Neil Wood-Mitchell — February 26, 2019 — February 26, 2019
PART I: WHY
We’ve heard it a million times: if a picture is worth a thousand words, then imagine the value of video. Theory is nice – but research is better – and there’s plenty to support the case for video being the preferred method of communication for most of us. In any online ‘contest’ video will always outperform; gaining more traction and garnering more views and shares than text and image alone.
Generationally we’re consuming more digital than ever before… and of course, we’re all increasingly short of time, trying to do more, whilst ingesting online information as quickly as possible in order to make a purchasing decision or elicit the data we need to move forward.
So it’s simple then, let’s just grab our phones and create a mobile selfie video…Right? The challenge is that this is exactly what most people are doing. Just check out your LinkedIn feed. And whilst this is (sometimes) better than no video at all – simply churning out a poor quality video, for the sake of it, doesn’t equate to an effective digital strategy and is unlikely to grab the attention of your target audience or sufficiently impress potential customers.
Video is only one part of the jigsaw. But it’s a big one and needs to be in the right position. As with any form of communication, paper-based or digital, you’ll be judged by the quality of what you share – and not only that, you’ll need to stand out to be seen in the first place.
68% of people say they’d most prefer to learn about your product or service by watching a short video.
The success of your ‘campaign’ comes down to a small number of crucial ingredients:
- Campaign Plan (Who are you targeting and why)
- Content Quality (Production standards)
- Subject Matter (Story)
- Size of Potential Audience (Reach)
- Deployment Strategy (Execution)
It’s essential that each one of these ingredients is carefully considering BEFORE creating and deploying your video. Remove one of these pillars and the chance of success is compromised; there’s little point spending money executing an online campaign, targeting an audience with a message which is totally inappropriate and similarly, there’s little point having a beautifully crafted video if no one sees it!
However, when a professional video is shared effectively, at the right time – to the right audience, the results speak for themselves. When online audiences are engaged with professionally crafted messages, which inform and inspire, businesses should expect to benefit through:
- Raised awareness of business driven by video messaging and positioning
- Reach new audiences through effective targeting
- Increased traffic to website through lead generation
- Better conversion rate of website visitors due to pre qualified traffic
- Improved SEO rankings driven by increased social activity
Whilst there’s no secret recipe to success, keeping your audience in front of mind at the planning stages will keep you on track. All videos are not created equal and where quality matters, time spent planning your strategy and approach, will pay dividends.
In part two we’ll look at WHAT types of content that businesses are using to gain a competitive edge.
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