Video marketing has exploded in popularity in recent years, reflecting a growing trend: content that focuses on sight and sound is proving far more engaging for today’s audiences than text alone. Astute brands are increasingly exploring video as an avenue to showcase not just their products, but their company mission and story. It allows brands to build an emotional connection and community that drives more meaningful relationships with consumers.
By exercising artistic control over video narratives instead of relying on stock footage and assets, a business can perfect every scene to creatively and authentically express its brand personality on a deeper level. In turn, video marketing forges intuitive consumer connections which translate directly to key business growth metrics like engagement, loyalty and profits. Here’s why video marketing should form part of your strategy and how to implement it successfully.
The Benefits of Video Marketing
Encapsulates Brand Personality
Video provides brands with the perfect canvas to showcase their products in actual use and real-life contexts. Rather than relying on more abstract imagery, custom footage can take viewers through an authentic experience, interacting with products and seeing first-hand how they deliver on their promises. These videos become experiences in their own right that embody the brand message.
More importantly, custom creative control allows brands to fine-tune videos to creatively encapsulate their personality and differentiators down to the smallest details, from the shots used to the music and messaging. Brands can craft a visual world populated by characters who share their values, highlighting backstories and personalities that align. Essentially, custom videos move beyond a factual delivery of information into inspiring mini-films where the brand identity permeates all visual and emotional elements in a memorable way.
Reinforce Brand Messaging
The continuity of presenting a brand story across a series of concept videos also serves to reinforce the intended brand image. Consumers intuitively pick up on patterns in messaging, visual cues, characters, plots and formats when viewing multiple videos from the same company, which builds trust and familiarity. In crowded industries, custom videos allow brands to cut through noise by leaning into creative visual mediums centred around their differentiators.
Studies have shown that viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in video format, compared to only 10% when reading text. This massive difference demonstrates why video proves so effective at conveying ideas and building connections. Videos further appeal to visual, auditory and kinetic learning styles simultaneously for further memorability.
Spotlight Company Values
Videos can spotlight company values in action, embodied by characters facing choices that bring teachable moments or crystalise what matters to your organisation. Charitable initiatives or sustainability features, for example, come alive as stories conveying the brand’s soul. Likewise, instead of talking about innovative culture, video narratives can bring start-up stories to the screen through plots echoing a brand’s vision.
Video Marketing in Action: Best Practices
Humans are innately wired to respond to visual information and stories. When information is paired with compelling imagery, viewers pay closer attention, immerse themselves in the narrative, and retain the messaging better. Video leverages this human tendency by conveying stories through sight, sound and motion. So, one of the most important tips when crafting marketing videos is to have a clear narrative.
Brands can use video storytelling to explain their origin story and humble beginnings in an engaging, cinematic way. Rather than stating facts and history, bespoke footage recreates key brand moments in a narrative arc that connects emotionally. The founder’s journey comes alive, and viewers gain insight through watching these origin stories that could not resonate the same way through text.
It’s also important to identify your key brand differentiators and personas to target audiences those videos will aim for. Develop varying video styles, formats and storylines tailored to what matters most for these viewer segments. Maintain cohesive branding elements, such as colours, music and logo visibility, to reinforce connections across diverse content types meant to appeal to different groups.
Track performance by video category and monitor which video styles generate higher click-through rates and viewer duration as well as downstream metrics like conversions and sales volume generated. This enables you to optimise future production efforts around the specific video content that resonates the strongest with each target demographic.
Key video-level analytics to track include:
- Click-through rates: Which video styles and topics compel viewers to take the desired next action, whether to visit a webpage, download content, sign up for a service, make a purchase or otherwise convert?
- Viewer duration: Which videos keep audiences watching throughout their runtime vs. those seeing higher drop-off rates that may signal engagement issues?
- Video category performance: Are certain categories like tutorials, brand stories or top 10 lists performing better with viewers?
Experiment with various video formats, ranging from long-form videos to 60-second social media spots, maintaining a consistent publishing schedule that trains audiences to expect new and exciting branded video content frequently. It’s also crucial that businesses promote their top-performing videos more aggressively across various advertising channels and prioritise similar styles in future production schedules.
Most importantly, ensure videos stay on brand by aligning plots, characters, settings and dialogue to convey the overarching brand image accurately. Authenticity resonates the most, and having creative control over custom videos provides this flexibility. Brands should make sure to fully leverage this advantage.
Off-the-shelf stock footage and assets limit the extent to which a company can encapsulate the distinctive personality at their core. By embracing full creative direction over camera angles, characters, product integration and messaging, custom videos allow breakthrough encapsulation of brand identities within emotionally charged mini-movies.
In the end, video provides a gateway for productions to transport your distinctive mission, culture and style directly into the hearts and minds of target viewers. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a custom film conveying the essence of all your brand promises worth to future loyalists? Exceptional brands recognise this currency and are doubling down on video done their way.
