By Tim Donovan
10/10/2018
By Tim Donovan
With video-forward social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Youtube dominating the internet today, you are beginning to think of utilizing video to attract your target audiences. Smart! Video increases conversions by an average of 86% when placed on a landing page.
But where to begin? Here are 20 questions that can help you determine what type of video would be best for you and how best to promote it.
Short on time? Download the questions here!
Knowing where your video will live and how it will be used is a great place to start. To figure out exactly how and where you’ll use your video, it’s best to identify what your overall strategy is, and where your video will fit within your buyer’s journey. For example, if your strategy is to generate clicks to your website, and your buyers are in the awareness stage, it would be wise to place your video online (ideally on a social media platform like Facebook).
Having a powerful video campaign starts with setting the tone properly. When deciding what kind of video is best for you, remember both your brand’s identity as well as your target market. For some brands, having the right video means focusing on being comedic and current. For others, this could mean being sophisticated and traditional. Overall, try to think about who you are and what your customers value.
Budgeting properly is crucial to having a successful video marketing campaign. This will enable you to understand where and how your video can be marketed. If your budget is small [less than $5,000], it’s probably best to create a short video and advertise it online. However, if you have a larger budget [$10,000+], producing a series of videos or producing a commercial for TV could be an option.
Choosing the right length for your video can make or break how successful it is. To find this out, consider what your goals are for the video, as well as where it will be placed. For example, if you want to increase your conversions through a Facebook ad, your video should be around one minute long. However, if your video is made to serve as a tutorial or demo on your website, it should be long enough to get your main point across.
The ideal amount of videos to make depends on the goal of your campaign. If it’s to guide your audience entirely through the buyer’s journey, then consider building a cohesive set of videos for each phase. However, in a scenario where your video has a singular purpose, creating one video will work.
What you decide to show in your video can strongly vary depending on your advertising goals. Typically, your goal in creating a video ad is either to promote your brand or drive demand.
When aiming to promote your brand through video ads, you want to effectively share your brand story. In essence, this means showing content which includes core aspects of your brand and examples of past experiences others have had with your brand. The plan for these videos is to tell a story which encapsulates who you are, what you do, and why it’s important.
If you’re looking to drive demand, your video ads should emphasize your product as well as the value it offers. This can be done through showing a quick demo of the product where it’s features and benefits are directly highlighted. Keep in mind, these videos are most effective when targeted well and/or shown to your leads.
Key to an effective video marketing campaign is understanding user search patterns. More specifically, it’s extremely valuable to know how many people are searching for things related to your product (keyword volume) and what exactly they are searching for (keyword planning). Prior to deciding what your video should be about, research should be done to identify a topic which has a strong amount of user interest and fits your sales needs. Once these aspects are sorted out, you can create a search-optimized video, leaving you with more interest and impressions.
After watching your video, you want your audience to have a clear call-to-action laid ahead of them. By encouraging your viewers to take further action, you’ll ensure efficiency in your sales process through strong communication and understanding.
Deciding what action you want your viewers to take completely depends on where they are in the buyer’s journey when they see your video. Ideally, whatever the action may be, it should be one which smoothly guides your audience through this journey.
Discovering your video’s audience lies in knowing what part of the buyer’s journey your video appeals to. More specifically, your audience should be the people who will benefit most from seeing your video. This includes anyone related to your product including your prospects, leads, and customers. After identifying who these people are, you can put together a plan for reaching them with your video.
Value creation is key to any advertising campaign. After all, if someone doesn’t perceive your offer as valuable, getting them to become your customer is nearly impossible. To ensure that your video is creating value, discover what your audience would want to learn more about through your video. If you’re advertising to people who haven’t heard of you, this could mean sharing your story and providing educational resources. If your video will be shown to customers, this could mean offering unique sales opportunities (discounts, rewards, etc.).
Choosing the right location for your video depends on both the tone you want to create as well as your goals. If your video is centered around explaining your product’s features, using an office space scenery or a minimalist white background may be best. On the other hand, if your video is aimed towards storytelling, you may want a variety of shots to pull from in different locations. Either way, it’s best to first identify what locations you have access to so you don’t come across any logistical issues along the way.
More and more videos with some form of animation in them have been surfacing. When deciding how much animation you want to use, consider where animation could add value for your customers. In many instances, animation is a great way to highlight the features of your product. Animation can also serve as a way to compliment any live-action features to your video.
To give you an idea of how powerful animation can be, here’s a recent motion graphics video we developed.
Just as not all videos need live-action in them, not all videos need animation. Gauging when and where you’d want to include animation in your video depends on what you want to emphasize and if you think animation can contribute to that. For many businesses’ videos, a combination of live-action and animation is utilized. This allows for the animation to support the live-action components of your video. Nonetheless, many videos rely on animation in certain situations as well.
Finding music for your video can be extremely tricky. Not only do you need to find the perfect song, but you also need to make sure you’re actually allowed to use it. Though you don’t necessarily need music for your videos, in most cases music can extremely enhance the quality of a video by adding to its atmosphere.
Luckily, getting the right song for your video nowadays doesn’t mean breaking the bank in licensing fees. Today, there are numerous royalty-free music websites you can get great music from for no cost at all.
Including people in your video is a great way to add an element of trust to the message you’re putting across. The people you choose to feature in your video can vary widely depending on your goals. If your video is more candid, working with internal members of your company can be a wise and affordable choice. However, if you want to add an extra spark to your video, working with celebrities or actors can be extremely helpful in doing this.
Here’s a video (you’ve probably seen before) which does a great job at utilizing their cast.
Depending on the type of video you choose to produce and who you intend to view it – you could need a small team of 1-2 people or a team of over a dozen to produce your video. Here’s a list of some people you may need to consider hiring for your video:
In this day and age, most videos are either consumed online via desktop or a mobile device. When considering where in the digital world to share your videos, there are a few options. If you’re looking to advertise to people who are unaware of your brand and product completely, targeted ads on Facebook and Youtube can get you great results. If your video’s audience is already aware of who you are, and actively seeking you, advertising your video on your website and social media channels will bring results, too.
Furthermore, knowing your buyer personas will help you understand your audience’s video consumption habits and allow you to advertise your videos accordingly. Below is an example of what a buyer persona could look like:
Checking in on your competitors and their videos will help you see what your prospects and clients could also be seeing. Edging out your competitors’ videos and advertising techniques could make your next sale. This means their video efforts are crucial for you to stay on top of. To find out what your competitors are doing, we suggest going to their social media and web pages to watch their videos.
Once you have an awesome new video, the next step is to make sure that it’s marketed well. For most companies today, this means advertising through Facebook, Youtube, and/or their website. However, other channels like cable TV also exist which are worth exploring if you have a strong enough marketing budget.
After finding out where to market your videos, getting people to watch them is another ball game entirely. We recommend having strong copy, as well as a great opening 5 seconds (pre-roll) to your video. Why 5 seconds? This is for two reasons. First, on platforms like Youtube, most video ads are skippable after 5 seconds. This means that if your first 5 seconds aren’t compelling enough to keep people listening, then your entire video may be skipped. Additionally, with the high volume of content on the internet today, many people will lose interest in any video after about 5 seconds if they don’t find value in them.
Tracking the efficacy of your videos has become much easier today through digital marketing techniques. By setting up tracking codes with tools like Google Analytics, Wistia, and Facebook Pixel, you can see exactly how many people watched your video and, if applicable, how many of those views led to conversions. When using a more traditional resource for your videos like cable TV commercials, tracing the effectiveness of your videos depends on measuring your sales and inquiries over time to see if they have led to positive results.
Getting started can be an overwhelming first step to take alone. If you are feeling this way, we would suggest working with an agency or professionals to get your videos done. By working with professionals, you can enjoy the process as a team of people work to develop a beautiful video that is focused on generating results. If you would like us to be part of your team, reach out to us and we’ll help you get there.
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