Video Production Strategies for Effective Brand Communication

Video has always been an key component of any marketing strategy, but it seems to have skyrocketed in importance over the past decade or so. This can be attributed, at least in part, to the rise of video-sharing platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels et al., along with the ease with which people can now shoot, edit, and promote their content to a large audience previously unimaginable. But, things are a little different if you’re a brand seeking to lift the number of eyeballs on your business or products, as people expect production values to be higher than the average Tik Tocker while somehow remaining seemingly low-budget in order to appeal to their demographic without looking like they’re trying too hard (a peculiar situation but one that has nonetheless come about thanks to shifting perceptions regarding what consumers want the businesses they patronage to be).

Fortunately, there are plenty of tricks that any brand, from the smallest solo entrepreneur to the largest, can exploit with finesse to help them create amazing content that speaks to their target audience and effectively communicates their message. In this post, we are examining several techniques that businesses can use to achieve positive outcomes on their video production expenditure to help them gain more traction among new customers and appeal to existing ones to come back and continue using their products or services.

Understand Your Target Audience’s Preferences

Perhaps first and main in your mission to generate videos that will actually have any chance of developing a positive ROI is to really take the time to understand your target audience and the types of content they prefer to consume. You may believe that you have already put in the research for this during other marketing campaigns, and while you can undoubtedly reuse a lot of that data if this is the first time you’re enacting a video campaign, it’s wise to gather more data related to how, where and why they consume the videos they currently do.

This will give you a massive heads-up before you dump a significant amount of your marketing budget into what can often be a lengthy and expensive process. If you visit The Jasper Picture Company website, a professional video production operation running out of Melbourne, you’ll notice that they mention there are several types of videos you can create, from staff training videos to social media ads, making it critical to understand how those your video is aimed at will watch, in what capacity and for what reason. Taking this step will ensure you can tailor your production to match what is wanted and that your budget is spent on the right style of shoot.

Define Clear Goals For Your Videos

It’s tempting for smaller operations to become starry-eyed about the fact they need to create videos to appeal to a new raft of potential customers, but without proper planning and an understanding regarding the reason why they need to do so, the best they can typically hope for is to gain a slack handful of views and a couple of possible conversions. In fact, without a clear plan, you can even run the risk of damaging your brand by outputting content that fails to align with your demographic and not having the foresight to include or omit the sorts of things they want to see. But that inevitably brings up the next unison, which is, how do you go about setting goals outside of simply wanting to lift revenue? Start by determining your target audience and their demands to help you specify precise objectives for your company productions.

Whether your whole marketing plan is brand exposure, lead generation, or generating sales, match your video goals with it. You can use the well-used industry acronym of SMART to help you with the process, which is to say they should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable,  Relevant, and Time-bound.  For example, instead of hoping for “more website traffic,” say, “increase website traffic from YouTube by 20% in the next quarter”.  Choose the main performance metrics, such as views, watch time, click-through rates, or conversions, that you’ll be monitoring.  Review your findings often to hone your plan and maximize the following videos for improved success.

Create Engaging And Relatable Content

Engagement is one of those fuzzy words that is banded about when discussing anything to do with marketing, specifically regarding videos. In fact, it is one of the pivotal metrics that YouTube and other video platforms use to measure how much airtime they should give to videos. This is because it tends to be a pretty good indicator of whether people are interested in what they’re watching. In order to lift engagement (outside of the other points mentioned throughout this post), you need to focus on generating content that is relatable to your target audience. In practice, this will depend on what you’re creating the video for. For instance, if it’s a training video to onboard new hires, it will still need to be engaging to avoid them from zoning out, but it will use a different set of tactics as a video developed for the purposes of brand awareness. To archive this task, you need to focus on the following:

• Storytelling: Beginning strong with a hook and delivering a gripping story can help to increase video engagement. Offering useful material and featuring actual people helps to establish credibility and keep viewers engaged.
• Consider various engagement tactics: Ask viewers questions throughout to increase video engagement. Add a clear call to action to direct users to the intended subsequent actions, such as visiting your website or subscribing. When they are prompted to take a specific action throughout the video, they are more likely to remain interested in sticking by.
• Technical considerations: Never forget about the technical side of video production, as this is just as necessary to its success as other, flashier tricks. This might show as optimizing for various platforms by tailoring video format, aspect ratio, and length to each specific platform’s requirements while also preparing eye-catching thumbnails that ac artistically assemblely reflect the video’s content and entice viewers to click.

Find opportunities to go for Storytelling To Connect Emotionally

This tip will depend heavily on the type of video you’re creating. For example, if you’re generating a series of videos used to train your staff on the importance of cybersecurity, you might want to avoid this step in favor of simply noting the facts (which will also help you to avoid the corny training videos of the 80s that tended to opt for storytelling when there was no need). But, if you want tot to ramp up excitement for a new product or develop a loyal customer base, you might want to see how you can tell a story that will connect with those you’re hoping to hook. We can see how this works when looking at adverts from some famous brands that have both succeeded and failed miserably.

On the better side of things, you can observe how companies like Apple and certain car manufacturers use a story to help show customers that by using their products, they too, can be a part of a larger family. Conversely, without correctly tuning into the current zeitgeist, you risk damaging your brand and causing controversy where there really ought not to be any. A great example of this is Jaguar’s rebrand, which has pretty much been universally panned, causing them severe damage in terms of how they’re perceived.

Increase the Smoothness of Videos For Various Platforms

Let’s be clear: the purpose of spending time and resources creating a video is likely going to be to put as many relevant eyes on your brand as possible. As such, you will need to make a call to see where you will post your videos in order to have the best chance of reaching your target market. This could be YouTube, Instagram Reels, TikTok, or possibly all of the above. Neethtelss, what matters most is that you optimize for whatever platform you want to post on. For YouTube’s main videos, this will be the traditional 16:9 landscape ratio, but for most of the other short-form platforms, you must make sure that any video you’ve made is able to rotate into a portrait aspect and still maintains all the relevant points you want to get across. Nowadays, it’s generally prudent to create two separate videos, one landscape, and one portrait, so that you can be 100% certain your viewers are watching your production as intended.

Analyze Performance Metrics To Improve Your Subsequent Productions

Once you’ve posted your video to whatever platform you have chosen, it’s not time to sit back and relax. As with any marketing campaign, you need to pay close attention to the data metrics of the platform offers so that you can polish and update your processes come your next attempt. This will show how users interact with your video, how many conversions you achieve, and what sort of comments are being said in the comment section. While the comment sections are notorious for their vitriol, you shouldn’t dismiss their points out of hand. Instead, take a proactive approach and use all the data you collect to come up with better, more targeted videos for your next campaigns.

Although the process of creating videos has become somewhat more accessible in recent years, it still takes a keen understanding of the what, how, and why to ensure an outcome that makes sense. By using these points and others that you gather from your own research, you should be in a better position to generate positive ROI and gain new customers into your fold.