With rapidly dwindling attention spans and the amount of content available online, brands have struggled to attract their audience. While getting audience responses with static content like images has been difficult, video content has increased.
Video content requires more time and production value than images but has proven to deliver much better results. Today, the correct type of video content can get more than 60x impressions than images for the same brand. This makes video content the lynchpin of today’s marketing strategy.
Now that we’ve discussed the clear advantages of video let us show you how to set up and run your video content creation pipeline!
12 Steps to Craft Video Content That Captivates Your Audience
1. Define Your Video’s Purpose
The first and most pivotal decision you need to make is to decide the purpose of the video you’re creating. While this question might seem simple initially, a video can accomplish various goals. Depending on these goals, several of the video attributes will change.
Let’s take you through a few examples to illustrate our point. A testimonial video will be short and not have that many effects, which can take away from the central message of the video. On the other hand, a product reveal will have several stylistic choices of elements that can leave a lasting impression on your audience.
2. Understand Your Target Audience
One of the most important parts of the video creation funnel is knowing who you’re creating the video for. Identify the audience’s pain points and how your product or service can solve them. Another strategy is creating detailed audience personas to help you focus your effort.
An audience persona is simply a list of preferences and traits of the average audience member in a particular category.
If your company is creating a video for an ad about your plumbing wrench, the target audience should ideally be a male in his 30s to 50s looking for home improvement.
When creating a target audience, include standard demographics and buying habits.
3. Create a Proper Script
It might surprise many, but even a short clip will need a script – yes, just like those Hollywood movies! The spoken word has a lot of power, and every video needs to start with a strong ‘hook.’ A hook is anything that immediately attracts the attention of your target audience and piques their interest in your services.
Ensure that there is a logical ‘flow’ throughout the video. The ideal flow for a video script is to start with the problem your brand helps with, the solution, and the benefits. Ensure that you keep your language simple and easy to understand so it reaches more people.
4. Decide the Best Style of Video
Though it might not be immediately apparent to people, there are reasons why a video’s stylistic choice affects its impact. With modern technology, video creators have several video styles that they can use. Videos can be live-action, animated, interviews, behind-the-scenes, and many more.
Several factors determine the style of video you choose, but the most important one is your budget.
If you’re a small—to medium-sized business, choosing an extravagant 3D animated video might consume your entire marketing budget! Remember that the budget does not dictate the effectiveness of the video—only the creativity does.
5. Ensure Quality Software and Equipment (As well as people!)
One of the most important things you need to consider is your choice of software and tools. Video content production is a specialized field with many elements. A video needs to look polished and reflect your brand values. To this end, ensure you have the best tools you can afford according to your budget.
Another factor to consider is the scale of the video production. If you need longer video content, you should hire experts to help you. Remember, cutting corners in quality will only ensure a suboptimal response from your audience.
6. Improve Storytelling With a Storyboard
The ultimate goal of any video is to help the brand tell its story. This is where creativity plays a significant role. The best part of the creative process is that it can come from anyone on your team! Experienced people and freshers are bound to have innovative ideas that can fuel your video content creation.
Storyboarding is a proven technique that makes the process much easier. It involves imagining the scenes of the video through rough sketches. Storyboarding can help decide on various aspects, including camera angles and dialogue.
7. Focus on Each Unique Platform
A key aspect of video creation that not many people know is that platforms dictate the video’s content. Each platform has its own set of video parameters that are displayed on the feed. And they can vary wildly depending on your choice.
A good comparison example is YouTube vs. Instagram. While both are primarily visual platforms, Instagram uses a more vertical alignment for its videos, while YouTube does both. Implementing unique video creation processes for all platforms is the best approach to ensuring ideal results.
8. Stay Ahead of Visual Trends
Video is a niche where trends can change dramatically, even briefly. Monitoring videos from popular creators and competitors can give you great insights into creating your own compelling video.
Whatever you do, don’t create videos that are cluttered with graphics and animations – they can lead to people unfollowing your brand’s socials!
9. Incorporate Clear and Distinct CTAs
Communicating the brand message to your audience is vital, but communicating the proper CTA ensures better metrics! The video should help the audience take action, whether by clicking on a link or signing up with their email.
Make the video compelling enough and add proper CTAs to ensure the audience does what’s needed.
10. Opt for a Strategic Approach to Promotion
The promotion process can make or break a video’s success. Share your brand video across all social media channels to ensure maximum reach. Remembering the ideal engagement times for different platforms can help you get the most shares.
Leverage paid ads according to your budget for new product launches and targeted promotions to get the best results.
11. Continuously Analyze Performance Metrics
With the advent of technology, video marketers have gained more insights through robust performance metrics. These numbers, accessible through social media tools, can help you identify your best videos and weed out lower-performing ones.
Review these metrics periodically to create your content calendar. Track ROI to ensure that you don’t exceed your marketing budget.
12. Ensure Video Content Gets Updated
The one step that many popular video creators and brands forget is to listen to their audience. A lot can be learned through audience feedback, both from viewers and internally.
Keep your video ideas fresh with regular format changes and ideas.
It is also a good idea to borrow a few things from your competitors—just make sure you give them your brand spin!
Video Creation FAQs
1. What are the best styles of video content for small businesses?
No single ‘best’ video style can be used for everything. It depends on what you want to do with it. Testimonials build brand trust, explainer videos aim to educate your audience, and instructional videos help troubleshoot.
2. Do I need a huge budget to invest in video?
The simple answer is no, but a big budget does help. To start, you get by with your smartphone and a few simple editing tools to create videos. Creativity is the key here!
3. What platforms should I create video content for?
As many as you can! Most popular social media platforms have a video component; any business that wants to do well should leverage them all. The disclaimer here is that you must consider each platform’s limitations and guidelines.
4. What free and paid tools can I use to create video content?
Several free video creation tools can help get the ball rolling if your marketing budget limits you. DaVinci Resolve, iMovie, and OBS Studio are popular because they’re powerful tools and don’t cost a dime. If you want paid software, Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro offer several powerful features.
5. How can I improve the reach of my videos?
Here are a few things you need to remember to ensure many people want to watch and share your videos.
- Optimize your video titles and descriptions for SEO.
- Ensure you add subtitles so people can watch it with the volume off.
- Leverage the right social media influencers for your brand.
- Share your videos consistently across multiple platforms.