More than ever, planning your marketing even during this period of uncertainty is absolutely necessary. Once again, you need to think about the various scenarios that might unfold next year and see how your business would react to them. In this article, we will focus on digital video strategy.
As video production by nature is an important investment, it has to be carefully prepared as it requires some time and attention. You need to think about the content and the artistic direction that works. Then you need to ensure this project will meet all your expectations in terms of delay, budget and dissemination.
To do so, here are the main steps you may need to follow to reach your marketing goals with a digital video strategy.
1. Define your goals
Before making any plans, think first about your business and where you want to bring it. How is your business doing so far? What could be improved and what are your strong and weak points? Do you have the budget to dedicate to video marketing?
So what are your goals for the year? Improve your brand visibility or connect more with your clients? Improve your relationships with them or get more visits on your website so you can increase the conversion rate?
Whatever are your goals, once you have identified them, you can proceed to the next step.
2. Video concepts that fit with your goals
Now it is time for brainstorming. What kind of videos will best work to meet your objectives? What is the best style? Animation or explainer video, telling stories or focusing on your products or services and your clients? There are many possibilities and you need to choose the best according to your objective.
As nothing is certain, you should have plenty of ideas and think big. So if unexpected things happen, you will be able to pivot and take another option that you already considered from your initial plans.
Here are some questions you can ask:
What worked well in the past? And what was the most engaging content for your customers? What is the strategy of your main competitors? How did their strategies work for them?
And then think about yourself. What are your digital habits and what is driving your attention? What is trendy in your industry and is it possible for you to follow these trends? Imagine yourself as a buyer: what do you want to see that would catch your attention?
Then try to consider many ways to communicate: should it be a long video or a series of short videos? Do you need voice over for an animated character? Consider many points of view so you can have more diversity in your concepts.
Once you are done with these differents options, you can move on to the next step.
3. Prepare your creative briefs
The creative brief is a crucial document containing any information that relates to your project.
Thus, you need to set creative briefs for each of your best ideas so you have a clear view of your projects: timelines, budgets, messaging, distribution channels.
You can be able to see what you will be facing during the different phases of the project.
You need to know at this stage the cost of your project, the timeline, the resources needed and confront them with your goals and your available financial resources. So you can make sure your project will be processed in a smooth way and avoid any undesirable delays.
4. Plan your ideal production timeline
With your goals and ideas identified and your creative briefs prepared, you have the basis of a video strategy. Now, it is time to plan these projects throughout the year, by choosing the best period among your other activities and priorities.
What is the best time to release the video campaign for your industry and which content is the most relevant? Then place the video projects you have prepared in a rough timeline that represents the best-case scenario for your digital video strategy.
You will be able to start your projects if you make sure you have the necessary budget. If that is not the case, you can postpone or modify your projects throughout the year at the times that make sense the most.
We hope you understand that planning a project, such as video production, is demanding and you cannot avoid careful analysis. You need to be prepared as much as possible to get your desired results.
Do not hesitate to discuss about your projects with us, we will be happy to help!
See you soon!
Kevin
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