6 Questions You Should Ask Before Starting a Video Project
When you want a professional video for your business or brand, you want it to be perfect.
The perfect video should be the ideal length, it needs to get your message across, and it should promote engagement within your target audience, among a long list of other necessary elements.
But to reach this level of perfection, a lot of careful planning and consideration is required. That’s why we work through a detailed questionnaire with each of our clients before we start a project.
If we’re being honest, our project questionnaire has a lot more than six questions… however these are the 6 major points you should consider first!
1. What is the purpose of the video?
Purpose is an essential aspect of each one of our projects. By knowing the video’s intended purpose, we can determine its objectives and goals.
With these goals, we can create and track a set of metrics or KPIs (key performance indicators), these help us determine the effectiveness of your video and how its performance matches your expectations.
We make videos to compliment marketing strategies, for charities, for tech companies and for education institutions. Each one of our clients comes to us with a very different reason for getting professional video, it’s our duty to understand why, and deliver to satisfy the need.
Some of the reasons include: content marketing campaigns, to display a product or service, for search engine optimization, to increase engagement in social campaigns, lead generation or for a direct response campaign. We want to know your reason.
2. Who is the target audience?
When we know the mindset and motivations of a video’s target audience, we can tailor videos directly to them.
We ask our clients whether they have audience research, have they conducted focus groups, do they have detailed customer personas?
If so, these are very useful for us to get a clear picture of who we’re making the video for. If this is a well targeted campaign, a large number of viewers will feel like we’ve made the video just for them, and that is extremely valuable.
3. What do the viewers need to know?
We also ask what the viewers want to know from you. Knowing more about your audience and their expectations is very different from what you want to say to them.
By putting yourself in the shoes of the viewer, you can start to think of the information that they need in stages and deliver each stage in the appropriate time.
This is what gives you the competitive edge, by understanding the needs of your audience, you make them feel welcomed and in control.
4. How close are the viewers to taking action?
Knowing where the video viewers are in your marketing funnel allows us to know how to approach the video’s call to action.
If the intended audience knows nothing about your brand, we need to create top of funnel content that will introduce them to the brand and leave them with a good impression. This type of content should compel them to want to learn more. However, it’s unlikely that we’re going to get them to make a purchase with just one video.
If the prospect has already seen this type of content and is familiar with your brand, it’s likely that we are going to create content just to give them the extra guidance they need to make an informed decision.
Videos should vary greatly depending on where your target audience is in your marketing funnel. A different audience will require a different budget and a different approach to storytelling.
5. What is your call to action?
What is the call to action (CTA) and how can we tell a story that compels the viewer to take action?
Once we know the brand or business’ call to action, we design every frame of the video to give the viewer the impetus to take action.
The script is then designed to lead up to the call to action, the music should sit in line with the task, the voiceover or dialogue will be carefully selected to tell a story that leads to the natural conclusion. We like to get a clear picture of what the audience should think, feel and do after watching your video.
6. How will the video get to market?
How will it be distributed? Can we help you get more people watching the video? Does it need an advertising campaign, or perhaps a social campaign? Will there need to be additional material to support the video, such as white papers, press releases, graphic design, etc…
Once a video has been made, it’s a crying shame if it sits on YouTube or Instagram gaining a few hundred views and coming to a halt.
In order to get maximum return on your video investment, we need to seed the audience to the right people and that’s where a good distribution strategy is worth its weight in gold.
Plan Your Next Video Project With Phantom Productions
After we answer all these questions, we can start working on defining the right story to accomplish your goals.
Looking to get a professional video for your brand or business? Let’s chat.