This article has been contributed by Roman Daneghyan.

We live in a fast-paced world. Everything around us is becoming more bold, vivid and dynamic. Videos are becoming more embedded in society – they are part of most people’s everyday lives. In fact, videos have become vital in today’s media industry.

Whether it’s entertainment, news, advertisements or reality shows, videos are an integral part of the global media landscape. More and more, videos are on the rise, with over 50% of viewers watching their content on their mobile phones and not via their desktop computers.

Using video marketing and well-produced promotional videos are an essential ingredient in any marketing strategy to develop your business and create brand awareness. Almost every successful business is adopting video marketing, which is transforming the advertising landscape as we know it.

There are a few reasons why your audience likes videos. For one, short videos deliver information easily, they’re entertaining, catchy and quick to digest. They’re also viewable on the go as a welcome break from ‘reality’. For example, they can be watched in the train, bus or even on a lunch-break.

Videos can be informative, inspiring or educational. This engaging nature of video creates the ‘joy’ factor: global audiences just love watching videos. Yes, videos give people a boost including an actual dopamine release which stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain.  This fact would explain why people love videos as much as they do: it’s beautifully addictive.

The most viewed video of all time is Despacito on YouTube with no less than 6.1 billion views as of May 2019, presumably some folk have watched the music video on repeat because they just can’t get enough! So this idea illustrates why it’s crucial to use video marketing as part of your publicity  to compete with other brands and products.

Since the internet has different market segments, your marketing strategy needs to be as strategically planned as possible. You and your marketing team needs to carefully map out your potential viewers and audience. More and more companies are investing in video marketing to increase sales performance and to deliver a better customer experience.

Video is not only the most popular media form online, it’s also the most effective in communication. For example, users are able to retain 95% of the content of a video but only 10% of content in text format. So video is simply a much more effective way to get your message across!

Create High-Performing Videos in 12 Steps

Now we are going to show you how you can wow your audience with high-performing marketing videos by following these 12 steps:

1. Define Your Marketing Goals

First of all, define your marketing goals. What is it that you want to achieve with your videos? Is it boosting sales, or creating awareness of your brand or product?  Most marketers are looking for the best return on investment (ROI) for their clients. So you need to crucially define the goal of the messages that you want to bring across before starting to develop your video content.

2. Know Your Audience: Profiling Pro Tip

The next step is to create your content for your video marketing strategy. For that you need to create a story that will draw in the attention of your viewers. Instead of trying to sell something, rather wrap your message in a visually appealing story. But first you need to find out what kind of content actually suits your brand or product. So you need to figure out your audience or buyer persona. A good way to do that is to visualize your ideal client: age, class, male/female, lifestyle, hobbies, location and so on. It is really important to have the right buyer persona in mind when developing your content marketing plan.  Your audience will also shape and ultimately define the tone of your brand. You will have to evaluate whether your brand approach is light and entertaining or rather serious and corporate? It all depends on your audience and can be adapted along the way. What type and style of video would your ideal customer love? How does your product best connect with your customer? What problem does it solve?

Once you have answered these questions and you’ve developed a concrete profile, set that profile as a standard to evaluate all of your strategic planning against. So whether you write something, design a flyer or shoot a film, everything that is being produced speaks to this buyer persona. That’s our profiling pro tip.

3. Remember First Impressions

Thirdly, have a strong introduction. Studies have shown that one-fifth of viewers swipe away a video within the first ten seconds! So just like in a good book or when meeting someone for the first time, so also in videos: it’s really important to hook the viewer within the first ten seconds through a solid and intriguing  introduction. So make sure your introduction stands out so that the viewer is hooked and stays tuned in for the rest of your message. You’ve heard it before that “first impressions last!”

4. Use A Strong Video Title

It’s important to have a strong video title that will create a sense of anticipation to watch it. If your video name isn’t catchy, no one will bother to click ‘play’, so don’t risk being boring! You want to engage the viewer right from the onset, so make the video title entice the audience.

5. ‘Show, Don’t Tell’

Try to stay away talking about the product too much. Rather tell the story and focus on the mission. This is storytelling biggest secret: ‘show, don’t tell’. Give your viewers more than they expect and they will come back again for more. For example, the Nivea brand experts use emotional videos that focus less on the product but more on the experience.

Check out this video by Nivea:

A Nivea commercial that is driven by the characters and impressive setting- can you guess why?

This overall Nivea video style shows its emotive intent, and portrays an endearing mother-daughter relationship. Why so? This relatable scene between mum and child speaks of trust, tenderness, care and protection. All these qualities will now be transferred  in the audience’s minds from the people to the Nivea product by association. That’s the magic power of suggestion!

6. Plan Your Video Flow

Once you have your content and visual outline ready, you can look at your video content scheduling needs. Your team needs to look at how many videos per week or per month you will have to make. Will it be one video per week? Or would three a week be more effective? Once you have decided on how many videos you want to schedule, you can look at the broad content of your videos.

7. Produce The Video

Your next step is now the production side of the video making. Given that you are working in a team, you would need to split up the roles and divide tasks into each part.

Essential tasks include:

• Scriptwriting or interview questions (for example, will it be a scripted video or spontaneous live recording?)
• Lighting and sound (do you need extra lighting or does natural light suffice? Is there a mic on the camera or do you need extra equipment, such as a boom or a lapel mic?)
• Location and setting (where would be a good setting to record the video without too much background noise?)
• Editing (who will edit the footage and with what software?)
• Online marketing (who will be responsible for uploading the videos, keeping track of the SEO data and using the most efficient channels?)

In my experience, this work above can be significantly streamlined by using a service like Renderforest which is the equivalent of WordPress for video. Before WordPress you used to have to hard-code your own site. Likewise, before Renderforest you used to have to shoot and edit all your own content from scratch. Now you can save time and money and get quality results. Renderforest assists with creating some really strong video marketing content quickly and affordably  whether you need product promo’s, company overviews and more.

They have loads of video preset templates to  choose from that can quickly and easily be customised for your brand even if you have no video editing background. For example, Renderforest’s ‘event promo’ video templates come in a load of sleek and trendy varieties that can suit any business. You can even search for ‘trending’ or ‘most popular’ varieties. . The videos are quick to produce and easy to assembly with intuitive customization options. Check out their website.

You can also view our blog on best Video Editing Courses.

Renderforest’s Event Promotion Video Templates

8.  Choose Your Video Channels

Once you know what kind of content you want to produce, you have to decide on which ‘channels’ like YouTube, Facebook, etc,  you want publish your videos. This again also depends on your audience. Will your audience engage more with a video that is posted over Facebook or YouTube? Most publishers post videos to a range of social media channels to maximise total audience reach since the cost of publishing video on social media accounts is generally minimal or zero. Those videos can then be ‘boosted’ with paid promotions within the social media channels to ensure more views depending on your budget.

Publishing videos on YouTube, Facebook or Vimeo are all highly recommended. Those online platforms guarantee a large exposure – with YouTube alone racking up over 500 million hours of video watch time a day YouTube belongs to Google, therefore your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is immediately boosted through using the most popular search engine channel.

Also note that when promoting video over Facebook, uploading the video onto the native Facebook app rather than sharing a YouTube video long Facebook is really rewarding, as the videos have a ten-times higher reach than YouTube. This in turn also increases your SEO.

9. Harness The Power Of Music

Music is key to a strong and inspiring video. To have a good score will create an emotional relationship to the viewer, which in turn will create a stronger bond to the brand. Think of the power of music videos like Despacito to drive astronomical numbers of views. Take this pro tip from cinematographer Carlos Perez- the director of ‘Despacito’. Carlos attributes part of the video’s viral success to the fact that the video “directly supports the vibe of the song”.  So if we borrow from this advice, we could say make sure your song “directly supports the vibe of the video”. So don’t be shy in using some catchy, toe-tapping tunes to craft your video message.

Despacito – the World’s Most Catchy Video

10. Make Videos Smartphone Friendly

You know how watching a funny cat video on your smartphone is the last thing they do before going to bed??? Well… I do that too!  So remember to make your video marketing strategy mobile phone friendly. More and more users have access to the internet and love using smartphones to watch videos and surf their social media accounts. By 2020, there will be 6.1 billion smartphone users globally (via TechCrunch).  That’s a huge potential cellular-based audience. So make your videos easily accessible on cell phones by adding captions if the video is watched on silent, and by keeping the videos short and sweet.

11. SEO – Optimise Your Video

Include frequent data analysis in your marketing strategy. Through thorough Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques you can increase the exposure of your video  online. A well-written description of the video next to the post, for example, will help to increase your SEO.

12. Consider Live Video

Once your video is complete, you need to find the right channels that suit your video marketing strategy. BUT, if you record live, your content won’t need to be uploaded separately, since it will go straight online through the online channel that you use. For example, Facebook has a live recording stream, as well as Instagram.

So to wrap up, using videos as part of your exciting marketing strategy is a non-negotiable, a no brainer- you’d be crazy to ignore it, but you’ll be delighted to discover it! Using good promotional videos is super important for any business development and creates outstanding returns on your investment. Renderforest has made it really easy to create pro videos from scratch, so there’s no reason not to have your own awesome video marketing project.

As a brand, you want to create a long-lasting relationship with your audience, so the more intense your video marketing plan is, the more likely it is to build a loyal audience who will soon become a loyal fan base, who will soon become loyal customers!

About the author: Roman Daneghyan is the Chief Marketing Officer at Renderforest, a Content Marketing Specialist and an Expert in SEO, Social Media Marketing, and Link Building who enjoys sharing the experiences gained along working as a marketer and helping other entrepreneurs succeed.