I always say that the story we tell in our marketing videos is the single most important element in the recipe. I also say that the story should be created by the type of business being marketed. In turn that is decided by knowing who the customer is and how they think. This leads me to ask questions that enable me to plan effective marketing videos. After I have constructed a plan, however, I often have another task distracting me from the production. That’s persuading my client that the marketing video we need to make is the one that best appeals to potential customers. Often my clients have another video in mind entirely. It’s a video that they feel best portrays their business. Clients pay the bills so sometimes I end up producing marketing videos that are not as effective as they should be.
This got me thinking. Are there a series of questions that businesses of a certain type can ask themselves to enable them to plan the most effective marketing video? I think there are. In this blog I’m going to explain the questions I ask and why. Then in the next series of blogs I’m going to ask and answer those questions for a number of business sectors.
[bctt tweet=”5 key questions to ask to deliver a truly effective marketing video” username=”yellbusiness”]
The Questions
1. Who Are My New Customers?
This is slightly different from having knowledge of your current customer base. You need to decide, as a business owner, between two marketing options. Are you going to grow your customer base by trying to attract customers from competitors? Or by attracting new customers into the market? If you are trying to take customers from competitors then knowledge of your existing customer base will be the foundation for the answers to next four questions. However, if you are trying to expand the market by recruiting new customers entirely then you need new knowledge. Imagine you are a hunter in prehistoric times. You provide meat for your family group by hunting deer. Do you get better and better at hunting deer and therefore catch them before the neighboring tribes do OR do you start hunting wild boar as well as deer? You will need to learn all about wild boar to be successful BUT you will not have as much competition with your neighboring tribes. Widening your customer catchment is always the best long term solution for business but it requires you to learn all about your new customers.
2. Where Are My New Customers Looking?
Advertising can either use a scattergun approach or a more targeted method. Using social media allows for both approaches. The great benefit of using social media, however, is the ability to target people in a very specific way. Having decided on our answer to the first question we can now make a decision. Either use our knowledge of our customers, or our research into our new customer targets to decide where we will most effectively place our marketing video. This does not mean we shouldn’t also use the scattergun approach. It just means that there will be places where we must also definitely place our video.
3. What Are They Looking For?
What your customers are looking for is not necessarily what you want to show them. You may want to display a certain aspect of your business. You may want to show your business in a certain light. What really matters is what your customers are looking for. In order to maximise the effectiveness of your marketing videos you must remove ego from the equation. Don’t start from the position of what you want to show. Instead start by asking what they are looking for. Are they looking for a specific product? Good service? Expertise? Nostalgia? Excitement? Safety? Find out what they are looking for and show it to them.
4. What Do They Want To See?
Haven’t we just asked this question? No. This is the next level of depth in planning your video. Your customer is looking for product X. What they want to see is product X being used by an expert. Or perhaps they want to see how easy product X is for them to use. This is the second step on the decision path that your customers are following. First of all you found them and set them on the path. You showed them what they were looking for and they decided to pay a bit more attention. Then you showed them just what they wanted to see and now they are interested. So finally how do we persuade them to decide to make contact?
5. What Makes Them Decide?
This comes down to the little extra touches in your video. It’s the smiling face that’s genuine and not posed. It’s the silly gag that makes you human and likable. It’s the extra care and compassion that you show. Before I went into business for myself I used to run a video production Unit. There were video editors, voice over artists, admin assistants, freelance cinematographers and script writers all in my unit. They all had completely different skill sets. But there was one question I would always ask of them when I was trying to make us better at what we did. Where is the love? In this script where is the little bit of love you used to make it charming? In this edit where is the love you expressed by timing a cut just right?
When you make your marketing video you need to show your customers just a little bit of love. It doesn’t really matter how you do it. But do it. That’s the thing that will make them decide.
