Video Strategy: Getting Through to the Why

Why You Need a Video Strategy

This is where we’re supposed to lead with jaw-dropping statistics about how we’re only a year or so away from the point where video accounts for more than 80 percent of Internet traffic. You already know this.

What you’re struggling with – and what we want to talk about instead – is about how you can set yourself up for success as you enter into the slipstream of content marketing with video. Yes, you need video. But do you know why?

It’s not time for “how” or “what” yet.

Want to know the top way to drive up costs while at the same time diminishing the effectiveness of video marketing? Approach it with a “one-off” mentality. Coming in a close second is the fallacy that investing big bucks to get high production value gives you a leg up on your competition.

You need a plan. The action steps of your plan should follow a policy. The results should be measurable. Notice we’re nowhere even close to talking about scripts production yet? Those are action steps. First you need to identify and implement the decision-making that determines these action steps. Start by coming up with confident answers to these questions:

• Why do you want to communicate with video?
• What do you want video to accomplish for you? Get past epic objectives like, “increase brand engagement,” unless you also will implement a way to specifically measure it.
• What are the explicit pain points or problems that you want video marketing to help you with?
• How will you hold the reins on consistency, so your videos are in alignment with the rest of your marketing material?

The brainstorming you do to come up with answers is in service to a video marketing mission statement. Aim to distill it all down to a one-liner that explains what you want to accomplish, for whom, and why.

Our company will use video for [your target audience] to [the behavior or action you want your target audience to do].

You may discover that you’ll want video to help you with multiple target audience that drives them to do a variety of things. Identify this and get to the point where you have your collection of one-liners. But, don’t break out the champagne yet. This isn’t your strategy. It’s the mission statement (or statements) that will determine your strategy.

Focus on Pain Points for Video Strategy

Visual storytelling is unparalleled in its ability to educate and offer perspective because it allows you to show a product or service in action – or it helps people put a brand into their worldview. No other type of marketing does a better job of communicating the end state – the WHY – of a product or service.

Successful video content pays particular focus to pain point or problem before then moving the visual storytelling along to share a solution. This focus on pain points is an effort you will need to perform on your own organization. You’ll have to look inward as you look outward. It’s at this intersection where the traction happens.

Over time, we’ve identified a series of common pain points many organizations share as they seek to integrate video into their marketing. As we’ve worked with companies, we’ve discovered that establishing a video strategy removes these pain points. They aren’t obstacles, by the way. Each one will challenge you to search for the WHY. Ask yourself these questions.

Are you reactive?

It often comes down to bandwidth and resources. Research, product development and launch are priorities. Then it’s time to get a handle on how video can be used for marketing. To be fair, you might already have decided upfront – during the preliminary stages – that video will play a part in your upcoming marketing.

A strategy that includes a proactive approach allows for the process of visual storytelling to develop in tandem with a new branding effort, or with a new product or service. As you’re determining its relevance to your customers, your visual storytelling preparation has time to find the right approach.

It’s not an afterthought. One example where this frequently occurs is an event. Video simply captures the event when it’s an afterthought. An effective strategic approach allows video to actually be a part of the event itself.

Do you give yourself enough time?

This might sound like an echo of the afterthought concept. That’s reactionary, while this is more about deciding you have insufficient time to develop and produce video to complement your marketing plans.

Not enough time, in this case, means you think it will take too much time and resources to create visual storytelling that’s on par with your brand. This is certainly true if you haven’t strategized your plans for video. A planned approach prevents the need to start from scratch with each video project. The pain point dissolves when you move away from the one-off view of what’s to be accomplished with visual storytelling.

What’s your plan and how will you measure its success?

How far would you get with the CFO or decision-maker at your company if you presented a plan that had no demonstrable return on investment? Developing a video strategy puts a business case in your hands.

The rest of your inbound marketing already accompanies customers along the buyer’s journey. Your video content strategy should do this, too.

• At the awareness stage, you’ll need educational videos that raise your visibility as an expert that understands the problem prospects are trying to solve. Explainer videos are highly effective for this purpose. You’ll embed ways to measure the impact on new visits to your business or digital presence.
• At the consideration stage, it’s time to educate prospects about solutions for the problem they’re trying to solve. How-to videos are highly effective for this purpose, showing the process for a solution and increasing their trust. You’ll embed ways to measure online conversions or qualified leads for your business.
• At the decision stage, it’s time to show potential customers that they’re not alone. This is the push to help them fit your brand, product or service into their worldview. Customer testimonials work well for this purpose, as do company stories. People want to know the humans behind a brand just as much as they want to watch a video showing a product or service solve their problem. You’ll embed ways to measure sales that are a direct result of this visual storytelling.

You can manage what you measure. You also can calculate a return on investment. Obviously, the one-off approach to creating a video wouldn’t give you the specific types of visual storytelling you’ll need to use video marketing to accompany people on the buyer’s journey.

Defining their path and where you want video to meet and accompany them helps you to create a strategy that rewards you with efficiency. You transition from thinking there’s no way you could afford to create all these videos to realize that you are planning the process of video production that will result in an array of messages.

What are you really measuring?

Let’s talk about measuring success. Overall views is a strong key performance indicator for a video created to accompany people who are at the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey. But that’s likely not what moves the needle when you’ve got people who are at the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey.

Before you even get to the creative direction and aesthetic values, you must determine how you will know if this particular video is shepherding people toward the behavior you want from them. What’s your goal? How will you measure the outcome? Don’t confuse these measurable goals with your strategy – which the approach you’ll take to achieve those goals.

Do you understand the cost?

Video production is expensive, but probably not for the reason you might expect.

In a perfect world, you’re just like Dollar Shave Club CEO Michael Dublin, and produce a low(er) budget video that goes viral.

A decade ago, Slate Magazine investigated the chances of a video going viral. It’s only become because of the explosive growth of user-generated content (UGC) on social media platforms. As StackAdapt concludes with their infographic, the odds of video virality have become so great that organic distribution has given way to paid strategies to reach relevant audience.

There’s no longer any correlation between production value and popularity – but there is a direct association between cost and objective. Video creation becomes expensive not so much because of production, but more because the lack of an overall strategy limits the ability of a production company to efficiently capture the visual storytelling elements that will be used as foundational building blocks for entire campaigns.

This forward-thinking approach also helps video production crews capture what’s needed for the growing number of platforms people are using to watch visual storytelling. Expensive is when the ends don’t justify the means. Video isn’t too expensive when you incorporate efficiency.

Beware of the justification that one or two videos with multiple messages for multiple audiences is a way to increase the focus on production value. It results in beautiful confusion.

Before Writing the Video Script

Video marketing is a strategy, but in some ways it’s also a goal. The pieces of visual storytelling you create represent a deep dive into understanding ways to engage prospects and transform them into customers. You have to know why you’re creating them before you can get to how you’ll create them.

Video marketing doesn’t begin with a script. It commences with a strategy that helps you reach the goal of creating a cohesive and measurable way to use visual storytelling to move different people along their journey from discovery to purchase, while keeping in mind that you’ll meet them on that journey in different places.  There are many themes and genres for video production.  In fact, True Film Production provides over 15 different types of video production.  Contact one of our production offices today to see if we’re the right fit for your vision.