Today, brands can no longer get by using just written content and images. To interest and engage consumers, it is important to include live streaming, interactive 360 videos, augmented reality, and more
Video is the most important piece of the modern marketing mix. After all, it’s how people today are spending their time: watching online video content. 80% of businesses use video as a marketing tool and 8 in 10 people have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.
How to plan your brand’s video strategy?
Your video marketing strategy will ultimately be what guides you - your budget, your timelines, your production processes, your conversion metrics, and more. At Orange Videos, we suggest an easy framework to begin the thought process.
- 1) Begin with your video goals.
- 2) Identify your target audience.
- 3) Figure out the story you want to tell.
- 4) Be creative.
- 5) Create a timeline.
- 6) Maintain a realistic budget.
Let’s look at each one of these in detail.
What is the goal?
A typical marketing funnel has 5 stages and videos can be used in each of these stages. However, you need to develop your video content strategy to specifically target your customer in each of these stages. The goals you set for your video marketing should consider where your audience falls in the funnel.
Videos can be used for brand awareness at the top of the funnel, for providing use cases and social proof in the middle and to demonstrate product working at the bottom of the funnel.
Who is your target audience?
All successful marketing campaigns start with the same question – who are you targeting? It then follows what kind of content will resonate with them and where (channels) that they are most likely to be on.
The good news is that most products ad services are brought to life with an ideal buyer persona in mind. However, it makes sense to refine and answer specifics about what your video will say - the key message and the desired call to action, how will it say it - the style and the tone of the video and where will it be seen - the distribution to reach out to the audience where they are most likely to watch it, engage with it and then take action on it.
What’s your story?
Products and services are bought as much for their emotional benefits as they are for their functional benefits. Every product is a reaction to a problem and aspires to solve the problem for the user. The classic video storytelling framework works on the problem-solution structure. Here, a protagonist with a goal is the customer demographic you are targeting. The conflict is the customer’s pain point - where he / she is getting stuck and looking for a resolution. The solution is your product and the reasons to buy are the product’s features and benefits.
What are the creative requirements?
Are you going to create an animated video or a live-action video? The most important thing to choose is the style of the video. There are multiple treatment options available in both these broad styles. You must think about the creative roadblocks that might arise.
What’s your timeline?
Video projects usually take longer than expected. That’s because there are multiple steps involved in converting your vision into reality. Concept, script, graphics, storyboards, animations, music, voiceover - all need to go through multiple stages of approvals and work well together.
For planning a video, consider 3 timelines - video strategy, video production and video distribution.
What’s the budget?
This is perhaps the toughest question to answer. Without a proper budget, it is difficult to ascertain what can be delivered. Do remember a few cost factors - animation videos are priced by the duration of the video, whereas the major cost in a live action video is the number of shoot days and the length of the edit.
A low budget might be good to engage a freelancer, whereas an experienced agency like Orange Videos could be engaged for a larger requirement - corporate video film, brand videos, digital commercials and high quality animation explainer videos.
To know more about the cost factors in making a video, please get in touch with us.
