Connection. People need to feel connected. They need to trust the brands they are working with or buying from. So, how do you create that connection using videos? Easy – be yourself.
Everything, yes everything, you do can be put into a video and become content for you to express what’s important to your brand and drive community engagement. Contests, ad campaigns, sponsorships, charity drives, clearance sales, even regular daily activities can all be transformed into some of the best marketing for your brand.
Showcase Your Company Culture
Showing off your brand’s culture is one of the core functions of video; it’s not always about driving sales directly from promotions. Most standard promotional content only showcases your products or services, but a well-done video that includes aspects of your culture is much more powerful and genuine.
Since viewers are so accustomed to tuning out standard commercials, it’s important to do something different. Try making a commercial that engages on multiple levels or create culture-focused content that shows off people and their personalities to better connect with the audience.
If you want to create an engaging commercial, it needs to have a well-thought out message that tells a story and promotes your product or service. Focus primarily on the story your commercial is telling with the product making a few prominent cameos. These types of commercials are the ones that create conversation and drive good feelings or nostalgia, helping to foster a community around your brand.
Some great commercial ideas are built around being extremely short, like Youtube mid-roll ads.
A culture-focused video showcases the company values, employees, and the larger community. These videos are not about a product or service, but about the people that use the service, the larger issue at hand, or anything that connects people with the brand. It is almost always more engaging to have real personalities, employees, or community members as opposed to actors. Plus, creating more content that focuses on personalities that match your brand and your brand’s target demographic will not only create a dedicated community, but also lead to an increase in word of mouth referrals and loyal customer-base.
Plan Videos Using Audience, Insight, and Theme
In order to produce high quality videos, you have to start by planning out content so it aligns and has a consistent message. We recommend writing down a statement for your video that includes these key pieces of information – audience, insight, and theme.
Audience
Think about who you want to be watching the video or using your product or service. While you’re deciding on your audience, make sure to answer the question, “What is a problem they are having that your product or service solves?”
Insight
Ask yourself, “What do you want your viewers to gain from this?”
Theme
Theme can be uncovered by asking the following questions.
? “What do we want to say?”
? “What is our solution to their problem?”
? “What is the overall tone and message that viewers should be taking away from the video?”
Once you identify these answers, write a statement like this: “ (Your company) wants to make videos for (Audience) but (Insight) by (Theme).
A guiding statement for me, as a videographer, would be, “I want to make videos for people who wish they could have high quality video that increases brand relationships with their audience but are unsure what video production involves by showing them that video production isn’t hard but does take effort, ingenuity, and consistency.”
Below are a few additional items to keep in mind when producing videos for your brand.
? Keep each idea in line with the core values and messaging. If it doesn’t provide consumer value, encourage engagement, and align with your core values, don’t make it.
? Decide how many series, episodes, or videos you want to make; what scale they will be; and what they will each be about. Then, make a list of videos with the key themes associated with each.
? Decide who will be in the content – actors, employees, clients, industry partners, executives, or even animation/text with voice actors.
? Decide who will make this content. An outside firm or in-house employees?
Creating quality content takes time and work, but it’s worth it. Are you ready to make great content but not sure if you can take it on by yourself? That’s what Ke is here for! Take a few moments to learn all about our video services and check out some examples of our work.