4 Amazing Apps to Create Your Course Launch Video in 30 Minutes (or Less)

Video is the most powerful tool for engaging your audience online. Learning to create a fast do-it-yourself course launch video can massively increase your reach and help you fill your online courses, coaching programs, and events.

With the recent changes to Facebook’s mystical algorithm (which determines who sees your free and paid posts and ads), it is more critical than ever that you jump on the course launch video bandwagon when planning your marketing strategy.

According to Facebook experts, users are watching 100 million hours of video per day. There are so many ways that you can use video to grow your list and fill your events (besides sharing videos of your cat):

• Create a webinar invite video highlighting some really cool “preview” slides from your webinar slide deck
• Create a series of animated Facebook posts about your upcoming online course or preview webinar
• Include a video in your blog posts or newsletter
• Create a testimonial video with photos and excerpts from course participants or webinar attendees to share on your sales page or as a social media post

Creating a course launch video can have huge benefits in your results. The reality is that most of us don’t have our own video department (it’s more likely that you are the video department). This means that your videos need to be fast and easy to create.

This Morning’s Assignment: Create 4 Videos in Less Than 30 Minutes Each

This morning, I sat down to play around with 4 video creation tools to see how fast and easy it could be to create a launch video. I think you are going to be excited to see that each of these tools I’ll share can help you create a video you will feel good about sharing with your audience on Facebook (or, any other social media channel).

I chose to create videos that could be useful in marketing the free webinar I’m leading this week, 6 Steps to Launching Fast, which kicks off the launch of our 2016 registration of our Launch Lab program, which starts next week.

I set a timer and tracked the time required for me to create each video. I also challenged myself to get to “good enough” and not obsess over perfection.  I set a maximum time investment for each video at 30 minutes or less.

Check out the results and my review of each app below.

4 Apps to Create a Course Launch Video in 30 Minutes or Less

App #1: Animoto

Animoto is a robust tool to help you quickly create professional video slide shows. Essentially, Animoto allows you to turn your photos and videos into an animated video slide show.

Cost: Free trial, then $22 per month.

Pros: You can customize using a library of available templates. The majority of templates offer limited customization such as choosing from a select number of font options. Animoto makes it easy to choose a soundtrack from their pre-licensed music library.

Cons: There are only 3 templates that allow you to more fully customize font, colors, etc. in order to align with your brand image.

Time required to create the video below: 29 minutes (whew, barely made the 30-minute maximum)

Here’s the video I created with Animoto:

App #2 Flipagram

Flipagram is an app that allow you to create photo videos and easily synch music.

Cost: Free

Pros: Flipagram is easy to use. It’s free. And, you can customize fonts and easily share to social media accounts. You can also record voiceover.

Cons: Limited ability to include easy-to-read text overlays. Any text you add to images would need to be formatted in the center in order for it not to be cut off in the video display (take a look at the video below to see what I mean by this). I would have liked to include a call-to-action like “Free webinar: 6 Steps to Launching Fast” and it wasn’t readable on the video.

Time required to create the video below: 11 minutes

Here is the video I created with Flipagram:

App #3: Ripl

I opened up the Ripl app on my iPhone. I quickly loaded up a few photos, typed in my copy into the prompts and included my link. This is a user-friendly, super fast tool to use. You can easily create a launch video right on your smart phone in minutes or create eye-catching posts.

Cost: Free (limited options) or free trial (7 days) and $9.99 a month (no contract)

Pros: Super easy to create animated social media posts with your photos, copy and links. There are available templates that you can quickly customize.

Cons: The videos are “animations” of photos you upload. You can include up to a maximum of 8 photos. Think of this more like an animated Facebook post that you can schedule and then boost to get additional traffic. The templates are somewhat limited and it might be challenging for you to align to your brand image completely. Ripl videos are ridiculously easy to share from your phone to your social feed. However, you cannot download the video to your phone to share on the free plan.

Time required: 4 minutes (seriously)

Here is a screenshot of the Ripl video as I created it:

 

App #4: Powtoon

If you have seen an “explainer”, a video with hand-drawn animation explaining a product, you know these can grab your attention. An animated video can be a great addition to your online course, blog post or social media posts.

I created a free trial account in Powtoon to test how easy it would be to design a quick video sharing an invitation to my free webinar. I chose one of the many templates in the library, customized the font, copy and objects in the template to create this video:

Cost: Free (limited options and the Powtoon logo displays) or $89 a month (or $19 per month if paid annually) *If you outlined all the videos you needed to create for a course or launch, you could easily choose to use this tool for one month. The month-to-month option offers flexibility. The annual package offer a much more budget-friendly expense of $19 a month. You can also pay per video export, which is 25 exports for $200.)

Pros: Explainer videos and animated videos are really hot right now. If you are not a techie, it is really amazing to be able to create a video like this in minutes.

Cons: The free templates are limited. There is a customize option which allows you to use the design tools and library of objects to start from scratch and create a fully custom video. This is a bit more technical and considerably more time-consuming to do.

Time required: 25 minutes

Here is the video I created with Powtoon:

Needless to say, you can always shoot a great video with your camera or iPhone. These apps are fun ways to vary what you are doing in promoting your course or program launch.

Let me know how you are using video to grow your tribe in the comments below.

PS>>Are you ready to launch your online course? Join me for a free webinar, 6 Steps to Launching Fast. Plus, you’ll be able to download our ‘6 Steps to Launch Your Program, Course, or Event..Without a Big List” process to use in your own launches. Click here to save your spot.