Video isnâEUR(TM)t going away âEUR" quite the contrary and more businesses are adding web to their marketing mix. ItâEUR(TM)s likely this will involve partnering with a web video production company. The start of this process should include creating a really effective brief âEUR" it focuses the businessesâEUR(TM) attention on what you want to achieve with the videos, and provides a level playing field when approaching several potential web video production partners.Guidelines for your web video production Brief
The following should be included in the brief you hand off to the team responsible for creating your next video project. If you canâEUR(TM)t provide all of the following categories of information to your production team (with some detail) then you may not be ready to start your project: Company background - How are you situated in your market? How is your company perceived by your customers? What are your key brands attributes? Why are you different? These questions are all important context that helps your production company understand why online video might be helpful in promoting your company.
Focus of video - Do you want to promote a product, a service, your customer support, your entire company, or something else? You canâEUR(TM)t promote them all at once so you need to start making decisions now âEUR" you may need to plan a series of shorter more focussed web videos, rather than longer more detailed ones. You need to be able to provide sufficient detail about exactly what it is you are promoting. What problems do you solve for your customer? Is your solution unique? How do you differentiate yourself in the marketplace âEUR" price, technology, service, selection, experience, etc? YouâEUR(TM)re not looking at business outcomes here âEUR" you are determining the specifics of the subject matter in the video.
Competition - Who is your competition? Do they use video to market themselves? Is it effective? How and why should your video be different (or similar) to their video?
Target audience - Exactly who is it you are trying to reach and why. What are their unique attributes? Have you built personas for your key audience? This is one of the most difficult questions for businesses to answer - not because they donâEUR(TM)t know who their audience is but because they are concerned about having too narrow a focus. Fortunately the cost of video production is considerably lower than it was just five years ago so itâEUR(TM)s possible to build more tactical video solutions for each audience.
Business Goals - What are the specific business goals that you want the video to drive? Views, downloads, traffic, referrals, awareness, clicks, inquiries, shares, links, âEUR~likesâEUR(TM), calls, sales, etc? You have to be able to identify specific goals otherwise you will never know if your investment was worthwhile. Knowing this will help your video production company to determine the best approach to creating your video.
Timelines and budget- When will the project start and when is the completed video required? Have you allocated a budget for the project? If you have itâEUR(TM)s a good idea to communicate the budget and ask the companies exactly what they can deliver for that budget. The alternative is hiding the budget and asking everyone to guess at your budget. This forces the video production company to make assumptions about the number of shooting days, locations, actors, number of cameras, type of equipment, amount of motion graphics and all of the other variables that go into the creation of a video. The only way to get a useful comparison is to ask production companies to provide detailed treatments and estimates based on these assumptions.
The following should be included in the brief you hand off to the team responsible for creating your next video project. If you canâEUR(TM)t provide all of the following categories of information to your production team (with some detail) then you may not be ready to start your project: Company background - How are you situated in your market? How is your company perceived by your customers? What are your key brands attributes? Why are you different? These questions are all important context that helps your production company understand why online video might be helpful in promoting your company.
Focus of video - Do you want to promote a product, a service, your customer support, your entire company, or something else? You canâEUR(TM)t promote them all at once so you need to start making decisions now âEUR" you may need to plan a series of shorter more focussed web videos, rather than longer more detailed ones. You need to be able to provide sufficient detail about exactly what it is you are promoting. What problems do you solve for your customer? Is your solution unique? How do you differentiate yourself in the marketplace âEUR" price, technology, service, selection, experience, etc? YouâEUR(TM)re not looking at business outcomes here âEUR" you are determining the specifics of the subject matter in the video.
Competition - Who is your competition? Do they use video to market themselves? Is it effective? How and why should your video be different (or similar) to their video?
Target audience - Exactly who is it you are trying to reach and why. What are their unique attributes? Have you built personas for your key audience? This is one of the most difficult questions for businesses to answer - not because they donâEUR(TM)t know who their audience is but because they are concerned about having too narrow a focus. Fortunately the cost of video production is considerably lower than it was just five years ago so itâEUR(TM)s possible to build more tactical video solutions for each audience.
Business Goals - What are the specific business goals that you want the video to drive? Views, downloads, traffic, referrals, awareness, clicks, inquiries, shares, links, âEUR~likesâEUR(TM), calls, sales, etc? You have to be able to identify specific goals otherwise you will never know if your investment was worthwhile. Knowing this will help your video production company to determine the best approach to creating your video.
Timelines and budget- When will the project start and when is the completed video required? Have you allocated a budget for the project? If you have itâEUR(TM)s a good idea to communicate the budget and ask the companies exactly what they can deliver for that budget. The alternative is hiding the budget and asking everyone to guess at your budget. This forces the video production company to make assumptions about the number of shooting days, locations, actors, number of cameras, type of equipment, amount of motion graphics and all of the other variables that go into the creation of a video. The only way to get a useful comparison is to ask production companies to provide detailed treatments and estimates based on these assumptions.
