24 Jul MEET THE DEMANDS
OF MODERN MARKETING
There are videos everywhere you look now.
So many brands use videos for marketing – and this comes as no surprise.
Videos are a powerful way to get seen, heard and understood within seconds. Using a creative combination of appealing visuals, enticing audio and impactful text, videos offer the perfect synergy that enable businesses to:
• grab attention,
• convey appealing messages and
• leave a lasting impression on customers.
Yet, there’s a BIG ‘but’ coming here.
While there is an abundance of video content, it doesn’t mean they’re all good. In fact, most brand videos get outright ignored.
Why?
Well, sure, it’s easy to set the phone up, hit record and talk until you’re blue in the face about your products and services. But whether that works for your audience is quite another story.
Here’s the video content secret: it’s all about the prework.
Without an effective video content strategy, brands will always find it hard to create engaging videos that stand out and add value to customers.
So, let me ask you:
How can you avoid producing low-impact videos that are easily forgotten?
How can you produce videos that are compelling, creative and generate excellent results?
In this article, I will share 5 of my very own video tips to help truly ambitious brands create hardworking videos that cut through the noise and drive real results.
How to produce video content that sets ambitious brands apart
To keep your brand in front of audiences and be authentic in a noisy market, you need to do much more than just hit the record button – you need a strategy.
Let’s delve into the 5 important factors you need to consider and strategically plan for when it comes to video creation.
1. What you want in a video may be different from what your target customers need.
Many business owners and CEOs use videos to build awareness around their brands. They believe they know their products and services better than anyone else, so they jump in and take charge of talking about the value they offer.
However, this is not always effective. Business owners and CEOs can ramble on and on about the benefits and features their products provide, but it won’t lead to conversion unless it’s conveyed in a way that captures the interests of customers.
Before you even proceed with video production, remember that videos must always be customer-centric. You’ve got to be thinking:
What is our video designed to do?
Who am I talking to?
What do they need?
Who is the best person they will listen to?
Regardless of your solution, it’s challenging to make a sale if target customers feel that they are just being lectured to by the owner of a business.
So, with a clear understanding of your customers’ pain points and goals, you may want to consider featuring other people in your brand video. This may include experts in the field, your committed employees, famous influencers, satisfied clients or a shopper they identify with.
Want to review your current communication strategy? Get in touch now.
2. Have a powerful opening, a stronger ending and a consistent message.
As the first few seconds determine whether or not your audience will continue watching, it’s crucial to pay close attention to your video’s intro. It should leave people craving to know more.
In the same way, your ending should be a powerful punctuation to motivate people to act. The goal here is to leave a memorable impression in your customers’ minds.
When it comes to video scripts, getting straight to the point and having a clear brand message are also crucial.
Just look at it this way: if you’re throwing one ball to your customer, it’ll be easier for them to catch it. But if you throw more than one, they’re going to drop all the balls and catch nothing.
You can’t also expect your customers to get your main point if you’re pitching so many messages to them.
It’s in this effective video scriptwriting that I believe brands can focus on differentiating themselves from competitors.
For instance, you can talk about the reasons why customers should care about your products and services as compared to others in the market. However, it’s even better if you, say, add proof in your video to make a statement.
Are you ready to craft your unique sales story? Let’s do this!
3. Be intentional about the communication cues you want to convey.
Think about all the direct and subliminal cues your audience picks up when watching your brand videos.
• Do they reflect the message you want to relay?
• Are they consistent with your tone of voice and overall branding?
• Are they deepening your customers’ trust?
Keep in mind:
It’s about keeping only the relevant scenes and eliminating all the boring cuts that just make your video drag.
Everything that encompasses your production values – from visual quality, audio quality and production design all the way to technical execution and acting and performance – should positively influence your viewers’ thoughts, emotions and behaviours.
Whether these cues are intentional or not, you should always be deliberate and thoughtful about what you’re communicating and their potential impact on your audience.
For instance, if you want to be seen as a high-end brand, you may want to start investing in high-quality video production to justify your premium prices.
Want to start creating quality video? Get in touch today.
4. Timing is everything! Effective videos are neither too short nor too long.
You can create the most informative and value-adding video, but it won’t matter if you can’t draw interest from your audience or get them to stay longer than 5 seconds.
This is where having the appropriate video length and duration helps! With people’s short attention spans and always on-the-go lifestyle, brand videos must be not only engaging but also easy to consume.
As such, in video storytelling, I always recommend the in late, out early principle.
It states that scenes should start at an already significant moment (in late) and end before all details are fully resolved in customers’ minds (out early).
The “in late, out early” concept focuses on making your video engaging and dynamic through a meaningful but concise narrative. It avoids relying on excessive setup, too much information, prolonged storylines and unnecessary conclusions.
It’s about keeping only the relevant scenes and eliminating all the boring cuts that just make your video drag.
To make the most out of them, remember that videos should be:
• long enough to be sliced and diced into multiple formats and edits
• but also, short enough to leave viewers wanting more.
Ready to get “in late” and “out early?”. Let’s get you going.
5. Seek the help of video creation experts for the best results.
Strategy and creativity are two factors that can transform subpar videos into cracking creative content that gets clicks.
And these are the exact things that professional video creation experts, like P2, deliver. Combining strategy and creativity, our team provides videos that meet the demands of modern marketing to help you:
• reach fragmented audiences,
• quickly build awareness,
• offer value through video content,
• achieve more conversion, and
• drive ambitious businesses forward.
The expertise of video creation experts is what truly sets brands apart from their competitors – and customers notice the difference.
I always say: hiring video professionals is a smart long-term investment.
Video creation experts produce quality video content that is tailored to your customers’ needs and reflects what you stand for as a business.
At P2, we create engaging videos that suit your budget and can be used across multiple formats and different platforms to help you benefit from video – today and tomorrow.
Your ambitious brand deserves to have creatively cracking videos!
Fortunately, you can rely on our video creation experts at P2 to make this possible.
Our team at P2 guides businesses through the cluttered world of video content, allowing brands like yours to stand out and achieve success.
If you want to build a compelling library of videos that cut through the noise and drive your business forward, contact us. We can’t wait to unleash our creativity and video content strategy to provide the branded videos you deserve.
You can also call us for a no-obligation, bespoke Communications Audit that adds clarity and conviction to your video creation.
Ready to turn ambition into reality? Let’s do this.
P2 Content Creators
Video for Ambitious Brands