Rural City of Murray Bridge-Thomas Foods International sod turning
Rural City of Murray Bridge–Thomas Foods International sod turning
Rural City of Murray Bridge - Opening of the new Rowing Club
Rural City of Murray Bridge – Opening of the new Rowing Club
Rural City of Murray Bridge-James McCrae on Murray Bridge
Rural City of Murray Bridge–James McCrae on Murray Bridge
1. Strategy | 7 Essential Steps To Successful Video Production
There’s no denying that video is an essential aspect of content marketing in the 2020s. In this blog series, we are unpacking the 7 Essential Steps of Video Production, beginning here with step one: Strategy.
Perhaps you’ve heard something to the effect of the Five P’s before: Proper Planning Promotes Phenomenal Production.
It’s true: before any video ventures are taken onboard, having a solid strategy in place is the crucial first step of seven. Its importance doesn’t have to make stressful or complex rocket science. Strategy, as we’ve devised it, is founded on two straightforward key aspects, as follows:
1. Determine your goals
It is essential you know from the beginning why you are making the video. Why walk down that path at all? We already know how well video content performs, so it’s time to cater it to you. This should be answered by your goals – or the question: what do you want to achieve with this video?
- If your answer sounds like any of the following:
- “To generate leads”
- “To increase brand awareness”
- “To make more profit”
- “To increase engagement”
Then the path remains dark, without direction.
These goals lack drive, they are without strength. “Goals” like these are hardly goals at all; it’s money-out on wishful thinking, and likely to get you lost in a video-void black hole.
Fortunately, we have a roadmap for a successful video production strategy starting point, illustrating the SMART goal structure. A SMART goal structure sets up your goals to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Your video goals need to be Specific. They cannot be as vague as those listed above. Your true goals will answer the questions that arise from those broad ideas, detailing the ends you want and the means by which you will achieve them.
To see results, your goal needs to be Measurable. Considering those previous half-goals: How many leads, and to what end? Increase by how much? How much more profit, by what deadline? By how much do you want to increase engagement, who do you want to engage more, and in what way? By putting a specific number to your goal, your progress becomes measurable. Being able to see your progress removes the blindfold, so you can see the lights that lead you to the realistic end of the tunnel.
Example of a measurable goal: “We want to use video marketing to see a 20% increase in our brand awareness by 1 September this year.”
Speaking of realistic, the goal you set needs to be Attainable. Ambition is always admirable, but there’s no point setting your sights on world domination by the time our next blog post is out, when all it will do is crush your dreams and your drive with the blow of inevitable failure. Keep your feet on the ground and be pragmatic in what is possible, and what is plausible. Increase website traffic by 12% in 12 weeks, increase brand awareness by 40% across Australia, world domination by the end of the year, after a few more tunnels, bridges and highways…
On the note of pragmatism — if it isn’t related to you, your field, and/or doesn’t benefit you, then… What are you doing in this tunnel? Any goal you set out to achieve must be Relevant. Make sure the conversation is about you, and not just about the latest trends. Having a relevant goal will reward you with relevant results, and increase your ROI. Unless you want to give away free money to entertain people — if so, your tunnel just became an escape room.
Finally, put your goal to a Timeframe. Since you have set a measurable goal, you have an idea of when it could be attained. When do you need your video to be made by? How long will the campaign run for? By what date to you want to have those goals met? If having a measurable goal gives you progress lights to guide you, having that end-date in mind is a light at the end of the tunnel.
A SMART video production strategy is a strong strategy: and a strong strategy is understanding and defining (as accurately as possible) what your desired outcomes are. Being able to articulate in detail what pertinent outcomes you want and are able to achieve in a specific time frame is the key. Articulate this key, and you can unlock the halfway door to your video marketing goal.
- Explore your audience.
Now you’ve got your SMART goal organised, next you need to understand your customers, in all their different subsets. It is crucial you determine how they are different from everyone else, and how they are different from each other. Your target audience may be broad and share commonalities, or they may be as individual and niche as a multi-faceted diamond, requiring a bespoke, targeted approach.
Depending on how you need to reach your audience, your approach could look like one of the following:
- a 10-second vertical video campaign, specific for social media platforms on mobile to drive traffic to your website
- a series of TV commercials to increase brand awareness
- an engaging explainer video to showcase your product and services to call your audience to action, converting them to customers
- a combination of the above, specifically catered to your goals and audience subsets
Within this exploration of your audience, there is a key question you need to have answered:
What is a problem each subgroup of your customers face, for which you (your products/services) are the solution?
With the key of the SMART goals and your understanding of what it is your audience needs that you provide, a video concept is beginning to take shape. The better your understanding of your audience’s pain points, the more effective and engaging your video will become – and that points your path in the direction of the light at its end.
We explore this aspect more in the next blog post of this 7-part series, as we enter into chapter two of video production: Scripting.
Strategy is the just the beginning of a successful video production: the foundation of the path. For our team here at redbikini, we’re passionate about the strategic video production adventure. If you want to have a conversation over coffee about your strategic direction, to understand your audience in-depth, or to refine your business goal with a cutting-edge corporate video production company, give redbikini a call today.
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Intro | 7 Essential Steps To Successful Video Production
You’ve traversed internet time and space to make it to this blog post, so the odds are you’re considering a corporate video production company to help you market your business, brand, company, product — or absolutely anything else.
A wise move: studies show a consistent demand and preference for video now more than ever (Hubspot, 2017). It’s a vast and exciting creative process, but it can also be a looming, twisting tunnel, with no known end in sight.
There’s no denying the prevalence of video in the 2020s. So, how is your video content performing in this over-saturated market? If you’re struggling to see results, need to clarify your video marketing goals, or just want to know more about what’s involved, then stick around; we’re doing a video production deep-dive, breaking down seven steps essential to a successful video production endeavour.
Perhaps you’ve heard something to the effect of the Five P’s before: Proper Planning Promotes Phenomenal Production.
It’s true. Before any video ventures are taken onboard, it’s important to plan ahead, and the best way to do so is by having a sound understanding of each of these seven steps, taking your video content marketing to the next level.
Step one: Strategy
It is essential you have a solid Strategy in place. An effective strategy is crucial in setting up the video production process for success from the beginning. The strategy stage looks at identifying SMART goals and the diverse subsets of your target audience, so that you may address each of them and their pain points, with you as their solution.
Step two: Scripting
The script describes the audio and visual aspects that the video will contain. This serves as both the creative and practical framework for your finished video, the part of the process where the storytelling begins and the concept is planned. Be it an information-heavy training video or a sharp and exciting TV commercial, a good video script will serve as the foundation for effectively translating the video ideas in your head to an as-realistic-as-possible fruition.
Step three: Pre-production
Akin to planning an event, the Pre-production stage covers the organisation of the people, places and things involved in the execution of Production. Director, producer, cast, production and camera crew, location, gear (cameras, lighting, green screen), props, wardrobe, catering. Anything that needs to be present in the video on the day must be organised in the pre-production stage.
Step four: Production
Production is where the rubber hits the road. The strategy sets up the script, the script sets up the video idea, the pre-production organises the production. With the strategy in place and the script front-and-centre in the production team’s mind, the filming process becomes painless.
Step Five: Editing and Animation
Depending on what needs to be done, this could be completed in a day, or take weeks – every video is different. Editing is where all the raw material is put into the edit suite to create the video detailed in the script. The Animation part of this step can be as simple as text graphics aesthetically superimposed over the footage in your brand font, or it can be complex 3D animation. Once the Editing and Animation stage is complete, we achieve ‘picture lock’, the cut of the video you approve of for the finished product. But it doesn’t end there.
Step six: Finishing and Delivering
Finishing is all about polishing the video. While the visual aspects of the video may be complete, it may require sound design, sound mixing, and colour grading, the importance of which we look into in this blog series. It is the step that takes your video to the next level as it gets closer to publishing. Delivering is where you get to see the changes made to the video since picture lock, before it is called the “finished product”. Changes can be made until you are satisfied with it, and then it’s ready for the last (and definitely not least) important step.
Step Seven: Distribution
Distribution is concerned with getting your polished video in front of the audience that you uncovered back in step one, Strategy. There’s little point investing in all those steps with a corporate video production company if no one is going to see your video. Organic traffic is your free audience, garnered through hard work, creativity, and your time, but an unreliable audience for ROI. Paid advertising optimises the placement of your content for your target audience, advancing your ROI for your video and driving the results you are going after by investing in video production. We look more at the merit of paid distribution in the final blog post of this series.
As we move through this blog series, we will unpack those seven steps essential to video production success even further. That is, Strategy; Scripting; Pre-Production; Production; Editing and Animation; Finishing and Delivery; and Distribution. If you want to unpack the anatomy of successful video content, learn more about your audience and how to make your video perform, then the secrets within this blog series await you.
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Every week for 7 weeks we will be releasing a one of the 7 steps.
Here are the sections we’ve released so far:
