Ever wonder what it takes to run a successful video marketing initiative?

Some of the world’s leading brands have asked themselves the same question. We've leveraged their expertise to help you take control of your video marketing strategy and get the results you want. The end deliverable is what we call the 7 P’s of Online Video which include:

• Plan and identify your content's purpose
• Match your budget to find the optimum price and production value
• Getting people within your organization to work together and be efficient
• Ensure you have the most up to date publishing technology
• Plan out your promotion strategy
• Drive audience participation with your content
• Identify profitability metrics

 

This week we will cover the first four.

1. Purpose

What is the purpose of my video?

Video is one of the most powerful ways to engage an audience – just look at the growth of YouTube. But there’s a serious difference between cat videos and video for business purposes. When it comes to business content, you'll need to define who you’re trying to reach, what you want your video to communicate and how you want your viewers to respond. Some questions to consider:

Are your videos for internal use, external distribution or a mix of both audiences? Do you want to live stream an executive presentation, promote a new product, capture and archive a training session or encourage viewers to share content with their social networks?

Will your content inform, educate, entertain or sell? Is the purpose of your video to generate ecommerce or leads? Are you trying to improve customer service, increase productivity or eliminate risks?

The purpose of your video will determine how you measure the value of your video.

2. Production Type / Price

What style of video do you need and how much should you spend?

Are you using a script, capturing a live presentation or will you do a Q & A? Will you need location visuals, stock footage or translation into multiple languages? Who is the best person to deliver your message, is it an in-house subject matter expert or a professional actor? Identifying your needs and the best approach to deliver content means figuring what your visual approach will be. Answering these questions will help you begin to shape your video strategy.

Viewers often respond just as well to an internal sales presentation, training session or social network content that has a lower production value. Having staff creating this type of user-generated video content is a great way to immediately deliver certain types of information and brings authenticity to the viewer. Short 2 - 4 minute pieces produced by a staff member with a mobile device has minimal production costs and when you combine this with existing business processes for management and tracking, you can easily test what types of content resonate with your audience.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you plan on capturing your executive team or live streaming an all-hands meeting there are specific technical issues that are easiest handled by a professional. There are many elements which professional videographers make look very easy because they are experts in the best ways to shoot, light, mic and package the presentation. Creation of external marketing content also often requires more polish to help you promote and/or sell products and services. There is a wide range  of production in between. When you start to identify the end result, you will more easily work back towards a budget range for your production. It comes down to what level of production your audience will respond to.

3. People

How do I maintain efficient workflows across my team?

In any production, the cost of people’s time -- from the creative resources to the business or marketing team -- is the biggest expense. This cost escalates with poor video asset management because informal video archiving creates a number of problems. Video files require lots of storage and can not generally be shared by email, especially raw content which is an order of magnitude larger than final compressed files.

Video asset management provides a central location, where team members can collaborate both inside and outside of your network and ensure they are working with the most current content. Content can then be easily organized, searched and tracked across teams and initiatives. Staff and external contractors will be able to build and store a library of common video elements, so people know where to find exactly what they need instead of having to ask someone or recreate common elements like logos, product demos, animation, B-roll and other footage.

Video asset management is built to help staff manage other video specific needs, such as providing a tool for defining video’s metadata and creating specific permission for viewing and approvals. The right tools create an environment where people can focus on building content, without having to worry about many of the administrative needs which video creates.

4. Publishing

How do I make sure my video runs on all destinations and devices?

Consider where your video is going, which devices it will run on and how you will future-proof it against changing technologies. Each playback device – from laptops to smartphones to TV's and gaming devices -- has different video format requirements for codec, bitrate and container. The lack of standards has made distribution a more complicated process. You'll need to create a variety of file versions to ensure your content can run under different device types and with different data requirements, from mobile, desktop and all the way up to connected TV's.

Your video solution should automate the entire video lifecycle management – ingest, organize, process, distribute, measure, analyze – eliminating configuration and management complexity. If your content is only for an internal audience, security features, like geofencing, restricting access by location, and ensuring your viewers are authenticated users are two features you'll need.

Cloud-based video platforms provide turnkey video hosting and HTML5 video player technology that make it easy to deliver and customize a consistent viewing experience, regardless of browser support, embedded links and applications, or final destination.

Next week we will review the last three P’s that will help your organization create a successful video initiative.