Video Marketing Strategy: Create Marketing Videos the Right Way

In this highly visual age, you know how crucial video is as an effective medium to communicate with your target customers. Often, that’s more easily said than done–but it doesn’t always have to be, especially if you know how to make marketing videos the right way.

The video marketing benefits are numerous, and you need to take advantage of them. Here’s a guide to help you get off on the right foot and connect with audiences with your video marketing strategy.

Before You Start: Understand the Video Production Process

The video production process can seem overwhelming. Fortunately, understanding how it is broken down into specific stages of production can help you successfully create videos that connect with audiences. Here’s a look at each step, with its own challenges and conventions. 

Phase 1: Planning & Development

Video production planning is where you consider big-picture questions relating to your video ad. These may include: 

• What is the concept for your video?
• How should it visually feel?
• What is the scope, and how technically involved should it be?
• How big a budget are you working with, and what are your other resources?

This is a time to ideate, be creative, and think broadly. Grab a pencil and paper, go for a walk, and contemplate how you can make the best video ad possible.

Phase 2: Pre-Production

Video pre-production is where you bring the planning to a more nitty-gritty, nuts and bolts level. 

• What crew do you need to hire?
• Who’s the cast?
• What’s the location?
• How can you maximize limited time on location?
• How will you achieve that shot? 

You may have to sacrifice some grandiose video promo ideas for practical realities — but you might also come up with some great, creative solutions to your problems in the process. 

Some find pre-production tools — such as shot lists and storyboards — helpful. These are ways of visually conceptualizing your shoot to take as much guesswork out as possible.

Phase 3: Production

Production involves the actual footage-capturing phase of the process. You’re on location, filming actors or animals, or possibly animating. This is where all your planning comes to a head. At the end of the day, you go home with the raw footage of your video marketing spot.

Phase 4: Post-Production

Video post-production involves editing and refining your footage into a finished product. It may involve such elements as:

• Adding music (whether original or licensed)
• Integrating sound and visual effects
• Adding voiceover
• Mixing your audio tracks to make sure that dialogue is crisp and audible relative to music and other elements
• Color correction

Use an objective view to polish your footage and make it look as good as possible. Post-production can be minimal if you’re happy with what you filmed and edited, or it can be more extensive if it turns out that a lot of recutting and fixes are required to achieve your final vision.

Phase 5: Marketing & Distribution

Finally, it’s time to get your content out and in front of audiences. That still requires strategizing so you can connect with the right audience in the most impactful way.

Set Clear Campaign Goals

The only way to measure success is if you know what you’re aiming for and achieve it. Clear campaign goals could include:

• Building brand awareness
• Generating more sales for a particular product
• Broadening your audience demographics or targeting a new demographic
• Rebranding your company
• Successfully launching a new product or service

Determining your goal will influence every other aspect of your campaign, including both the style and content of your videos.

Define Your Target Audience

Now that you know your goal, you can define your audience.

This may include things like:

• Gender
• Age
• Location
• Interests

Demographics can seem crude, but they are directly related to the product you sell. There are also other ways to define your target audience (like “taste clusters”), but you have to know one way or another whom you’re trying to appeal to with your product and associated campaign.

Many marketers find it helpful to create a profile of a consumer they’re appealing to. For example: Marcia, in her 40s, looks after her health but likes to have a good time. Try that exercise to see if it works for you!

Decide on What Story You Want to Tell

Emotion and narrative are deeply intertwined. Ultimately, you want your audience to be moved enough to buy your product (or feel a positive association with your brand). 

That emotion you’re aiming for dictates the narrative you’ll tell.

• Is it the story of your own brand (i.e., the struggles you faced as an entrepreneur to make your excellent product)?
• Is it the story of the kind of individual you want to connect with? 

Many food and beverage brands tell a story about the good times they want you to associate with their brand, while pharmaceutical companies focus on how sufferers of a certain condition can reap tangible benefits from their products. 

All the questions you answered earlier will help you decide what story it is you’re telling.

Need some inspiration? Check out these video marketing examples!

Decide on Your Platforms

As Marshall McLuhan famously noted, “the medium is the message.” That’s never been more accurate, as each social media platform has its own story and user base.

Social Media

There are many important options for a social media advertiser to consider. Some of the most popular platforms include:

• Facebook, whose demographics are beginning to skew older. Users expect a slightly longer video on Facebook (say 10-20 seconds) relative to other social media platforms.
• TikTok, which skews younger, calls for short content edited in a certain, high-energy way for maximum popcorn appeal.
• Instagram, whose Reels are now mimicking TikToks. Content tends to focus on lifestyle-type content (fashion, accessories, high-end cooking appliances). If that is your brand, it may be worth considering.
• Twitter, which focuses largely on the (pithy) written word but also allows for brief video ads. The Twitter audience tends to be more verbally engaged and older than visual media, and scrollers tend to be always moving through Tweets, so this content has to be short and to the point.
• LinkedIn, which has a more professional veneer for employers and job seekers. Video content for LinkedIn should definitely be SFW.

Connected TV

Connected TV (CTV) refers to the way we now stream content via the internet. Popular services include Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, etc. Americans are cutting the cord and moving over to CTV in massive numbers.

CTV is the future (and perhaps even the present) of TV viewing, and it’s a boon for advertisers. Even services like Netflix that have held out on including ad-supported tiers are planning to introduce advertising to their platforms soon.

Not only does CTV advertising deliver eyeballs — it delivers data. 

That data can be used to target exactly the demographic you’re looking to reach — and if you don’t quite hit the bullseye the first time, you can tweak your ad so that you eventually reach your intended audience — and achieve your campaign goals.

Keep Creative Requirements in Mind

As noted above, every platform has its own creative requirements to best speak to its audience. But your brand has certain needs to make the impression you want. 

Those creative requirements should remain paramount, even as you are bound by the limits of budget and schedule. But so long as you bear in mind what matters most about your video — what you want it to say, the emotion you want it to convey, the tone it needs to have — then you can make all those other limitations work for you.

Related: Social Media Video Ad Specs & Placements Guide

Related: Your Guide to Connected TV Video Ad Specs

Take Your Budget and Timeline Seriously

Your campaign is there to help your business grow, and no one benefits if you blow out your budget or fail to make your production and launch timeline. 

An organized, efficient, well-planned shoot is the key to success and keeping your video production cost low. Remember, complex or over-the-top isn’t always better — some of the most successful campaigns were actually very simple.

Polish and Perfect

Post-production is where you can make your footage shine. Color timing and correction, for example, is an art form that’s given some of your favorite movies their visual pizzazz and identity. 

Further, since post-production can be less labor-intensive than production, it can be an efficient way to add gloss and shine to all your video types. 

Schedule and Promote Your Videos

You’ve worked hard to make your content as good as possible. Make sure it reaches your audience when it’s most receptive.

Schedule its release on social media or CTV so that it’s there when your target audience is ready to watch it. Your work speaks for itself — but in this age of digital distraction, you have to ensure it makes it in front of the right audience at an appropriate time. A great campaign can be designed to follow your audience from CTV to their phones, recognizing that many people are looking at two screens at any given moment.

Test, Measure, and Analyze

Go with your gut — but back it up with data. If your campaign isn’t landing as you’d hoped initially, that’s ok. Go back to the drawing board with the footage you have and rework it until you’re happy with the results.

• Related: Learn more about the latest video marketing trends.

Creating Marketing Videos: Final Thoughts

On the one hand, making video content has never been easier. On the other, it’s an extremely difficult task to break through the noise and reach an audience so that you’re really getting through to them. 

When it comes to marketing video production and creating video marketing strategies, it helps to go with a partner that knows video production at every stage, from the very first conceptual outline to the analysis of the video’s results (and possible retooling). QuickFrame helps businesses make use of the power of video for maximum performance for every channel, audience, and objective with our innovative video production platform.

Get in touch today to learn how we can help you achieve your video marketing vision!