4 Crucial Steps for Kicking Off Your Next Video
We love making video. But we love making video more effective. Here are a few tips!
There are a lot of moving parts that go into making a video for your business. But despite the variety in different types of videos and budgets you could allocate, there are a few universal questions and processes that are crucial before launching into a video.
- What is the goal of your video?
- Do you want a person to watch this video, then head to the next stage in your sales funnel?
- Are you looking for people to better understand a tricky concept related to your product?
- Do you want to entertain and delight your customers?
Understanding what your video is trying to accomplish at a high level is important when communicating it to your video production vendor. At Houston Video, these answers are build the foundation on how to most effectively design and script the video, but also for tracking and analyzing performance to know if the video was successful.
For example, a metric for example one could be on click through rate. A metric for example two could be fewer support tickets. And for example three could be social media engagement, comments, or backlink shares.
Who is your audience?
This is a simple question that’s often overlooked. The benefits of modern digital marketing is you no longer need to rely on “one video that speaks to every potential customer.” It’s much more effective to segment your customers and create variations of a video targeted specifically to them.
Is your audience a new customer unfamiliar with your product line? Do they use a competitor product you are trying to convert? Are they highly technical or enterprise level executives? Are they an existing customer you are trying to upsell?
New audience arriving to the page via a targeted ad may need a little more introduction to your company and a lot more entertainment. Enterprise level executives expect more discussion on things like integration into existing systems and broad deployment training, whereas the technical purchaser expects performance comparisons and protocols.
Without understanding who is going to watch your video, it’s nearly impossible to approach the message correctly. But once you define and segment a target audience, the design of the videos comes through quickly.
Where will this video live?
Should this video be designed for your website? Will it be embedded in an email? Or will is it part of an ad on social media?
At Houston Video, when I know a video is intended for a blog or social media channel, I design a video to be shorter with a goal to drive click through. Whereas a product pages or educational videos can be designed to be longer with a more buttoned-up approach.
What kind of timeline are you working with?
Like all other projects, it’s important to understand the timeline you are working towards. Houston Video can typically turnaround a video in 2 weeks, can can deliver faster.
When you’re designing a timeline for your next video project, make sure to account for different phases that go into the video:
- Conceptualization
- Script writing
- Script feedback
- Scheduling and facility availability
- Editing
- Editing feedback
- Delivery
Over the years I’ve learned to add buffer for each stage of the process. The script will no doubt receive feedback, the talent (even employees and executives) may not get their lines on the first take, and the structure of the edit may need to be tweaked based on the product team’s perspectives.
If you have to move fast, consider scoping an idea to include fewer people so that you avoid getting bottlenecked by executive or facility schedules.
At Houston Video, we understand difficult scheduling and are very flexible. We can easily film on the weekends or evenings. Often times we prefer these times. We try to take advantage of the decrease in foot traffic in offices and facilities, allowing us to more freedom in locations to film with good audio and backgrounds.
Recap
So let’s recap. You know the goal of your video, the deadline, the audience, and where the video will be embedded. The only thing left is to find a video production team that can help you execute.
Houston Video specializes in video for small and medium business marketing. We apply the strategy and production expertise learned from filming large companies such as Exxon, Texas Children’s, and Academy Sports & Outdoors to your business. Our goal is to help you stretch your dollar and grow your business with effective marketing. Give me a call to schedule a free consultation.