Make a Professional Video: What form of video is best suited to my needs?
September 17th, 2013
So you’ve read about the costs and benefits of having a corporate video on your website (see our article: ‘Corporate Video Production – What’s its cost and value?’) and are now seriously considering funding one for your own business. But what kind of video should you be looking for? What format would best suit your needs? What other factors do you need to consider in order to make a professional video?
The best way to answer this is to put yourself in your audience’s shoes: How do you want them to engage with you and what kind of action would you want them to take after having watched your video? This notion of a call to action is imperative, for without it all the time and money you spend on producing a video would be pointless. If it makes no difference to your customers, to your business, to you, then why do it in the first place?
Knowing who your video will be aimed at and knowing their preferred response to it will tell you straight away the form of video you should choose to make, the options being as follows:
1. Viral Video:
You want your audience to interact with other potential clients or customers by linking them to, tweeting them about, or soliciting them in various ways to watch, your video. Generally, though, your video won’t be nested solely on your website. It will be available also on YouTube, Vimeo, as well as other general sites that are associated with your business or product. This all sounds great, but what are the downsides? First of all, coming up with a great concept that will go viral is notoriously difficult. There are no guarantees, and even if your video did go viral, you have no control over the content with which it will be associated.
2. Promotional Video:
This form of corporate video can be broken down into two sub-categories: conversion-type and education-type. The first one – conversion-type – is when the video is geared to directly convert the viewer into a customer or client: What am I selling? Why should you buy it? How can you get it? Those are the basic questions to be answered by such a video. The second type – education video – is more nuanced in its approach, for its aim is to build knowledge and trust that ultimately should reward you with a customer or client. They haven’t bought anything yet, necessarily, but after watching your video they should have bought into the idea of buying from you. This video is more about you: Who are we? What do we do? How do we do it? Why do we do it, and what do we stand for?
3. In-house Video:
This video is not geared toward external customers and clients so much as staff and employees. Its aims can be multi-various: from induction to training, from incentivizing staff to building knowledge. Whatever way you look at it, it’s about stating and re-stating the core values of your business, brand or product, and getting that information out consistently across the organisation.
There are of course other, more bespoke forms of corporate video production outside these categories, such as event video production, interview filming, etc, but if you were to boil down the key forms of video that are available for a business, these would be it. It would also be best to pick one or another and not try blending them, or there will be a good chance that your core message will be diluted and all the time and money you invested would be for naught. If you want more than one type of video, then best budget for more than one type of video.
But even if you do just budget for one type of video, be aware that does not necessarily mean you need only end up with one finished video product! Let’s say, for instance, while filming an education-type video you were to film a number of clients enthusing about your business and the way you conduct yourself. You probably won’t want to include every comment in the main video, but you can still get a separate cut of each of those comments and include it elsewhere on your site, perhaps on your contact page.
The key is to plan ahead, to consider how you can maximize the range of videos you can get from just one film shoot, thereby getting maximum value out of your time and money spent. Just don’t try and fit every element into just one video. Chances are it won’t work.
