Are you using video marketing? You should be.

One of the fastest growing marketing assets is video production and is quickly becoming a very effective means of communicating with an audience. Are you utilising this growing medium? 

Video is a powerful tool that informs, educates and entertains audiences. Video first became a phenomenon in the B2C world, and is now increasingly becoming more dominant in the B2B arena.

Company websites and blogs lacking web video will begin to risk presenting themselves with out of date media. Organisations, which fail to consider the video potential amongst growing smart phone and tablet penetration could quickly, find themselves falling behind competitors.

Especially when you consider the SEO benefits that result from embedding video to your online platforms. Did you know that many Search Engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo give priority to websites containing video content?

’A website with video content is 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of a search engine.’ Forrester Research, as quoted by Benjamin Wayne in Search Engine Watch.

Video production nowadays doesn’t end in the proverbial ‘can’, with modern media platforms, such as social media, the increasing adoption of the Internet by a huge majority of consumers and thus worldwide sharing, means that your products and services can be distributed repeatedly and constantly.

However, such an effective medium must be produced and managed professionally. A video taken on a phone and uploaded to any old youtube account isn’t an effective way to capture your customer’s imagination.

It’s important to remember that effective short films need crafting in more ways than one. Even if you know what you want to say, where, when and how you say it could make all the difference to how your story is received.

Here are a few key elements EDGE Creative will assist you with when creating and producing your video.

• What’s the point? – The video must have a message and a great creative to match. But you must entertain and inform the audience where every scene must add value and meaning in conveying your message.

• Tell the story – The most effective way to relay your message to your audience begins with structure – a beginning, middle and end. Build the expectations of the viewer develop the message and end with a strong call to action that encourages a desired behaviour.

• Graphics – Strong visuals boost the effectiveness of your video production and ensure messages resonate. Just like audio, graphic elements are strategic considerations that can help structure your video and emphasise important sections, such as a strong call to action.

• Audio – Whether it’s narration, music or a piece to camera, clear audio is vitally important in reinforcing your message, creating impressions and ultimately makes it easier for the viewer to digest the information. Just ensure you don’t violate copyright considerations.

• Cinematography – The days where television was the only source of video is long gone. There’s an ever-increasing trend amongst consumers to research online to make decisions in the physical world. With a web video you are creatively expressing your brand values and you need professional video quality to match.

• Don’t waste a second – The online world is fast paced and cluttered. Your audience is quicker still and will have a very limited attention span. Understanding your target audience enables the creation of a video that’s worth watching. Most common practice is a maximum of 3 minutes for a web video, often less.

• Going viral – In consideration of the online world we now live in, applying a very creative brief is a very important strategic component. As a consumer you should make a video that people can’t help but pass on.
  Producing a video and strategically positioning it across the Internet and social media encourages sharing of your content.  Allow viewers to embed your video on their sites/blogs as these small considerations can make a huge difference as to whether your video can reach that holy grail of going viral on the World Wide Web.

• Tracking – There’s some very valuable tools online to help you monitor and distribute your video that quite frankly don’t exist in TV or cinema.
  On popular video-sharing sites, like YouTube and Vimeo, you can access data about your viewers such as, peak viewing ages, what type of device used, at what point they click off a video and much more. Learn from your reports and seek to improve your video strategy based on this data.

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