5 Steps to Video Marketing Success: A Beginners Guide

Today, the market is cluttered with independent videographers, filmmakers, and video editors. The competition has moved far beyond the quality of your videos. The modern consumer looks for things that they can connect to your brand or product video. In such cases, how do you go about building a video marketing framework that attracts new business, helps your brand name, and improves your brand recall?

As a CEO or a marketer, you can build a strong step-by-step framework for your video marketing success. Here are some essential steps that you must take into consideration while you create a video marketing framework for your brand. 

1. Understand your needs and set a goal

Like any successful marketing strategy, you need to have highly specified goals for your video marketing strategy. They say, ‘A well-explained problem is half solved,’ and this can’t be truer in the context of marketing. The first thing that needs to be done by the business is to define what they are struggling with and how video marketing can address those pain points. 

Creating a simple questionnaire about the vision for your brand’s success and expectations from a video marketing campaign can take you far ahead of people in the same domain as you are.

Your goals for video marketing can vary depending on where you are in the branding process. They can range from increasing awareness, engaging people, promoting products, and increasing sales. Once the bottom line is clearly defined you can take the next steps and start with the actual planning part of your campaign.

2. Define your purpose and evaluate your resources

Once your strategy is well aligned with your goals, you should focus on the purpose for which you are creating a video. There are so many different types of videos that can be made for your brand. You should understand all of those types and which one aligns the best with your requirements. For example, introduction videos are really effective for making a strong first impression of your brand, mentioning all of your offerings, and giving a brief description of what your vision and motivations are as a brand. This type of video may not work if you wish to describe a new product that you are launching in the market. 

Understanding your capabilities and limitations is equally important to come up with good material. Are you working on this video in-house or assigning it to some third party? Do you have the required camera gear? Do you have experts in the field who would take care of all the last moment changes, alterations, and improvements? Do you have all the required software to make the edits? All these things need to be addressed before the actual shoot. 

A big-budget and a fancy camera don’t make your video effective. Some of the most viral videos are shot on a mobile phone camera and edited on a video maker. So the purpose and plan are way more important than your resources. A video shot from a simple mobile phone camera and edited using an online editor can also do wonders. 

3. Come up with a script and storyboard

Before you are on the ground shooting the video that you planned, writing a precise script and storyboarding your video frame by frame is a really good idea. Even though it adds a long extra step in your pre-production, it makes your outcome significantly better.

A very simple way to create a storyboard is to take a notecard and draw each frame that you would want in your video, along with the dialogues and voiceovers. This way, the work gets organized, and there’s no confusion on the day of the shoot. 

You can also include prompts for the video makers and editors in your storyboard for smooth post-processing. Spending some time on your script and storyboarding will not just minimize your work on the shoot day, but also give you greater clarity on whether your video can communicate what you are trying to say. 

4. Filming and editing

This is the most important as well as a crucial part of your video-making process. Get your equipment and crew together and shoot!

If the pre-production efforts are carried out perfectly, you just can’t go wrong with the shoot. All you need to do on the actual shoot day is to ensure nothing is missed out and there are no silly mistakes. Here is a small checklist for the shoot day: 

• Make sure all your equipment is charged.
• If there are people in the shoot, make sure they are well briefed.
• If you want to divert your traffic to a specific place, use it as a call to action in your video.
• If it is a product shoot, make sure all your products and props are ready beforehand.
• Finalize the video maker and chart out the editing brief.

Now that everything is taken care of, filming should be relatively smooth, but you must be attentive to any last moment requirements and delays. 

5. Sharing your newly made video

Congratulation! Your video is finally out, and you are all set to release it to the public. When you plan to launch the video, consider creating a campaign around it to multiply its reach and effectiveness. Selecting the right platforms and the right time is also crucial for the success of your video.

Once the video is live, do share it with your close network, link it to your company’s website, and create secondary content for them on your social media. You can boost the reach of the video by using it in your email marketing and paid ads. Make sure marketing this video is a part of your overall marketing strategy. 

If each of the steps is executed with precision, your video marketing efforts will surely meet the goals that you are aiming for. While this article is a brief overview, it covers all the important aspects of video marketing. You can use this as a reference article and dive deeper into each step in the process.