Connecting with your audience through video content
About 300 hours of video is uploaded to Youtube every minute, which makes video content extremely accessible to a large audience!
The sheer volume of content available at your fingertips is staggering, from the beautiful to the bland it’s everywhere! But, at a time when anyone can make a video, what makes a “good” one?
That’s one question many businesses struggle to answer — especially when trying to make a corporate video for the landing page of their website.
We’ll share with you, how to develop a strong video idea to give your website visitors a clear picture of your business.
Who is your audience?
This might be a bit of a no-brainer. But, before you create a video you’ll need to know who your audience is.
Generally speaking, most businesses are looking for video content that will connect an emotion, feeling or atmosphere with the brand. But, if you don’t know who you’re talking to, it’s hard to craft a meaningful story to reach the intended audience.
We’ve developed some quick tips to help you define your audience.
Research
The first step to defining your audience is to do research!
Gather information from analytics (captured on social media and your website) on who buys your product or service, and who visits your website. Do not guess who your customers are — look it up and know!
Build a persona
Once you’ve gathered the data, it’s time to start weeding through it. Begin by putting it together into an ‘audience persona’. An audience persona is basically a list of common characteristics your customers (either real or intended) will share. A good persona usually outlines basic details like age, gender, marital status, job role, education, salary, and location.
You may decide through the process some details aren’t relevant like age, gender, or income — but what matters more to your business is that audience live and work in your local area.
Example:
Target Audience
- Lives in Lancashire
- Married with kids
- 50+ years old
- Yearly household earnings £100,000+
You don’t need to have all the details outlined above — but you will need at least three key details in order for a persona to be effective.
For our client, Excelsior, we created a video to show how plastic products are made using rotational moulders. The video shows how the team is involved in the process from the first scoop of plastic all the way to packing product ready for shipping.
What are you trying to say?
Once you know who you’re talking too, it’s time to fine-tune your message. If your video will sit directly on your homepage, you can start with a simple three question pen and paper exercise. We recommend, you keep your answers to one word or short phrases and then write ‘em down!
Question 1: What do you want people to feel?
Question 2: What do you want people to think?
Question 3: What do you want them to know about your business?
From there you can start to build out a wider sense of what your video needs to capture and you’ll likely start to see some themes emerging. Try to summarise what your video needs to communicate into a complete sentence or two.
Example:
- We want people to see our everyday life as a business.
- We want people to see how we build or develop our products.
- We want people to see the faces of our friendly and valuable team.
- We want to show the quality of our products and services in an inviting way.
- We want to highlight our core business values of honesty, humility, and hard work.
Once you’ve done the pen and paper exercise, you should have a clear understanding of what you’re trying to say with this video.
We’ve recently created a new website and landing page video for local financial firm PM+M to showcase and reflect their friendly and approachable atmosphere.
Why should they care?
After you’ve outlined what you’re trying to say, it’s time to weave in the last layer, which is why should the audience care. This is where you can weave in your value proposition — what do you offer that other companies don’t?
Summarise in one sentence or two, your value proposition and why a customer should choose business for the products and services you offer. Be sure to include things that set you apart which may include, your service, products, or atmosphere.
We created a video for the Roman Stone Tile Company, focusing on their value proposition of, “providing a stunning selection of exquisite Italian porcelain surface tiles to interior designers, architects, and private customers across the UK”. The purpose of the video was to entice customers to pop-by the showroom and see the tiles in person.
Now that you’ve gone through the process and seen a few examples, you’ll be in a much better place to create your new website landing page video!
And if any of this seems too complicated or if you need help honing your idea we’re here to help!
We have experience in developing, shooting, and editing video content for websites, social media, to help businesses like yours meet specific commercial objectives — feel free to give us a call to discuss!
