Video marketing strategy has become increasingly important with the growing technology. Today, creating a video has become easier than ever before. We see 8 year olds creating YouTube videos about their daily lives spanning from what they ate for breakfast to who their latest best friend is. Creating a video can seem as easy as just pushing the record button. But for a professional company who is trying to communicate with their customers, there are some important considerations you will want to make before you hit the record button.
Define your video objectives and goals. What do you want your video to do? Raise awareness? Drive traffic to a landing page? Motivate your customers to buy your products and services? Showcase your company as an industry leader? Differentiate your offerings from your competitors?
The list is infinite but your goals are not. Defining your video marketing strategy will help you to narrow in on the right message and provide clear calls to action within your video to help motivate and move your viewers into paying customers.
Define your audience. Marketing is the process of communicating the value of your product or service to a specific audience. Narrowing down your video viewer to a specific buyer persona rather than a generic audience will help you create a much more targeted and effective video. When you also match the goals you have planned for the video with the audience the video is intended for, you can set up clear metrics to be sure this video marketing provides the right ROI for your company.
Develop your message. This crucial part of your video marketing strategy involves planning out your ideas, themes and topics to communicate clearly to your audience. Ideally there is only one principle message but if you have a broader purpose in mind for your video then you may want to include two or three key messages. What are the things that you need to tell your audience that will resonate with them and what do you expect them to understand AND remember after they have watched your video. Obviously, the more messages you include the less likely your audience is to understand and remember any of them.
Determine your budget. It is impossible to know all of the hard costs up front, but determining a budget range will allow you some flexibility during production yet give you some context when meeting with vendors who are providing a quote for supportive services.
You might have to do some research if you have no prior experience with video production but at the end of the day you will need to have a top line for the maximum you are willing to invest in a video project. There is little point in discussing video with anyone if you can’t communicate a budget.
Get to the point quickly. In today’s world people are bombarded with information, images, ads, kids, work, partners, and world news about 100 times a minute. So, if you are hoping to capture the attention of an audience in this highly competitive information hungry and over-scheduled world, get to the point quickly.
In the first 8 seconds, you will want to be sure to capture the needs of your audience in a compelling way to keep their attention through the end of your video.
Decide your platform. When you are in the goal setting stage, an important part of your video marketing strategy is to consider the different platforms you plan to use to get your video out to your intended audience. But it is important to know that each platform has different communication expectations from its users so be sure to consider this when developing your video. If you plan to edit your main video to be marketed on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Website, Blog, etc… you will want to be sure that you can edit the video to the appropriate lengths for each platform, while still offering a strong message to move your viewers into customers.
Developing and producing a professional video to reach and engage current and new customers takes a lot more than just pushing a record button. If you are serious about adding video to your marketing strategy, reaching out to a marketing company for a video consultation should be your first step. Happy recording!!
