Not having a video strategy in this era of online media can be extremely harmful for your brand. In terms of reach, nothing has potential for sharing like videos, and they can effectively and quickly communicate who you are, what you do, and why people should care. However, if you don’t know what you’re doing, adopting a misleading or amateurish video strategy could damage your brand’s reputation. Poorly made or poorly planned videos achieve little at best, and at worst could reflect badly on your company. It is well known in the marketing arena that companies are more willing than ever to spend thousands of their budget on creative campaigns and advertising across many different avenues, the main goal being to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, often with many messages being sent to the viewer. Instead of focusing on one key aspect or concept, scattergun approaches to advertising try to bolster the brand to seem cool or relevant in terms of trends, revolutionary in terms of product design, and invaluable to consumers or businesses as the key to success, happiness, or wealth. This is of course never all true. What many marketing departments are missing nowadays is that a creative idea on its own is not enough to build a consistent relationship with the public. One clever or viral ad will get you into the limelight for a day, but you will be replaced by an equally clever or funny video the next. Maintaining creative output will increase sales because the public will begin to recognise you, and once you are a known brand you start to become a trusted brand. The key to doing this is not to cast as wide a net as possible, but to use smart, strategic, focused techniques that target specific groups that your brand will appeal to. A video, even a video commercial, should be informative and effective at reproducing the values of the brand. These values are what people will latch onto and identify with. When we talk about video commercial we are more concerned with how creative or entertaining it is, or how many times it has been liked or shared on social media. However, thumbs up on Facebook do not pay the rent. When it comes to a video strategy with the aim to establish and maintain a brand, it is necessary to decide an editorial plan based on conveying the value of the product and how that product is the best fit when it comes to solving a specific problem or satisfying a specific need. Your message needs to be centred around helping someone, not selling to them. Once you’ve proven to be a company of quality, you’ll be held above your competitors. A flashy video that doesn’t say anything might seem slick or sexy, but ultimately they are forgettable, and don’t allow anyone to genuinely connect with what you’re about. If you can create a connection, your brand will be thought of before any others in your field, because you took the time to separate yourself from them. It is not the best product that necessarily sells more, but the first one that comes into the customer’s mind. This last sentence explains why a video strategy based on random trends or meaningless topics can’t be effective in the long term just considering the average length of the customer purchasing process.
A video strategy should be based on 3 elements:
Value. Your video has to be informative and intercept all possible objections your potential customer could make when it comes to buying your product. Prove your product to be better than the rest. Customers are very careful nowadays, especially considering the wide range of more or less similar products they can easily find online. What you want is to eliminate the need to search. Coherence. Your video should perfectly adapt to your company values, that are the values associated with your brand or better, with the perception people have on your positioning within the market. Start at where you are, and build up to where you want to be. Pretending to be something you’re not won’t work, people can see through a hastily built video designed to impress with no substance behind it. Consistency. Your video strategy should be consistent enough to create new value on a regular basis without being banal or boring. It is better not to publish than to publish something that undermines your credibility both in terms of value and coherence. Once you have a stable base of recognition, you can start rolling out more content because now you know what works. As always, keep a tight focus on what you want to achieve: what do you want to say, and who do you want to say it to? Now that you have just given a basic briefing on how to lead a potentially successful video strategy, I am offering you 20 valid reasons on why you should start today to produce value-driven, coherent video content to be published regularly and consistently where your potential customers will see and engage with it:
All this data leads to a clear conclusion: that people prioritise videos as a way to interact with and make sense of the world of information and business. If you are not involved in this process, you will be left behind. Videos do not require active effort like reading. Passive consumption of media is something that can be done over a short or long period of time, and allows information to be replayed as well as be digested at the watcher’s leisure. People are also far more likely to go back to an interesting video than an article they didn’t have time to read. Furthermore, reading involves a single sense while a video directly involves two senses: we can either watch a video with the audio turned off or listen to a video without watching it. We can’t acquire new knowledge by closing a blog or a book. People watch video at home, at work, on the train. How can a video strategy be worth it in terms of brand awareness to justify the means and the time you need to plan and develop it to be as successful as you want it to be? First of all, it comes through people having a spokesperson that represents the company’s values. People tend to like people instead of products. They trust people, especially people they have heard of, far more than the product itself. Secondly, if you are structuring your content in a way that is constantly adding value to your target audience it can become a powerful PR weapon, basically free, due to the people who will recommend your videos or endorse you just by sharing the video on their profile. Once a person has shared your content on their Facebook Timeline, for example, they are becoming a testimonial of your product and your credibility in front of all their friends. While this may be a small group of people, do not underestimate the power of a referral from a friend. The vast majority of people will be far more likely to use a product or service they’ve received a glowing review of from a friend, and will in turn be more likely to recommend it to others. Ultimately, YouTube is the second biggest search engine in terms of users’ research and it can give you a considerable hand when it comes to your search ranking on Google due to the major influence it has in SEO Optimisation. Ensuring people see you first will give a boost in business, and massively increase your credibility. Once this is achieved your brand will begin to expand itself without you doing anything, becoming an entity of immediate customer recognition, one that cannot be confused with any other. Visit our video production company Televisualise for examples of how we’ve made videos for clients including Dominos, Nationwide, and Ombar.
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AuthorVarious members of the Relations Group Team. Categories |