5 Things You Should Do Before Creating Your Next Video

5 Things You Should Do Before Creating Your Next Video

These days, just about anyone can create their own videos, but that doesn’t mean everyone should. Before creating your next video, you want to identify the right approach to video production for your brand. There are 5 key things you should do before creating your next video.

Brand identity, business goals, and overall organizational messaging should all be considered before creating a video. The right approach to video can drive sales and increase positive brand awareness. On the other hand, the wrong approach may cost you money and potentially damage to your brand’s image.

5 Things You Should Do Before Creating Your Next Video

1. Take Your Brand’s Pulse

Before ever hitting the record button or pulling out your money to pay someone else to do it, you need to first make sure you understand your brand in the context of the larger world.

Is your brand perceived as a scrappy tech start-up or a smart cosmetics line? Are you a novelist with a cult following, a professional consultancy, or are you a trendy restaurant? Chances are there are some common words like scrappy, smart, professional and trendy used to describe your business.

SEE ALSO: How to Measure Your Digital Branding Efforts

Before ever painting a picture of your brand for your audience, you must first have an idea of what that picture should be. The only way to know this is by first finding out what others are saying about your brand.

Measuring Your Digital Brand Impact

There are a number of ways to measure brand perception, including focus groups, surveys, and individual interviews. There are also certain social media tools such as word cloud generators, which prioritize the words most commonly associated with brands. These insights will help you to form a pre-production strategy for your video content.

Some questions you might ask to take the company’s pulse are:

  1. Who Is Talking About My Brand?
  2. What Are People Saying About My Brand?
  3. How do people feel or act in response to my brand message?

 

2. Define Your Goals

Before creating your next video, you want to define your goals. After learning the general perception of your brand, you can then decide the purpose of your video content.

You want to align your content with the stages of your sales and marketing funnel and relate video to your overall business goals.

Before Creating Your Next Video: The Digital Marketing Funnel

One goal might be to increase interest in your solution by helping a consumer see your solution as a viable option. A demo video would work well for that goal.

Another goal may be to generate more leads by driving traffic to your site. Valuable videos can be a way to attract visitors to your site.

Convince and Convert offers a great list of the best video content for every stage of the marketing funnel.

SEE ALSO: How to Define a Branding Goal and Strategy

3. Check Your Finances

The fact is you simply might not be able to afford professional production services. It’s helpful to know this in advance. If your brand doesn’t require the big-budget production team, you can invest your money in equipment like cameras and editing software. If you keep at it, you will learn how to shoot and produce good video. Because of your limited resources, you will be forced to innovate to compete with bigger brands.

SEE ALSO: How to Build a Digital Brand on a Budget

 

4. Choose between Doing it Yourself (DIY) and Hiring a Professional Production Company

When deciding between DIY and paying a professional, both approaches to video production are valid and can be effective in fulfilling business and communication goals. There are many benefits of video for brands.

Determining which approach is right for your brand is not simply a question of dollars and cents; individual/organizational circumstance plays a much greater role in making your final decision.

One reason a brand might want to try the DIY method is because it comes across as authentic and not like some ad campaign thought up by stuffy corporate executives. The DIY method is relatable and transparent and people trust it. DIY is also a fantastic way to rally your base and to grow a community around your brand.

5. If you Decide to DIY, Don’t Sacrifice Quality

Follow these quick tips to make sure your DIY video reflects well on your brand.

  1. Learn to edit video– Adobe Premiere is a great editing tool to have under your belt.
  2. Download video editing apps on your phone such as iMovie, Adobe Clip, and VivaVideo.
  3. Invest in good equipment if possible, if not, then make sure your phone is in working order and is updated.

The most important thing to keep in mind when doing it yourself is to stay persistent.

In Conclusion

A brand’s identity is unique, just like yours or mine. The same approach to video that works for Uber, might not work for McDonald’s. It is up to you to determine which approach is best suited for your brand. Choose wisely.

What’s the right video approach for your brand? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Written by
Joshua Payberah

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