Starting a video marketing campaign can be daunting if you’ve never done it before, and one thing we talk about a lot on the vlog is getting clear on your video marketing strategy at the very start.
Previously on the vlog, I’ve talked about the three end goals of any video marketing campaign. Figuring out which one of these best fits your strategy – whether it’s to teach, inform or inspire – is essential to setting the tone, content and style of your video marketing.
But what else do you need to think about when starting a video marketing campaign?
Whether you’re producing a series of video blogs, a new promotional video or working on your employee engagement, here are three things that you need to think about when beginning your video marketing campaign.
Hone your Key Messages
An essential part of any successful video production campaign is having a clear understanding of what your video’s key messages will be.
This will involve talking to all stakeholders in the project, both internally across departments and externally if you’re working with agencies or partners. Key messages shouldn’t be shoehorned in halfway through the production process, so make sure anyone who’s invested in the project gets to have their say from the start!
The problem here is that you may get inundated with opinions on what everyone thinks are the most important key messages for your project. And they may not necessarily match what your intentions are! So don’t try to make everyone happy! After all, everyone has their own opinion on what’s important!
Overloading your film with too many messages can make your film difficult to understand and leave your audience confused.
The solution? Try to keep the key messages in each film down to a minimum. Have a look at simplifying your messaging or splitting your project into a number of films rather than just one if you do need to include a lot of messaging.
As a general rule, the more messages you have in a video, the more bloated it can be. Every key message in your video should be partnered with a compelling call to action. So if there isn’t a strong enough urge to take action, maybe you need to revisit, simplify to lose a message altogether.
Remember, keep your video marketing goal in mind throughout this and don’t be afraid to have difficult conversations with some people too about what you feel is important for the project!
Get a grip of Your Budget
If you’re starting a video marketing campaign, have a chat with whoever holds the purse strings and get an idea of what budget you have to work with.
As we all know, getting money out of people isn’t always the easiest thing! But there is a simple way to weigh the odds in your favour so you can hopefully get all the cash you need for your project!
Get at least three quotes from different video marketing suppliers and present these to your boss. This will help you both clearly illustrate what the spend is for and justify the spend against your proposed return on investment. A good video production proposal should be easy to understand by anyone, whether they’re familiar with video marketing or not.
Understanding the costs that go into producing professional video – from script writing to filming, editing and video optimisation or Video SEO – is a good thing in itself, as it helps you anticipate and estimate costs of future campaigns too.
We always give clients a detailed breakdown of what goes into each part of the production process and the associated costs so it’s easy to understand.
We try and keep our project proposals free of technical jargon and include lots of information on the key benefits of a project as well as examples of previous successful campaign too. All of this information should go a long way in helping you get all the cash you need!
Understand How The Video Will Be Used
A crucial part of a video production strategy is understanding how your video will be used and distributed once it is complete. Video SEO is a big hurdle for a lot of companies because there are so many ways to distribute video. Plus, with it being the final part of the process, it’s often overlooked.
Think about your video – Is it meant for an internal audience only? Or is it a testimonial video that you can share on social media? Perhaps it is a testimonial, but the featured customer is sensitive about where it is to be shown?
This is where it’s important to be cautious of scope creep too. If a project begins life as a post sales or onboarding video for new customers, but further down the line your boss suggests adding in more salesy information into the script, the video ends up having too many messages and becoming bloated.
If the video ends up trying to serve more than one audience, this can add complications to how to distribute the video as well,. Keep an eye on the intended use of the video and make sure it doesn’t creep into an area it shouldn’t.
The way you distribute the finished video is important to get clear too. If you plan a big social media push, an email sequence or YouTube advertising campaign, make sure there’s the infrastructure in place to get your video campaign the best distribution it can possibly get.
If there are gaps in your organisation and you can’t distribute your video as you would like, have a word with the production company or agency you’re working with. A good video production company will help with things like Video SEO, email marketing etc to make sure your video gets out into the world and doesn’t sit gathering digital dust on your desktop!—
The better you understand, plan and implement these points when planning your video marketing campaign, the more likely your videos are to connect to your audience and give you a return on investment.
I always say that pre-production and the planning that goes into a video project cannot be underestimated, so investing the necessary time and effort to focus on your strategy is a guaranteed way to ensure that the rest of the project will go smoothly and accomplish your marketing goals.
