Video continues to take over the digital world. In 2019, more than 85% of businesses publish video content – up from 75% in 2018.
These days, creating marketing videos for your brand is not a matter of choice – it’s a necessity.
Wondering how to make a great marketing video for your business or product? Well, you’re at the right place to find that out. We asked experts to share their number one tips to make a great marketing video. Read on to learn what they said!
1. Study your target audience
Before creating a marketing video, it’s crucial to figure out who you are making it for.
Who is your target audience? How and where will your audience be watching the video? What are their preferences in terms of video style and message delivery?
Without knowing specific answers to these questions, you’re putting your video at risk of being irrelevant to the potential viewers.
Your video must be authentic, relevant and relatable to your target audience. You need to understand what your target audience derives value from and what makes them tick.
How are they influenced, what are their needs, and why should they care are just some of the critical questions that must be answered. The more you know about your audience, the better you will be at crafting the right message with the right tone in the right format at the right time.
2. Grab viewers’ attention in the very first seconds
It’s no secret that the human attention span has shrunk dramatically over the past decade.
Nowadays, to hold viewers’ attention for more than a few seconds, you need to capture it right away, at the very beginning of your video.
The first few seconds are vital.
For one, it’s important that the beginning catches peoples’ attention immediately, otherwise they will close the video within moments. And secondly, viewers need to be able to grasp your message within the first 20-30 seconds of your video.
There are several ways to grab viewers’ attention from the very beginning of your video:
- Promise a gripping story;
- Surprise viewers with an unexpected character, message, or scene;
- Illustrate the main point of your video as soon as possible;
- Present a problem that your audience may be facing, and offer a solution.
3. Incorporate storytelling
There has been a lot said about the immense role of storytelling in successful marketing videos.
Nothing is more effective than an original, relatable story that your video tells. Not only storytelling adds a human element to your video, but also builds consumer trust. Is there anything more important for a brand than that?
Tell a great story.
Stories transport viewers emotionally, prompting them to share. They are memorable, compelling, and inspirational.
Start with a hook to grab your audience’s attention. Build the story arch to fit your narrative. Use visuals and music to evoke different emotional responses in your viewers. Finish with a clear call-to-action that fits your goals for the campaign.
4. Define your video goals
Making a video just for the sake of having one is simply a waste of resources.
Keeping a goal in mind when planning, shooting, and promoting a video is crucial to the success of your video marketing campaign.
If you start from the right place, knowing what you want your video to achieve, then you have a solid foundation to set measurable targets that will help you assess how successful the video is and what your next step should be.
Otherwise you’ll end up just spending time, effort and money on a video that might not even be necessary and having no way to assess how successful it has been for you.
Keep an eye on these key metrics when setting goals for your video marketing campaigns and evaluating performance of your videos:
- Play rate
- Watch time
- Shares
- Comments
- Likes
- Click-through rate
- Traffic sources
- Viewer demographics
5. Keep your video concise
As you already know, the human attention span is short. People just don’t have time and patience to watch long marketing videos too often.
Instead of overloading your video with too many unnecessary details and plot twists, apply the KISS principle: keep it short and simple/sweet.
Where and when possible, we should keep our promotional video content short and sweet.
So, if you can make a shorter and snappier version that communicates your key messages, with impact, and in less time, then generally it makes it much easier and more enjoyable to digest in this crazy age of endless digital distractions.
6. Meet the needs of your audience
The primary goal of any business is to meet the needs of its audience.
This rule applies to marketing videos, too. Remember: behind every great marketing video, there is a problem that this video helps to solve.
Take what you know and translate that into videos that solve a real problem. Have the courage to answer the questions no one else in your market will.
When you genuinely help others improve their lives, their businesses, and their outcome… you gain a loyal audience and potential customer for life.
7. Plan the promotion of your video ahead
Promoting your marketing video is no less important than actually creating it. What’s the point of making an amazing video if nobody sees it?
Successful videos don’t just become successful by chance. They are part of a marketing plan and this plan should include how you will promote this to your target audience. This could be through blog posts, feature articles, promoted posts, newsletters, youtube channels, regular updates, joint ventures with other businesses etc.
It really is unlimited but if, like most people, you leave it up to only one promotion avenue or worse just upload to the internet and hope then you will end up disappointed no matter how good the video is. Plan, Create, Promote, Measure, Repeat.
Video marketing experts claim that you should spend at least as much time promoting a video as you do making it.
To make sure that your video reaches its audience, plan the promotion of your video ahead. Here’s the minimum checklist of what you should do after creating a video:
Summing Up
You don’t have to spend an enormous amount of time and money to create a great marketing video. Just follow these tips from the experts and reap the rewards of your work!
Do you have any effective marketing video tips? Make sure to share them in the comments below!
