video4marketing!

What went wrong? That’s the question all political commentators, campaign strategists and journalists are asking these days in the fallout leading from the 2016 elections.

Strategy first! Whether you are talking about video marketing, content marketing, or about a political campaign, it has to start with clear strategy (don’t confuse strategy with tactics, strategy is usually ONE, and tactics can be multiple).

Every single video marketing project starts with strategy session, and key elements are: your AUDIENCE, and your MESSAGE.

1. Identify Your Audience

Who is your audience, what are their problems, what keeps them awake at night and how you (your business, your product or service) can solve their problems?

It’s similar with political parties, they have to identify their audiences and their problems and then shape their messages accordingly.

“Many brands make the mistake of producing marketing videos designed to target every audience, thinking that by creating video content that appeals to greater numbers of viewers, thy’ll get greater leads and sales!“

Often there are many different audiences and each one of them requires a different approach, different tactics and different messages.
So, identify your audience(s) and develop personas. Without knowing your audiences you won’t be able to identify their problems, so it’d be hard to develop a meaningful message that would resonate with them.

2. Have a Clear Message – Be Specific!

Your message might be fit for your audience, but is it specific enough. Make your message clear and easily understood – and do this quickly.

“Having a video (or other content) that conveys one main message is essential to ensure your viewers have a clear understanding.”

Your message has to resonate with your audience, they need to know from your message that you feel their pain, in business (you might have problem of getting leads, or poor conversion…) in politics (they don’t want to pay more for doctor visits or scans, or they are underemployed…).

What exactly do you want your video campaign to achieve? Does the resulting video aim to increase brand awareness? Increase leads and sales? By how much? What specific numbers? ‘’Grow your audience with social media’’ will get you nowhere, but “Increase the traffic to your website with Facebook Ads” is specific.

3. Tell a Story –  (vs telling your slogans or a tagline)

Everyone loves a good story. Stories delight, motivate, challenge, anger and touch us.
Voters don’t have time to read through pages of data about your policies. They simply want to get a feel for who you are as a person and know that you can be trusted to do a good job for them. Identifying a few key story points to tell in your campaign is the best way to gain their trust, help them develop a feel for what you’re all about.

Slogans can only be effective if there is a story behind them. They need to know your story, then following up with your slogan won’t be a problem – they now know what you mean.

So, don’t assume that your potential customers know what your tag line stands for or your slogan, they need to know the full story; who you are, what you stand for, tell them a story how your product or service have solved the problem for your existing clients etc…

Have a look at few examples from Video Vault‘s clients’ videos where storytelling was used tot engage their audiences:

Please leave a comment or shoot us a question about your next video project.

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