How to Make a Brand Video That Customers Actually Watch

July 28, 2019 - 13 minutes read

Your step-by-step guide to brand-boosting video success.

There’s no denying it: humans are visual creatures. Studies suggest that 65% of the world’s population digests imagery more effectively than text-based information or materials alone.

When it comes to promoting your business to prospects, producing an inspiring targeting brand video will prove incredibly effective in driving engagement and encouraging conversions.

Video marketing is a powerful tool, and by creating head-turning brand videos that speak to your target audience, you will reap great rewards.

Here, we’ll explore the importance of video marketing in the digital age while walking you through the essential steps you should follow for supreme promotional success of the visual variety.

Video marketing is, without a doubt, one of the biggest reasons I’ve been able to create multiple six-figure businesses online.”—Katie Freiling, author and entrepreneur

 

Video marketing insights you should know

 

Before we get started with our branded video marketing guide, here is a curated selection of insights that will put the power of this most powerful of promotional mediums into practical perspective:

  • 54% of today’s consumers want to see more video-based content from the brands they like and follow. (Source: Social Media Today)
  • Recent studies show that video is the number one most popular kind of content to consume on social media platforms. (Source: Pew Internet)
  • 88% of today’s video marketers are more than satisfied with the return on investment (ROI) for their efforts. (Source: Oberlo)
  • Brands and businesses that produce branded videos enjoy an average of 66% more quality leads per year compared to those that don’t. (Source: OptinMonster) 
  • YouTube is the planet’s second most prolific search engine, boasting an average of 1.5 billion active users per month. (Source: Omni Core)

 

How to create a business-boosting brand video

 

To help boost your commercial reach, expand your audience, and enjoy maximum marketing success, here is a step-by-step guide to creating a branded video that gets results.

Know your audience

When it comes to digital marketing, understanding your audience on a personal level will form the foundations of your success—video is no exception.

To create a narrative or concept that will resonate with your audience, you need to get a firm grasp of their specific pain points in addition to their wants, needs, and desires.

By using a mix of digital age and comprehensive qualitative insights, you should create buyer personas based on your core customer base and use these profiles to shape the creative direction of your video content.

The above video campaign from Canadian Tires demonstrates the importance of understanding your audience. By sharing its message of inclusion, the Canadian consumer brand demonstrated its mission, offering its target audience genuine personal value. As a result, this emotive video campaign went viral almost instantly.

Develop a plan

Once you’ve developed your buyer personas, gathered essential data related to your target audience, and established your campaign goals, it’s time to create a plan that will help shape the core concepts behind your campaign.

Based on the insights from your buyer persona and your primary aims or ideas, you’ll be able to form an actionable plan for your branded video based on these questions or considerations:

  • What style of video do I want to make (e.g., a mini-film or narrative, a behind-the-scenes glimpse, a vlog-style video, a tutorial, a stat-driven documentary, an animated ad, etc.)?
  • What key content do I need to feature or convey to accomplish my video’s goals or mission?
  • How long do I want the video to be?
  • What resources will I need concerning talent and equipment?
  • How big is my budget?

By meeting with your team and working through these questions one by one, you’ll start to see your branded video plan forming before your very eyes. This will empower you to assign duties, allocate budgets, set milestones or timelines, and acquire the tools you need to get the job done.

Create a storyboard and get going

After getting under the skin of your target audience, creating a concept, and developing a comprehensive working plan, you should create a video storyboard to outline your video’s plot, scene by scene.

To help you get started with storyboarding for your video, here’s a hand-picked tutorial that will show you how to build a narrative for your video while bringing your concept to life:

Moreover, here are four practical tips to help you squeeze every last drop of value from your video storyboarding  and video production efforts:

  • When developing your video’s plotline and storyboard, follow this tried-and-tested format: Introduction, Problem Statement, Solution, Call to Action.
  • Select a number of scenes you’re going to use for each segment of your video and decide what visual action and copy you need to include to convey your message.
  • With your scenes established, set about sketching thumbnails for your scenes and writing your script. You can use intuitive tools to help you with this stage of the process.
  • After seeking a wealth of feedback on your storyboard and script, you should start producing your video according to your plan, ensuring you work based on your specified timelines.

This powerful marketing video effort features some of the world’s most influential figures in the tech industry and boasts razor-sharp visuals, inspirational content, a unique angle, and most importantly—a plot that grips you from start to finish. It’s a testament to the power of storyboarding and an initiative that’s earned Code Org over 14 million YouTube video views to date (and counting).

Once you’ve recorded your videos and gathered all of the takes or content you need, you’ll be ready for the next big step: the editing phase.

Edit, edit, edit

With your potentially game-changing branded video content on hand, now’s the time for some ruthless editing.

In many cases, editing separates a good video from a great video, so it’s important to get it right. You should assign two of your most qualified team members to work through the task or hire a skilled freelancer.

Using your original storyboard for reference, take the time to “murder your visual darlings” and chop away anything that is surplus to requirement. Once you’ve done this, you should instruct your appointed editors to sharpen up every scene to improve your video’s flow while adding the music and any relevant captions. Make sure you leave room for creative freedom while also checking in at regular intervals to ensure everything is developing to your satisfaction.

This astounding creation from none other than GoPro is a shining example of how editing can enhance the impact of a video. In the short space of two minutes, GoPro manages to amaze, astound, inspire, and above all—showcase the capabilities of its filming products. The value-focused editing efforts here make every second count. The brand also used its HD HERO3® camera to film the entire video, which offers an additional layer of immersive value.

Bonus tip: If you’re a budding eCommerce business on a tight budget, there are a host of mobile tools and apps that you can use for editing your video. Use this list of video-based editing tools for reference.

Optimize and publish

At this point, you’ll have created an amazing brand video. But if you want to ensure you enjoy a solid ROI for your efforts, you’ll need to optimize your videos and publish them on the right platforms, including YouTube.

Here are some tricks of the trade you should know to help you optimize your video for enhanced visibility on platforms like Vevo, Vimeo, and YouTube:

  • Conduct keyword research and select a primary as well as secondary term to use in your video’s title, tags, and video description. 
  • Write a compelling title that is concise, describes your video campaign, includes your brand name, and features your relevant key terms. As a rule of thumb, your title shouldn’t exceed 70 characters, including spaces.
  • When crafting your video description, you should include your brand name; provide a link to your website, online store, or landing page; speak in plain, digestible language; and weave your keywords into the text as naturally as possible. Your video description should not exceed 4,000 characters.
  • When adding tags, feature anything you feel is relevant to your video campaign or content and include common misspellings of relevant terms to ensure your video is as visible as possible to the right people.

Promote your brand video

Regardless of how sensational your branded video might be, if people can’t see it, does it really exist? In a sense, no.

To ensure maximum success, you will need to plug and promote your video in a way that’s strategic and targeted in equal measures. Building a content-based campaign around your video is the way to do so.

Here’s our eCommerce beginner’s guide to content marketing to help you gain maximum video marketing success

“Business decision makers LOVE online video because it gives them the most amount of information in the shortest amount of time.”—Robert Weiss, video marketing advocate

Now that you know how to create branded videos that get real results, it’s time to get out there and make it happen.

We wish you the best of luck, and for more creative inspiration, check out our rundown of the world’s most inspirational viral marketing campaigns.

Source for feature image.