With marketing videos being such a strong content form right now, digital video production should be on the radar of any company looking to strengthen its branding and bring in new customers. But video marketing content varies so widely that it can be tough to figure out what makes some videos go viral and others fail to impress. Here are simple video marketing tips that can enhance the success of digital video production of almost any kind:
- Clarify Your Goals and Audience
The first step in making any successful video is to sit down with your marketing team or brand consultants and define a clear goal for the video you have in mind. Do you just want to make people more aware of your brand? In that case, an informational video on some aspect of your industry might be the smartest move (and have the not-so-small side effect of helping with search engine optimization, too). Do you want to convince prospective customers that they should choose your services, over a competitor’s? If that’s the goal, your content will need to be more specifically tailored to your business in particular. Do you want to demonstrate how a physical product works? In that situation, a short product video is the obvious choice.
It’s very important that you define your target viewing group in this process so that you can tailor a video to this group’s habits and preferences. You’ll also want to establish some concrete metrics to assess whether the video is successful in its goals. This will help you to adjust next time around.
- Insist on Quality
No matter what kind of video you’re making, quality matters. Internet viewers have vast amounts of video information at their fingertips, and they’re experienced enough to discern what content is well made and what isn’t. This means that unless you already have an in-house production team, you’ll want to hire experienced professionals to handle the process, and not one of your colleague’s nephews who happens to be “good with a camera.”
You shouldn’t, however, conflate high quality with a serious or boring tone. People on the Internet enjoy cute and funny content, and you should consider those as options as long as their tone doesn’t conflict with the topic of the video you’re making.
- Optimize for the Web
There’s no sense in putting digital videos online if you’re not helping people to find them. This might include social sharing as well, but overwhelmingly, the strongest tool you have at your disposal is search engine optimization.
If you search video SEO tips online, you’ll find some specific instructions on the kind of tags and descriptions to use. But since you’re presumably already working with a digital video production company to make the video in the first place, you might as well choose one with extensive online experience. That way, you can take advantage of years of trial and error, rather than relying on a few technical tricks picked up on Google.
Do you think these three steps will help you? Leave feedback in the comments.
