Any video producer recognizes that content is increasingly more important when it comes to video production. Consumers enjoy watching videos or movies on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or cinema halls. Surprisingly, emails are open more when they have a video in them.
Video production continues to be the most effective element when it comes to entertainment, digital marketing strategy, and advertising. At Spiel, video experts believe that video marketing is the best way to increase brand awareness, exposure, and conversions.
As visual creatures, humans find video more engaging, memorable, and widespread than any other type of content and is no longer an option but a necessity.
Studies reveal that 78% of people watch videos online weekly, while 55% watch them daily. By 2022, online videos will make up almost 80% of all consumer internet traffic. YouTube is gaining more traffic and is the second most visited site after Google. 80% of businesses use video in their marketing approach, a sharp increase from previous years.
People tend to spend considerably more time on sites with videos. At the same time, 95% of sales representatives reveal that video helps consumers understand their products or services better, in addition to increasing sales.
If it is so beneficial, why isn’t everyone producing videos?
Video production is not particularly simple or affordable and requires knowledge, experience, and skills. Notably, the most crucial part of the video production process happens before the camera begins to roll.
Before setting out to shoot, you must have an obvious and concise idea of what the whole process entails and how much it will cost. The planning, logistics, and pre-production stages of the video production bear the entire process’s weight, long before recording commences.
It is possible to create a fantastic video without concrete planning, but proper pre-production planning will save time and money. Fortunately, many marketers and production directors have gone through the stages and learned from their blunders.
Once you envision a good video project, you need to know how to go about it, and therefore, below is a list of tips you can incorporate to be beneficial to you.
Identify your target audience.
Audience identification is the first step towards content creation for your video production. Whether you aim to get better insights from Google Ads or more targeted videos, defining your audience is critical and requires a complex process of building buyer personas. Buyer personas are descriptions of ideal consumers likely to become loyal customers.
It may be beneficial to have an audience with varying interests as your targets as it will assist you become more creative in planning your video content. Regardless of the target audience, every entrepreneur must have a document detailing their buyer persona.
Rather than a generic audience, narrow down your video content to a specific buyer persona to enable you to produce a more targeted and compelling video. Creating a particular audience will allow you to develop authentic and relevant content. Marketing campaigns that gear towards including everyone results in fascinating no one.
Research on what will appeal to your buyer persona –what will excite, inform or entertain them. Please think of how your product or service will help them.
Clearly define your message
Although identifying your buyer persona is crucial, outlining your message is equally important. Don’t try to exhaust all the information in a single production, have additional video productions for different content. For instance, don’t create brand awareness and bring up a case study all in the same video. Personalize video with a special message and a specific goal is much more effective. That way, the audience will hear you loud and clear and understand your message.
Set a realistic budget
After defining your audience and tailoring your message, you need to develop a budget. Lack of planning the financial expenses during the pre-production stage may lead to overspending. Additionally, ambiguity will lead to an inability to manage expectations.
Some aspects of video production are costlier than others, making you overpromise and under deliver more so if you intend to go overboard and incorporate voice-overs or third-party interviews.
If you are considering minimizing cost by shooting a quick video on your smartphone with colleagues as the production crew, bear in mind that no video is better than a poorly shot video when it comes to brand perception.
Write your script, edit and re-edit it
Successful video production depends on a well-written script that endures numerous rounds of critiquing and revising before it is ready for implementation. Get first-hand information from other colleagues on your team who interact directly with the customers.
Don’t despair if your video script endures several drafts before being ready for the camera. A majority of successful video producers revise their writing several times. Have a firm foundation as you begin will guarantee success as part of your pre-production, production, and post-production plans.
Create your video’s branding element
Old-fashioned television commercials with blatant call-to-action are primarily receiving competition from shrewder, more subtle brand awareness campaigns. Subtly promoting your business can result in your target market surprising you with favorable results.
If you expect your video to generate sales, strategically include a-call-to-action. Ignoring will lead to a loss of direction and your video losing the opportunity to make a sale. For you to strike a balance between subtlety and over-marketing campaigns, first plan the video without any calls to action, but as the video is about to end, request for action from them such as clicking a link, visiting your website, or making a purchase.
Put out your most captivating content first.
Thanks to evolving technology and smartphones, the average attention span for videos is 10 seconds. Hence, viewers will rarely watch a video to its conclusion.
Luckily, this is not entirely doom and gloom for video producers and scriptwriters. The first few seconds provides a perfect opportunity to capture your audience’s attention giving them a clue of what’s in store for them if they choose to watch the entire video.
Benefits of working with a professional production company
Video production companies value their work giving it the seriousness it deserves. All videos are compiled in their database and used as online marketing campaigns. Furthermore, discussing your budget with them before hiring permits them to research, strategize and produce high-quality video content within your set budget.
Laila Azzahra is a professional writer and blogger that loves to write about technology, business, entertainment, science, and health.