David Pondell
10
min read
Dec 8, 2024
From ideation and creative collaboration to video review and approval, there’s nothing simple about video marketing. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth your while. So, why video marketing? 82% of people say that branded video content has convinced them to purchase a product or service, and 77% say the same for a piece of software or app. And video consumption continues to rise at a breakneck pace.
Video marketing is a critical piece of giving consumers the content they want, but first you need to get over the hurdle of project kickoff. It may seem daunting, but a strong kickoff with the right participants and planning can pave the way for smoother video project management.
Let’s take a look at 10 questions to ask yourself to kick off a video marketing campaign the right way.
It’s important to consider your target audience before kicking off any campaign. Review your current data to identify high-value audiences and understand what drives them. For a new brand or product, analyzing your competitors can be a good place to start. Then create customer personas to ensure your audience stays top-of-mind throughout the campaign. Customer personas will help you create content that’s culturally, locally, and age-appropriate.
A solid video marketing strategy is multi-faceted and covers every stage of the funnel, so it’s equally important to map out your objectives. Are you looking to raise brand awareness, help move prospects through consideration, drive conversions, or propel engagement and growth? Whatever the case, be mindful of how your video marketing goals relate to broader campaign objectives.
By starting with your audience and objectives in mind, you can make sure any needed approvers on the team are aligned early on what you’re trying to achieve and make sure you are on the right path from day one.
To learn more about "How to describe a target audience in a creative brief?" read our blog!
Once you’ve identified your audience and mapped out your goals, you can consider which type of content meets your objectives. Sponsored content or an unboxing video might be just the thing for top-of-funnel campaigns, while a tutorial how-to videos or more targeted ads can keep customers engaged lower down the funnel. Aligning the type of content you create with your overall objectives will keep your campaigns focused.
The other thing to consider is video style. What type of video style will resonate most with your target audience, fit into your budget, and align with the broader look and feel of your marketing campaign? Is there a particular style of animation you typically use in your campaigns? Would animation, stop motion, live action, motion graphics, or another style make more sense? If you have a preferred style, identify it early, or leave your brief more open-ended to align on a style with your wider team or agency.
Of course, there’s also the question of whether video is the best format in the first place. Focus your video strategy on where you can make the greatest impact, such as demo-ing a product or engaging with your audiences on social media.
A video marketing campaign is more than the whole of its parts. Before kickoff, sit down with your team and your key stakeholders and come up with a plan for content creation and distribution to tie everything together.
Think about how many videos you’ll create for your campaign and the best length for each. Now is also the time to consider which channels your videos will run on — your website, social media, industry blogs? What are the specs of each channel? Can you leverage one video, video shoot, or video creation process to create multiple assets in order to make the most of your resources? Finally, if you’re creating a longer video, will you also want shorter companion pieces to promote it across channels? By planning ahead you can save time, money, and headaches – ensuring you’re getting the most bang for your buck and most impact for your audiences.
Budgets and timelines aren’t quite as exciting as storyboards and scripts, but it’s critical to nail down the practicalities before diving into the creative. Are you trying to hit a specific season or launch date? Be realistic about when you want your marketing video to go live, and set realistic timelines for each stage, from brainstorming to editing.
Similarly, break down budgets into production and promotion, and decide how much to allocate to video creation and to each video channel. Your budget will depend on the types of video you're creating and who’s shooting them, but be sure to factor in your return on marketing investment as well. In short, spend what you need to without sacrificing ROMI, however you choose to define it.
The number of views a video gets is just one small indicator of success. Far more important is how those views impact your business. For a clear understanding of your video marketing campaign’s performance, come up with key performance indicators that align with your goals.
Depending on your campaign objectives, your KPIs could measure click-through rate, social media shares, or conversions. A bevy of analytics tools — like Google Analytics and Kissmetrics— make it easy to to track KPIs across platforms.
There’s no one road to success for video marketing. But defining what success means to you before project kickoff will keep your team moving in the right direction.
Video campaigns involve a whole lot of moving pieces, so staying on top of your to-dos is top priority. Start mapping out each task involved in your campaign. From assembling a team, drafting a creative brief, and writing a script to creating storyboards, getting approvals and setting up your campaigns, begin to lay out a high-level roadmap.
Mapping all of this out will help validate the time needed to complete your project and understand what skills you have in-house — and where you might need to bring in additional support.
Now that you know what needs to be done, decide who’s going to do it. Look across departments to identify who should get involved, including personnel from product, legal and other relevant teams, in addition to marketing.
With so many stakeholders involved, it’s important to define clear roles and responsibilities. This helps to keep everyone in their lane and to limit the potential of anyone feeling left out, which can crop up when creative minds clash. Frameworks like RACI and DACI can help define these roles, assigning managers, approvers, contributors, and viewers. Defining roles and responsibilities ensures the right people are involved when they’re needed — and only when they’re needed.
Unless you’ve got full video capabilities within your team — and sometimes even if you do — you will need to assemble the right experts for the video marketing assets you want to create. This may mean working with an in-house creative or video team, hiring a contractor, or hiring an external agency.
If you already have in mind the style of video you want to create — or if you want the partner involved from start to finish in strategy and execution — you may be able to vet and hire the partner pre-kickoff. If you have an in-house creative team who will concept and then select a vendor based on the chosen style of video, this hiring may come later.
Either way, keep in mind a few considerations: What is your budget for hiring a partner or agency? Does the partner or agency have experience doing similar work (for example, animation vs. live action content)? Does your legal team need to approve and set up contracts with the vendor, or are they already in the system? If you’re working in a highly specialized field, does the agency have experience working in this space? Save time later by factoring the time and effort of vendor selection — and a possible procurement process — into your planning.
Perhaps one of the hardest parts of any project is staying organized. But the right online video collaboration tools can keep all stakeholders on task and in the loop. Look for a video collaboration platform that offers streamlined marketing approvals. Some video collaboration solutions even offer automated approvals to keep projects flowing.
StreamWork is the first video productivity platform built specifically for video marketing, streamlining video collaboration online to ensure the right people are involved at the right time. Streamwork also leads team members through the video editing, review, and approval process to get teams from ideation to final cut faster. And with simple task management, you can sleep easy knowing your team will never miss a step and the right people will be included along the way.
Beyond what tools you’ll use are the ground rules and processes to keep your video marketing project on track. If you’re using a video approval and project management software like Streamwork to help guide the process, you can grant access, set up the relevant approval groups, set up your file sharing structure, and customize your workflows to make each round of reviews run smoothly.
No matter how you approach your video campaigns, set guidelines to get everyone on the same page from the start. Use your first meeting to establish how reviews and approvals will work and where the latest assets will be stored throughout.
Now that you’ve got your strategy figured out, you’re ready to create your video brief and kick off! Buckle up, and let your creativity (and analytical powers) flow by working with StreamWork!
Author
David Pondell
David is a Sales Account Executive and Platform Specialist at StreamWork. David has extensive experience working with organizations of all sizes to implement seamless creative workflows that drive results and exceed client expectations.
