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Any company has a face and a voice. This is what we refer to when we talk about a company’s brand. Effective marketing requires developing a brand because people can’t relate to a corporate entity on an emotional level. Your brand will have a massive impact on how your customers perceive you. 

But brand building is not easy. When technological trends change so rapidly, who can say what marketing strategy will still be effective further down the line? But there is one medium that will remain a staple in advertising for years to come: video.

Video content is expected to make up 80% of internet traffic by the year 2022 and 87% of marketing professional use videos in their campaigns. That’s because video is by far the easiest and most effective way to get your point across. If you want to have any chance of getting potential customers to care about what your company does and what your brand represents, you will have to do it through video.

Now that you know what’s at stake let’s explore what it takes to create powerful brand videos. 

Think About Your Goals

Before you make any decisions regarding the style and direction of your brand videos, you need to think about your goals. What do you hope to achieve? Keep in mind that the purpose of brand videos, as the name implies, is to highlight your brand. 

They’re not meant to explicitly advertise a product or service, but rather to establish your brand in the minds of potential customers and hopefully facilitate an emotional connection. An overly salesy tone and style will have the opposite effect. It will make it harder for viewers to relate to a brand as they would to a person. They will see your company as a faceless corporate entity and nothing more. Branded videos are used as a sales support tool since they create brand loyalty by increasing awareness, credibility and trust. 

Think About Your Target Audience

You will not be able to create brand videos that resonate with any type of audience. People vary in terms of values, aspirations and lifestyles. By trying to establish a brand that everyone can relate to, you’ll end up diluting your message to such an extent that you’ll alienate everyone because they’ll feel as if your company doesn’t stand for anything so it can’t be trusted.

Your company probably already has a target audience, depending on the types of products or services you sell. You can start from there and try to put yourself in their shoes to figure out what kind of content they’re most likely to resonate with. Based on your sales, you have a lot of data on your customers’ behaviour so ask yourself:

  • Why are they interested in your products?

  • What problems do your products solve for them?

  • What do they care about?

  • What questions might they have about your products?

  • What visuals are most likely to attract their attention?

  • What devices are they most likely to use to engage with your content?

  • What platforms do they use the most?

Once you have the answer to these questions, it will be much easier to create the type of content that engages your target audience and aligns with your marketing goals.

Video Production: In-House vs Outsourced

Big companies usually have an in-house team dedicated to creating promotional content. Smaller companies often do not since it doesn’t make sense from a financial standpoint. If you’ve never made brand videos before, it’s better to hire a reputable video production company and let them help you decide on the style and direction that would best match your brand identity.

The entire purpose of creating brand videos is to put your company in a good light. For this, you’ll need high-quality, inspirational content delivered in the form of an immersive story. A poorly shot film that revolves around product placement will leave a bad impression on your audience.

Pre-Production Is Just as Important as Production

If you decide to outsource, you can start looking for video production companies by diving into their portfolios to see what brands they’re worked with in the past and if their content creates the kind of viewing experience you’d like to emulate. Once you’ve narrowed down the list, you can set up an initial meeting to discuss your business goals and target audience.

You’ll want to make sure the team you choose to work with understands what you hope to gain from this brand video and the type of audience it should be tailored for. Talk to them about your company’s values and mission as well as the data you have on your target audience.

Once you’ve decided who you want to hire, you can start putting together a script and a storyboard that will help you visualize every shot. At this point, you’ll also want to discuss details like the colour scheme, fonts for CTAs, key concepts and language.

Make sure you have all these elements figured out at least two weeks before production, so you have enough time for reviews and revisions.

Brand Consistency

Brand videos go beyond the requirements of regular promos. They’re an extension of your brand identity, so you need to be consistent in terms of messaging, voice, logo, colour scheme and narration. The goal is to create brand videos that are easily recognizable and help you integrate your brand in a natural and credible way.

For example, you want the actor that does the voice-over for your brand video to speak in the same style as all your promotional materials. This helps humanize your brand. Likewise, the colour scheme should overlap with your logo to make future brand videos easily distinguishable from those of competitors. Your logo should appear multiple times throughout the video to increase brand recognition but not to the point that it starts to look too commercial.

You’ll also want to adopt a narration style that your target audience can relate to and that you can replicate in future promotional materials. What matters most of all is that your branded videos communicate authenticity, so they resonate well with your target audience.

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