Creating Video that Delivers – Our 5 Secrets

George Shipley — November 20, 2017

— November 20, 2017

When people see video content they like, they are 41% more likely to seek future content from that brand and 37% are likely to purchase your product or service! Video is a hugely powerful marketing tool. But its not simply about being entertained, audiences want brands to provide them with regular help and guidance through clear and engaging content.

All of this points to brands having a dedicated video content strategy. But this is a challenge that can feel quite daunting, so we’ve broken it down to 5 key things you need to consider.

Frequency

Brands need to produce regular video content to stay in the front of their audiences mind. But this can be enormously challenging. The key here is to develop a central campaign idea that will give rise to plenty of potential content development, whilst also providing a framework for other creators to come in and create further.

Cost

Getting that frequency and quality of content within the annual budget is another huge challenge for brands. The key here is to carve the overall budget to align with major marketing objectives. It sounds obvious but understanding objectives will help you prioritise and spend well. By thinking about your content calendar holistically you can also maximise filming opportunities, making your budget go that much further.

Quality

You need to produce video content (and lots of it) that is of a quality that befits the brand you spent a lot of time establishing. If you don’t, you’ll actually end up negatively affecting your brand with the video you produce.

The following tips can really help:

1. Be smart with the way you plan your video content calendar. Try to film multiple pieces of content in single shoots.
2. Challenge your creative partners to be truly unique and embrace ideas that use innovative techniques and be open to creating content differently.
3. Invest time in producing video brand guidelines. Commit your brand’s identity on video to a specific document that sets a clear standard that all suppliers can adhere to, giving your video content a consistent quality across the board.

Engaging

Producing engaging and relevant content is a challenge for 61% of content marketers (Content Marketing Institute, 2016). Brands need to know to what their audiences are hungry for and serve up content that satisfies those needs.

Think about.

1. HUMAN TRUTHS: This is about finding themes and ideas that audiences will identify with. The bigger picture.
2. INTERESTS NEEDS PASSIONS: If we want people to engage and actively seek out our content, we need to give them what they’re hungry for. A reason to care. Content that talks specifically to their passions, needs and interests will engage.
3. GENUINE STORYTELLING: This means telling authentic stories. Structure a narrative so it satisfies and engages the viewer on an innate human level. The actual telling of the story is open to any number of creative treatments, which you can apply to a surprising number of different content types.

Activation

Ironically last, and frequently last thought about – how are people going to find and engage with this content. With 68% of brands seeing their content as ineffective in terms of engagement and correlated impact there is clearly a disconnect between content and marketing.

Think about…

1. Your customer journey, so you have a comms calendar with correlating CTAs that nudge toward overall marketing objectives, and can gauge pre-sales, engagement etc.
2. Channel selection is critical. Targeting information about your audience should give you some clear ideas of which channels you need to use to engage. Its vital that your content is created with these channels in mind.
3. Connecting PR, media, customer communications, partners, and events teams to ensure maximum awareness and distribution of content via owned channels i.e. YouTube, website and twitter

Essentially it’s about distributing the content to make sure it is discoverable for consumers, and seeding it in the right places to maximise its exposure to the right customers. It’s vital that this thinking is done up front, not after your video content is created.

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