater. Video, be it a recording or streaming, has become a popular medium choice.

But there are times when people are looking to figure out how to take static images and incorporate them into video. Well, there are a number of players that can be used to make that implementation task easier.

Video Ideas to Complement Your Content

It’s one thing to select a video editor — there are several ones on the market that have made editing easier. But your first choice starts with deciding which ideas to develop.

Identifying good ideas means picking images that support an audience that contains an intended customer. An intended customer consists of people who fit the following facets of a market:

Demographics

Psychographics

Specific, consistent behavior online or offline

Customer journey (like a preference, or better yet, a trend)

Mapping any images to one or more of these four facets will yield good ideas for videos that will connect to your audience. Topics on references associated with products and services. For example, if your app is built to show sports news, you can mention the news that Brooklyn Nets fans or New York Knicks fans would be interested in. Doing so would address psychographics and demographics as well.

Provide updates on old content, featuring what has been changed since the last time that content had been mentioned. This means you can take advantage of stories to share interesting comparisons between old content and new content, highlighting new behavioral shifts or notice a new way to experience a customer journey.

Follow up on breaking news that may associate with your product or service. This plays into the 10% of the 70–20–10 agile marketing rule. For example, you can indicate new vehicle inventory if your business is a car dealership, playing into recent news that car production is hindered by a lack of computer chips available.

Behind-the-scenes videos let people know what’s going on behind the scenes of your organization. This can be a way to connect to certain demographics or psychographics of an intended audience.

No matter what you select, you can form a consistent theme with your image choices.

Gathering Images

You can now take the next step in gathering images. First, consider the sources from which you are creating images. A source should also let you import your images into your tool of choice — drag and drop or sync a file quickly.

A source should also let you move pictures from a smartphone easily. That may be as straightforward as a Google Drive folder. Another trick is moving an image to an app that syncs on the cloud and desktop, like Evernote. I have often saved images of cars in Evernote, pixelating the license plate in some instances to obscure the license number. Moving to Evernote allows me to access the image on my laptop easily.

Also, consider file type. Pictures are straightforward graphics when cast as a JPEG file. But there are many ways to save images — as a JPEG or PNG. You may have diagrams that are saved only as a PNG.

Use large dimensions for images. You can always resize images easily when you have enough pixels to work on a blog as well as an Instagram post.

Keep in mind you can use images now from a variety of sources. A PowerPoint slide can be saved as a JPEG file — I have inserted slides alongside demonstration videos so people can see what I am speaking about. Screenshots from a laptop are also another source, as are screenshots from a mobile phone.

This video of one of my presentations was created on a smartphone. To show what was on my slides, I saved each slide as a JPEG, then used Camtasia to insert the slides alongside my discussion.

Repositories can be great sources, of course, with proper reference to the source.

You may want the source to also be a repository for videos. Keep storage size in mind to make sure there is enough storage available for video files from your editor.

Pick an Editor

It’s one thing to select a video editor — there are several ones on the market that have made editing easier. But choice can overwhelm, especially if the features feel similar. But if you narrow it to three or four choices, you’ll find a few that can work for you or your team if you are coordinating your video creation efforts with other professionals.

Here are a few editors that I think are great starting points for your video creation needs.

The Rise of Canva as a Video Editor

Canva is an online media platform that marketers are turning to, to create business cards, formatted email templates, image graphics for social media, and other marketing material. A subscription service called Canva Pro has long been available, offering the user options such as uploading logos and gaining a wider selection of graphic elements from Canva.

The most intriguing new feature added to Canva Pro is a video creation tool that consolidates image sizing and video options so that content can be conveniently issued on the major social media platform. It can do a magic resize, that allows it to adjust the size of the video to fit the platform. The free version of the online video maker offers premade templates, stock videos, and even music tracks.

Canva can be accessed on a mobile device or tablet, creating a workflow that makes it easier for a small business to work with a marketer alongside. Moreover, there are no watermarks on the videos which makes it a lot easier to call your video your own.

Canva Pro offers a good structure for designers, content creators, and social media managers who are continually creating social media and digital ad media while maintaining access to different social media accounts

Google Got Video

A second builder choice comes from Google. Google also offers a free video builder which allows you to add music to your video via Google and even animate some portions. To use it requires access to a YouTube business channel. Also, the Google tool is optimized for Google Chrome.

A Tried and True Choice: Camtasia

Image provided by the author

This third choice is my favorite, having been a user of the software for over eight years. Camtasia is a stand-alone video editor software. It costs $300 (upgrades for older versions cost less), so it’s a bit different but it’s a very reliable tool that has been on the market since 2002.

Its interface is intuitive for dragging and dropping media on its timeline. Its user interface means you can mix and match images and audio easily. Camtasia accepts a wide range of images and audio formats. You can provide your own music and images so it’s very creative in terms of options. You can then export your finished video as an MP4, as a Windows Media video WMV, as a QuickTime for Apple, and even to a YouTube video channel.

The biggest downside of Camtasia compared to Canva Pro is that the video editing is hosted on your laptop, so you need to have memory space for your videos and images. Most people rely on online storage, so if you are using a Dropbox or Google Drive for file storage — memory is not a dealbreaker for your tasks, since many of the services offer reasonable memory size, even in a free tier in some instances.

But the use of a cloud service does mean an extra step that can diminish convenience if you are working with numerous video and image files on a laptop with 256 GB of hard drive space.

This capacity feature is what I like about Camtasia — there’s flexibility in the types of images you can import. I imported presentation slides saved as a JPEG so that I can transition from my video image on the screen to an actual presentation. That makes it easier to explain details.

Camtasia alternatives

Camtasia has existed for more than a few years — it was introduced in 2002. In recent years, a few free video editors have been launched.

There is a terrific post that covers ten different “free” editors. Many of these are paid solutions, like Camtasia, but contain similar features.

Keep in mind, “free” software is not always a great long-term option. Each free software may lack good post-production features or not have enough user support to address bugs.

Software like Camtasia, which has been on the market for years, is usually supported by a vibrant developer community that is aware of the problems and solutions that arise. If you need reliable video editing, definitely look at the user commentary on the software to see how other people have felt about the free software.

Final Thoughts

You should now be able to create a short video, stitching together the images you want to insert into a video. Use transitions between images, adding fades in and out for example. Add audio if desired, as well as other edits.

But overall you have a framework for creating a useful video that will tell the right story of your offering to your customers.