6 Easy Steps to Develop Your Video Marketing Strategy

Creating a successful video marketing strategy is the most critical step in developing videos that make an impact. Your strategy will be the blueprint that ensures you’re creating the best, most relevant videos to meet your business goals every time. It will save you time, money and headaches and help you end up with digital content that works for you and provides ROI.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

1. Video goals

2. Target audience

3. Topics

4. Timeline

5. Creative

6. Budget

Video goals

Why do you want to create video content? This may be the most important question to ask right from the start. Do you want to attract new clients, give potential customers important information for decision making, and convince them to make a purchase or inspire advocacy for your brand. You might want a video you can use to raise investment capital.

Before you begin your video marketing strategy, it’s important to know how each video will help you achieve these goals.

You’ll likely have more than one goal spread across multiple videos. That’s where a content calendar can help you determine how many and how often you need each type of video. It can also help you figure out where the videos will be used and when.

Target Audience

Once you’re clear on the goal, you’ll need to define the audience you’re targeting. What do you need your audience to do (what is the call-to-action), think, or feel after watching your video? If you can answer that, you have a solid foundation.

If you know your audience well – their business challenges, pain point, needs, or desires – you’ll be able to create a video that speaks directly to them. Creating a video specifically for your target audience will make it much more relevant and actionable to them, and therefore increase its effectiveness.

Who is it for? Consider age, industry, location, language, income, title, etc.

What is the purpose? Think about where this video will live in your buyer funnel stages: Will it be used for awareness to draw viewers in for more information, education to help them understand what you’re offering on a deeper level, at the point of purchase, or after purchase to increase loyalty and advocacy (think: a customer who has purchased from you and you’d like to include a video in a follow up email campaign)?

Where will they see the content? Will this video live on your company website and/or social media, be streamed at a live event, shared privately on a Zoom call, etc. Each platform where your content will be seen might have its own requirements for video content.

The audience should inform every decision you make, from the colors, location and fonts you might use to the channel that you share your video on and more. 

Creativity and Types of Videos

With your goals determined and your audience persona created, you’re well on your way to a sound video marketing strategy. When deciding the creative direction for your video, you’ll need to give your audience what they need so they can do, think, feel, or act in a way that will advance your goal.

Awareness: What kind of content do you need? You may need a video to demonstrate a problem your audience has and provide a solution they may not know about. This could be a demonstration video. Perhaps you have a live webinar coming up and want to include a video explaining what the webinar is and who it’s for. A short, fun animated video could work for this.

Consideration: Your audience may already know about you but they’re deciding between brands or providers. In this research phase, you’ll want to show them why your product or service is the best. A product video or explainer video might be a good choice. If you create a product video, don’t forget to make it look amazing in each and every shot.

Conversion: They’re ready to make a purchase and just need a final push or reminder to do so. Prove why they should choose your product or service over the competition by giving them testimonial videos or animated product reviews to convince them.

Timeline

The best-laid plans in the world can fall apart if you can’t achieve them within your timeline. A strategy planned well in advance can help ensure that you’ll have enough time before product launches or significant seasons to prepare your video.

When developing your timeline, consider the approvals your video will have to go through and how much time each will need. You should also try to identify 1-3 people on your team who are key stakeholders and can make final decisions all throughout the project lifecycle.

When planning, consider a separate timeline for each phase of the process: Strategy, production, distribution and others you might have.

Budget

Having everything above outlined in your strategy will be a good starting point for understanding your budget needs. This will give you a good indication of how much time it will take, the location, props, etc. You’ll know what you will do in-house and what you’ll need to outsource to your production company.

As every good girl and boy scout knows, failure to plan is a plan to fail. So make sure you have a solid video marketing strategy in place before you begin production. It will save you time, money and help ensure you’re creating videos that perform well for your goals.

Tips For Creating Great Employee Training Videos

Using actors, on-screen text and graphics is one way to create a learning and training video.

While videos have been a part of employee on-boarding and compliance training since the advent of the VHS tape, they’ve become much more critical - especially with remote staff.

Creating videos for employee training can save time for the company and employees. Employees can get the information they need quickly - and even in the comfort of their own home - without needing another employee to assist them or scheduling and attending a formal training period. Unlike those old VHS compliance tapes, modern employee training videos serve many purposes.

Uses for Employee Training Videos

• Onboarding & compliance

• Showing company culture

• Platform & product updates

• Frequently asked HR questions

• Sharing company information

• Safety and security guidelines

• Personal interactions with clients and other employees

Companies also record team announcements and events to share across the enterprise.

Video Training Formats

Unlike static employee training options like Powerpoint and handbooks, video allows you to ‘show and tell,’ provide demonstrations, and be an easy resource they can refer to.

When creating an employee training video, there are various ways to present the information. A few of these options include:

• Host speaking to a viewer

• Screen captures and voice overs

• Micro-videos

The type of employee training video you decide on will be based on the kind of message you’re trying to convey.

A hosted video for a legal training course for our LA County client.

With hosted video, you may have the speaker in an office or other environment speaking directly to the viewer and imparting news or information. This is an excellent choice for communicating directly with your audience.

Many hosted videos also include onscreen demonstrations, illustrations and screen sharing. This onscreen variation tends to be the preferred method for training videos, keeping the viewer more engaged.

For product training videos, a screencast recording of your computer screen may be the preferred method. If you are training on new software or platform, you’ll want to show your audience what you’re seeing. In these, you can have a host or just a narrator, depending on your audience’s preference.

If you are training employees on a single process or idea, you may opt for microvideos. These are typically only a few seconds or up to a minute long. With this option, you may create a series of process videos so employees can easily find and select the video they need. It also allows them to break the training up into easily digestible parts.

Role playing videos can be funny, serious, or in-between. But they’re always engaging.

Lastly, one of the most creative and involved options is the role play video. In this type of video, a scenario is acted out between actors or talented employees to demonstrate how specific interactions should play out. You’d use this method to illustrate sales techniques or social interactions, for example.

Scripting

Whichever format you choose, you’ll want to think about your employee training video in the same way a teacher might approach a lesson. To do this, include the following key sections:

• Introduction

• Preview of key points

• Main material

• Section Introductions (if needed)

• Recap of key points

During your video, you can also add key points onscreen as banners, with explanatory images or screenshots to help drive home the message.

If you’re doing a screen cast or micro video that involves screen recordings, practice going through the process you plan to show. It might help to think of how you’d explain the process if someone from your audience were sitting with you.

In summary, using video for employee training videos of all kinds is fast, affordable, and convenient for your organization and your employees. With so many different approaches available there’s a solution that will work for you.

How to Draft a Video Production Creative Brief

Any good marketer knows that the best way to ensure great results is to start with a good strategy. That begins with a solid creative brief. The more specific you can be in setting your expectations, the more likely you are to receive exactly what you’re looking for. This is true for video marketing and digital content too.

A video production creative brief - either created in-house or together with your video production team - will set the framework to accomplish goals for your business, and ensure that everyone is aligned on what, when, where, why and how your video will be produced.

The brief can be drafted various ways, but regardless of format, it is the plan to ensure your video is created exactly as you need it as the project heads toward completion. In short, it’s the blueprint everyone will follow.

Here are the considerations that your video production brief should include:

Your Audience

Who are you creating this video for? The more specific you can be at this point the better. A video made for teenage exchange students is going to be a lot different than videos geared toward CEOs of global corporations. Your audience informs many minor and major creative decision - from the setting of the video, the script language, the people who will be in it, the music, the color and type of fonts or graphics, and so much more.

Your Goal

What do you want this video to achieve? Are you trying to generate awareness for a new service? Sell a specific product? Drive attendance to an event? Video is a marketing tactic and each tactic should have one clear goal. Without that clarity you may end up with content that doesn’t help you achieve the results you need.

Example of what your brief might say: “Our goal is to attract new business for our service.”

This tells us that we need to focus on service benefits and ensure the video gives your viewers direction and a way to find out more about your service.

Type of Content

Chances are you already know what type of video you’d like to produce. It could be a talking head video, feature commercial, animation, explainer video, or a series of explainer videos. Each video best serves a particular goal and they’re filmed and edited differently.

Example of what your brief might say: Our video will be a testimonial from three satisfied clients highlighting specific benefits. Total runtime not to exceed 1.5 minutes.

Your Message

If your goal is to bring in new business, your message should be in alignment. You should be able to explain the core idea of your video in one sentence. Your message provides reasons why your audience should take the action you want: i.e. buying your product.

Example of what your brief might say: Our social media service saves marketers time by making scheduling easier, making editing faster, and creating more accurate measurements.

Distribution

A video production company will storyboard and tailor your video according to the channels and platforms you will show it on (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, television). It’s important to include any particular format you require as well as the estimated length of video you want. Some platforms require specific size and resolution considerations as well as an understanding of the placement of various call-to-action features.

Example of what your brief might say: This video content will live on our YouTube channel and be embedded on our website.

Deadline and Budget

Perhaps the most important parts of the video production brief are understanding how fast you need your content, and what your budget is.

Ideally, you should include a timeline for delivery of first draft, edits and final product.

Understanding your timeline and budget will ensure the team understands the quality required and the time frame they have to deliver the video. It will impact who they assign to your project and the set the expectation for the quality that can be achieved.

Example of what your brief might say: First draft 12 weeks, one week for each round of edits (2) final video delivered in MP4 format by the end of Spring. Budget $15,000.

Contact us to get started and we’ll help with the planning of your content and ensure a smooth process from start to finish.

Anatomy of a Product Launch Video Project

The Project

Our client Strato Footwear is launching a new line of footwear and they asked us to create a suite of video and photography content they can use on their social channels, in email campaigns and on their site. The deliverables include six 15-second social media ads, one 30-second product video and 20 photographs of the footwear and model.

The Important Stuff

The shoes are the stars of this content. So it was important to show them in the best possible light (no pun intended since we shot outdoors). Our client wants their audience to see the many different ways the shoes can be used; on the beach, hiking on trails, walking in the city and just taking it easy. Of course, they also wanted the shoes to look good in each shot, so that meant plenty of pauses to wipe them clean as needed from shot to shot.

The client wanted the content to be bright and the scenes to be energetic. In other words, they wanted more than just shots of the product sitting on a beach or on a sidewalk. After some discussion, it was agreed that we would bring on some talent to show the footwear in action in different scenarios.

The Shoot

Filming the content for our client consisted of 6 unique locations; a beach, an open-air trail, a pine forest, a boardwalk, a nature reserve and a downtown area. As filmmakers, you quickly learn that filming outdoors provides a number of challenges, and the one we had the least control over was the weather. Sometimes we just have to wait it out and that was true for this project as we had to reschedule 3 times to ensure a nice, sunny day.

We hired one actor to be in all the scenes but dressed him in different outfits for each location. It was important to make sure all the outfits matched the client brief about the type of clothing their customers might wear. For example, hoodies, sport shorts, classic tees, chinos, etc. in neutral colors.

We made sure to include close-up shots of the shoes to show them off, shots of the actor walking in the different locations, nice wide shots of each location to let the audience know where the scenes were taking place, and close-ups of the actor.

The Outcome

Our client has material for their launch and website, and some great shots of the new footwear. We can mark off another successful product video shoot with a happy client. We’re looking forward to working with Strato even more in the coming months as they extend their line of footwear to include new designs, new colors and new products.

Making Talking Head Interviews Look Great

WHY IS LIGHTING IMPORTANT FOR AN INTERVIEW?

When you see a corporate interview or a talking head video where the person is lit badly, you'll probably recognize a few things immediately. The person in the video is the wrong color. The windows in the background are so bright that they're making the person into a shadow. The colors are muddy. And it just doesn't look professional. And that means the brand in question (your brand) doesn't look professional.

These are not good things when you're trying to make a lasting impression on your viewers. There's a reason good lighting is so important - if your client, CEO, CMO or team members look good, your brand looks good, your video is more appealing and, whether they know it or not, your viewers will more easliy accept that you're a company or brand that can be trusted.

This is why we always bring lights to our shoots - whether we’re shooting in an office, a stage, a warehouse, a university, wherever.

Watch to see how professional lighting, a mirror and expertly-placed reflectors can make an interview POP!

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IS BAD LIGHTING ACTUALLY THAT BIG A DEAL?

Yes. Think about the commercials you see on television. Specifically, the commercials for the “old neighborhood car repair shop.” Have you ever seen one and thought to yourself, "this looks cheesy," or "this guy really seems a little untrustworthy” or, worse yet, “this company looks ridiculous”?

If so, it's probably the fact that is was filmed very badly, and probably with bad lighting. And that lack of professional video definitely affects our opinions in some way. The good news is that the reverse is true. Good production values = good branding and trustworthiness.

• 62% of people are more likely to have a negative perception of a brand that published a poor quality video experience.

• 23% of people who have been presented with a poor quality video experience would hesitate to purchase from the brand.

• 60% of viewers said a poor online video experience would dissuade them from engaging with a brand across all of its social media platforms.

• 57% of people are less likely to share a poor quality video experience. 

Although lighting in video production is extremely important, it's never the only concern. We always make sure the background is clutter-free so that it doesn't overshadow the subject. In this case, we re-positioned a lot of books, vases, statuettes and even moved a large-screen television out the way.

With everything in the right place, we were ready to shoot away. After a few quick fun questions to loosen everyone up, we got to the testimonial questions.

Sometimes it's hard to believe what the viewer sees on their screen when you know what the space actually looks like. It's part of that "movie magic" that is so much fun. It can be challenging, fun, aggravating or a breeze. But it's always rewarding!