By Stanley Meytin
Settings goals is important when it comes to any marketing campaign. Once you define your objectives you can tailor your strategy appropriately towards achieving them and make tweaks along the way based on your success (or absence of success). Many companies seem to have long-established ideas about how to set attainable goals for more traditional campaigns such as newsletters, event sponsorships and emails but online video marketing campaigns seem to be a fairly new addition to the mix and sometimes there are unrealistic expectations for this medium.
Having a great videos appear to be only half the battle but if you don’t have the right objectives, you still won’t be successful. The goals you set should also be driving the content of your online videos as well as the way in which you promote your videos. Think about the questions we’ve stated below to help you gain insight in the goal-setting stage of your video campaign:
If you are focusing on brand awareness then the video content should be different than if you are introducing a new product. For example, an explainer video could be used for either objective: a video could explain how your product works whereas another could explain a concept or tend relevant to the space your customers operate in. Furthermore, you could promote an upcoming event or contest as well, which would again call for a different type of video and a different strategy surrounding where and how you share and promote video online.
Are you focused on getting as many views possible or are you trying to target a specific audience with your video instead? This ties in with the previous question to a certain extent as well. If the goal is brand awareness you’ll want a much wider audience than if you are promoting the fact that your CEO will be speaking at a certain industry-specific event.
You need to identify what the campaign is trying to accomplish and figure out how the video may help with long-term goals of the company. Another thing to keep in mind is how the video may impact other departments within the company such as sales, human resources or even product development. All of these questions will play a particular role in the long-term play of your strategy.
Metrics that are quantifiable are important. They can’t completely capture the success or failure of any marketing campaign but it’s vital to have set, measurable objectives that you can evaluate your results against. Whether the goal is to increase unique visits to your website, increase the number of Facebook fans, or increase the number of subscribers to your YouTube channel, it’s important to identify these goals from the outset and assign concrete numbers to them. That way you can tailor the way you share and promote your video accordingly and evaluate how your results compare with original objectives.
If you’re developing a video in-house, perhaps using a PowerPoint slideshow or something else you can generate on your own is an option. If you’re using an outside video production company, you may be able to go for something a bit better such as a whiteboard animation. You’ll have to consider the time needed to dedicate to the development of your video and just as importantly how you’ll be sharing and promoting your video afterwards.
After going through your goal-setting process and developing a plan, stop and go back to the beginning. Based on what you’ve learned about the time and other resources you believe you will need to execute the plan you’ve developed, think about you original goals and ask yourself if they are realistic. What kind of hypothesis can you make about your initial objectives?
Setting unrealistic goals or setting goals that are too easily attained can have a negative impact when it comes time to analyze the results of the video campaign. Before launching, make sure to look back through all of the details and confirm that the goals you hope to achieve and the plan you’ve developed are in line with one another.
By Stanley Meytin
Settings goals is important when it comes to any marketing campaign. Once you define your objectives you can tailor your strategy appropriately towards achieving them and make tweaks along the way based on your success (or absence of success). Many companies seem to have long-established ideas about how to set attainable goals for more traditional campaigns such as newsletters, event sponsorships and emails but online video marketing campaigns seem to be a fairly new addition to the mix and sometimes there are unrealistic expectations for this medium.
Having a great videos appear to be only half the battle but if you don’t have the right objectives, you still won’t be successful. The goals you set should also be driving the content of your online videos as well as the way in which you promote your videos. Think about the questions we’ve stated below to help you gain insight in the goal-setting stage of your video campaign:
If you are focusing on brand awareness then the video content should be different than if you are introducing a new product. For example, an explainer video could be used for either objective: a video could explain how your product works whereas another could explain a concept or tend relevant to the space your customers operate in. Furthermore, you could promote an upcoming event or contest as well, which would again call for a different type of video and a different strategy surrounding where and how you share and promote video online.
Are you focused on getting as many views possible or are you trying to target a specific audience with your video instead? This ties in with the previous question to a certain extent as well. If the goal is brand awareness you’ll want a much wider audience than if you are promoting the fact that your CEO will be speaking at a certain industry-specific event.
You need to identify what the campaign is trying to accomplish and figure out how the video may help with long-term goals of the company. Another thing to keep in mind is how the video may impact other departments within the company such as sales, human resources or even product development. All of these questions will play a particular role in the long-term play of your strategy.
Metrics that are quantifiable are important. They can’t completely capture the success or failure of any marketing campaign but it’s vital to have set, measurable objectives that you can evaluate your results against. Whether the goal is to increase unique visits to your website, increase the number of Facebook fans, or increase the number of subscribers to your YouTube channel, it’s important to identify these goals from the outset and assign concrete numbers to them. That way you can tailor the way you share and promote your video accordingly and evaluate how your results compare with original objectives.
If you’re developing a video in-house, perhaps using a PowerPoint slideshow or something else you can generate on your own is an option. If you’re using an outside video production company, you may be able to go for something a bit better such as a whiteboard animation. You’ll have to consider the time needed to dedicate to the development of your video and just as importantly how you’ll be sharing and promoting your video afterwards.
After going through your goal-setting process and developing a plan, stop and go back to the beginning. Based on what you’ve learned about the time and other resources you believe you will need to execute the plan you’ve developed, think about you original goals and ask yourself if they are realistic. What kind of hypothesis can you make about your initial objectives?
Setting unrealistic goals or setting goals that are too easily attained can have a negative impact when it comes time to analyze the results of the video campaign. Before launching, make sure to look back through all of the details and confirm that the goals you hope to achieve and the plan you’ve developed are in line with one another.
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