Unless you are living under a stone, you would have realized by now, that video has become the best medium to communication digitally.
Higher engagement, higher recall and much more impact.
But what it takes to make these video more impactful? How to best communicate your message via these videos? What strategy to implement for video production? What to show in my corporate video?
With below step by step guide, we wish to help you in building your own corporate video production strategy. We help you with ideas around conceptualization to video marketing.
Step 1 – Define Goal
At this step, we assume that you have already decided to go ahead and make a corporate video. To begin journey, we must answer 3 things.
1- Why do we want to make the video?
2- Who do we want to show it to?
3- How to measure success?
Often, video strategy is a derivative of competition launching a similar video or secondary research on how video is the next big thing. But its critical to define objective of the video. Objective could vary from describing product features, showcasing case studies or just company overview.
Basis the objective, target audience of the video shall vary. Target audiences dictates the tonality & thematic of the video. Different age groups would react differently to same video.
The promotional strategy also plays important aspect in making the video. TVC require a story narration from build-up to end while digital videos have to win attention in first 3-6 seconds.
Success measurability is important to know how well the video performed. Completion rate orvideo views could be some variables defined to measure success.
Step 2 – Understand your TG
Once goals are defined, we must spend time in learning about the target audience. Any communication can only make an impact once you have insights on what the audience is willing to engage with.
Just demographics would not really help define entire audience. Its important to understand behaviour, interests and aspirations.
Researching about the TG online surveys or interviewing face to face can help.
Step 3 – Conceptualization Communication Strategy
What would most engage your target audience can be a tough decision? Various aspects of communication strategy that can make an impact are split in 4 things.
1- Tonality & mood of video – Loud, quirky or subtle & sensitive.
2- Content of video – Passing information, facts, sales pitch or emotions.
3- Feelings – From Aw to inspiration to panache, what feeling should the video pass to viewer?
4- Action – What action do you want viewer to take after watching video.
One of the best approaches we feel is to make the video most relatable to viewer. Explain how the product or service is solving a problem for the consumer. Depending on the depth of problem the communication can be moulded.
Step 4 – Finalize brief & medium
Once communication and target audience is finalized, create a brief with measurable objectives and share with agencies. Add few sample videos for references and clearly state the deliverables. Deliverables can be 1 or 2 videos depending on go-to-market strategy.
Timeline of delivery is critical information that should be passed in briefs.
Allow agencies to come back with concepts and quotes.
Step 5 – Pre-Production
Once agency is finalized, first thing that needs to be closed is script. Script is the back-bone of video and should require most time.
Key to a good script is to break the communication in different parts. Introduction, build up, problem, climax, solution. The cuts vary with duration of video and medium of video consumption. For example a corporate video showcasing work culture of a company would start with – introducing the company, introducing HR officials who shall build up by sharing information about company. Then introduce challenges that employee face on day to day basis and how company is solving these problems.
Once script is finalized, story boarding is done to give final structure of video. Story board is a 3 cut version of script which details the video, audio and text portion of corporate video. Its the blueprint used by editors to create the final video.
Step 6 – Production
With final storyboard and script, shoot dates and venues are decided. Shoot can go upto 1-2 days depending on length of video and availability of stakeholders.
Voice over, if required, is done separately basis the story board.
After Lights, Camera & action, creating backup of all footages is good practise.
Step 7 – Post Production & final cut
In post-production, raw footage is cut and aligned as per the story board. Additional text, if planned is added. Voice over and music is additionally added to make the video engaging. Transitions and layouts are another good way of making the look and feel better.
It’s a good practice to make different version of videos for different promotion mediums. Digital videos are smaller and only contain the most engaging parts.
Make sure to add a logo and call to action in last frame to build recall and action.
Step 8 – Hosting & Promotion
Hosting of video can be done on own site or public sites like youtube or facebook under you channel name. For TVC, special cut of videos can be rendered basis the requirement.
Video promotion can be done basis region, time and audience selection.
Step 9 – Measure the impact
Overall video impact is hard to measure in exact numbers but metrics like brand surveys and brand impressions can be used.
Another metrics could be increase in the action which was communicated in the video. If video asked users to visit store, are there any incremental visits?
On digital mediums, metrics like completion rate of video view and total videos views can be taken as an estimate of success. Offline conversions can also be measured via digital mediums.
Step 10 – Extract learning
Once campaign is over, we must take a survey to understand the impact and gather the learning for next brief.
