Video used to be optional, a nice-to-have for brands with big budgets and limitless resources.

However, in today’s marketing landscape, where attention is short and authenticity matters more than ever, video has become a core part of how businesses build trust, grow their reach, and stay relevant.

We’ve entered a new era of content. One where polished blog posts and carefully curated social grids aren't enough on their own. More and more, the brands making real traction are the ones putting their mission, people, and products out there on camera.

When planned and executed properly, video marketing is engaging, develops a deeper connection with your audience, and ultimately, establishes trust and credibility.

If you’ve been stuck in the cycle of writing content that doesn’t get traction or feeling like your brand lacks a human touch, you’re not alone. Many businesses are rethinking how they show up, and video is at the center of that shift.

The good news is that you don’t need a massive budget or a production crew to make it happen. With the right approach, video can be consistent, scalable, and integrated into your broader content strategy.

In this conversation, Matthew Sommer and Jason Brewer, the founders of Brolik, a strategic marketing agency, explain how to make video work for your business and why now’s the time to start.

Video Transcript:

Matthew Sommer (00:00) - How Should Businesses Leverage Video in Their Marketing?

One thing I've been thinking about a lot, and I wanted to get your perspective on the trend over the last several years, particularly on social media, but across the internet generally speaking, is that we went through an era of the internet where it was all very text-based, and then we sailed into an internet that was so much based on imagery, largely static imagery and photography.

And over the last couple of years, it's been a really, really drastic shift to where such a huge percentage of the content on the internet is video-based. And that's not just on YouTube. TikTok is a video-based social platform. Instagram Reels is getting more and more traction as part of the Instagram experience. So many of what used to be static images on platforms like Instagram or Facebook are now all videos.

And so I've had so many conversations with clients where they want to figure out how to integrate video into their marketing, into their communication strategy, and into their strategies for growth.

How should businesses be thinking about leveraging video in their marketing?

Jason Brewer (01:15) - Video’s Role in Content Marketing Has Changed

Yeah, I think that we've totally changed the way we look at video.

Video is content, and the way we've handled content over the last 10 years is to come up with themes that we can have a cadence and we can create this consistent flow, a repeatable framework for content.

That's article-based content blogs, things like that, where you've got four or five different content types and you're releasing them and publishing them on specific dates, and you have a process.

This is how we think about video now. Five to ten years ago, we did a lot of video work, corporate videos, commercials, educational videos, and brand videos. They were like project-based videos. They could be $20,000, $40,000 projects for our clients. And that's stuff we are not doing right now.

There's still a place for that at times. But really, where we've gone, a lot of our energy has gone to incremental, scalable video approaches where we're shooting once, call it once a quarter, maybe once a month, once every two months. And we're shooting content for the next three to six months. And we're in a constant post-production cycle. We're on a weekly basis. We're cutting a long form video on a topic. We're cutting a 30-second, a 15-second, and we're editing a bunch with captions for reels and stories.

So, we're creating this sort of video engine that's based more on how we looked at article-based content five years ago and still do. And we're thinking about production in, shoot 10 topics, 15 topics, 15 videos, get as many looks as you can for as small and lean of a production budget as you can, and then have stuff in the can, as we say, have stuff in the can for three, four months. And we just stretch the life out of that.

So clients who are used to writing articles and articles, that doesn't go away, but what we've done for one client recently, we shot probably 11 or 12 different topic videos, different topics. Some were SEO related, some were client FAQs, some were more like culture and about topics for the website. So we came in with different needs.

We shot 11 or 12 different videos in about a two-hour window, and we are editing many different formats from that shoot. Now we're seeing all of this traction we're getting from this video content being out in the world, getting the founder's faces in front of people in front of their audience, and it's this investment that is just stretching. And it's like you do it once and you get so much out of it.

Matthew Sommer (04:14) - Repurposing Video to Amplify Content Value

One of the things that's been really interesting for me watching that and kind of watching you explore that and watching our clients explore that is how much it's actually had a positive impact on just the holistic content strategy where so much of the time, either we are essentially ghostwriting all of the content for our clients, or they're having to go and spend a lot of time writing content because it's so based on their personal expertise that becomes either a huge lift for them or a huge barrier to developing content.

And in kind of putting together these more content and informative based video shoots and projects and creating that content, I've seen our content strategists, the various members of the team, be able to repurpose that content to the text and blog content that you were talking about to short form social posts to all of these different areas, which is really amplifying the value of those conversations, frankly, or of those videos being created.

Do you think about that repurposing and sort of reuse as you're organizing, producing, planning, and putting together these video projects? And if so, how does that factor in?

Jason Brewer (05:49) - Optimizing Your Video Investment

Yeah, from just an investment standpoint, you're talking about stretching, let's just call it $25,000 in production and post-production budget instead of in one shoot and one editing session or a few days of editing, you're stretching that over four or five months.

That's huge. Are we putting it into the plans? Yeah. We're thinking about horizontal square and vertical formats when we're shooting. That has totally changed over the last five or six years. That wasn't a thing before.

When I set up a shoot, I'm thinking about getting three different looks, changing shirts between takes. I'm thinking about scalability when I shoot, which is different from how I thought five or 10 years ago, because it was all very much an isolated case.

Now it's like, okay, this stuff needs to live for six months across four different platforms, and we're going to have five different edits, duration, some with captions, some without. Think about we're shooting the same footage and it's ending up in a YouTube ad, a Meta ad on the about page of the website, in an Instagram reel.

It's a lot to think about, but you're getting so much more for your money.

Matthew Sommer (07:05) - How Video Mirrors the Responsive Web Shift

It's really interesting. Actually. It makes me think of echoes of 16-17 years ago when we started seeing and talking about responsive design for websites, when all of a sudden we realized that we weren't just dealing with landscape view 13-inch monitors or whatever that everybody had on their laptop or desktop.

And all of a sudden, these things are going to be viewed in a vertical format on a four-inch screen or on a 65-inch television. And that websites needed to be flexible and malleable to all those different use cases.

And that's not just about screen size. That's about a person who's walking down the street and needing really quick interactions versus someone who's really digging in deeply on a desktop with a mouse, a very delicate pointer and really trying to get work done.

It sounds to me like you're thinking about video in much the same way as when we pivoted the way we thought about websites back in 2007.

Jason Brewer (08:14) - Connecting with Audiences Cross-Platform

Yeah, I think so.

One other thing that has changed with video is not just the fact that it's now so much more scalable and cross-platform, but think about where everything is going in terms of AI right now and how much even the work we're doing is shifting into experimenting with AI across copy and asset creation.

And while the human touch is there and the concept development and the scripting is all human, there's a certain amount of AI support that's happening more and more.

And with video, you and I sitting here right now is a way to connect with our audience when everyone else is rowing in the other direction.

And I think that understanding that there's going to be more and more value put on true human interaction like this, and video is a great way to capture that and show that, while everyone else is messing around with the less human formats.

Matthew Sommer (09:17) - Authenticity and Human Connection are Key

Yeah, time and time again, we've seen that people form connections with things that are more authentic and human.

That cycle happens over and over again in marketing and in society, frankly. But you see that happening with businesses as well, that consumers connect with brands that they really can relate to and feel connected to and feel part of a community around. And the human element really plays into that. And video is certainly a better way to show humanity.

It's a more thorough way than recorded audio or static photos, and certainly better than AI-generated video, which has its place and is incredibly useful in a really interesting direction. But yeah, that human factor is interesting.

Jason Brewer (10:17) - Using Video for Consistent Content Output

The final benefit to video that we've explored recently, which you started to touch on, is, and for everyone out there who can use this, and this will help your process, if you're struggling to create content consistently, whether it's a lack of time, a lack of head space, or you just don't know whose responsibility is, it's an accountability issue.

It's a lot of work. We know it's a lot of work. Sit down, come up with topics that make sense and do what we're doing. Sit down and ask the questions and answer the questions in a video format. Bring that through and transcribe it and use that to build out your written content that could help open things up for you.

So traditionally, you think written first, multimedia follows, you could do multimedia first, written follows, and I think that we never really thought about it that way, but in the last year or two, we're seeing that that can work.

Matthew Sommer (11:15) - Do Videos Need to Be Scripted?

Right? You don't need to write a script for your video necessarily.

In fact, I recommend you don't. Most of the time.

How to Start a Video Strategy

A video marketing strategy presents businesses with the opportunity to create, repurpose, and distribute valuable content that can drive business growth and humanize its brand.

However, it can be challenging to get the ball rolling without the proper knowledge, time, and resources required for planning and executing.

This is particularly true for owners and leadership of small to medium sized companies who are bogged down with other aspects of managing their people, processes, finances, and other aspects of the business.

This is where an experienced, strategic marketing partner like Brolik can step in and help to guide marketing efforts, set priorities, and develop a roadmap for growth.

If you’re curious about the impact that a video content strategy could have on your business, take our quiz and see if you’re ready to scale.