In today’s digital age, video content reigns supreme as a powerful tool for engaging audiences and driving meaningful connections. Whether you’re in the swing of marketing plans for the new financial year or planning your next big video campaign – we share our expert tips for how to create winning video content that’ll drive ROI.

The Importance of Early Engagement With Your Video Agency

When you engage with video production experts from the outset of your content planning process, you set the stage for success in a bunch of critical areas:

1.  Budget Optimisation: Early collaboration allows video production experts to provide valuable insights into budget allocation which can effectively see your ideas sink or swim. They can advise on cost-effective strategies without compromising on quality, ensuring your budget is maximised for the most impactful results.

2. Goal Alignment: Video production agencies help align your video content goals with your broader marketing objectives. While you might already be a pro at this, a video production partner can review your goals with a fresh perspective. Whether it’s increasing brand awareness, driving sales, or educating your audience, their expertise ensures that every video serves a purpose in achieving your business goals.

3. Feasibility Assessment: Ideas are limitless, but they’ve got to be feasible. Video production experts evaluate the feasibility of your creative concepts beyond budget, by considering factors such as timeline, resources, and technical requirements. This early assessment prevents unrealistic expectations and ensures smooth project execution. It also saves everyone a whole lotta time, especially you!

4.  Creative Ideation: Collaboration with video agencies brings fresh perspectives and creative ideas to the table. Their tried and true expertise adapting ideas to screen along with their experience across diverse industries, enables them to innovate and propose unique concepts that resonate with your audience and differentiate your brand. It’s pretty rare that we don’t have to adapt a brand or agency’s ideas to better fit the video medium, so get ahead by involving your agency early.

Creating Effective Video Content Plans

Beyond early collaboration with a video production supplier, here are 8 additional tips for crafting effective video content plans for the year ahead:

1. Define Clear Objectives: It might seem obvious, but start with defining clear, measurable objectives for each video. If increasing brand awareness is your goal, then you should probably focus your video marketing strategy on things like ads and social media videos. If you’re more interested in increasing brand trust and customer retention, consider case studies and customer testimonial videos. Whether it’s brand awareness, lead generation, or conversion optimisation, align your video strategy with your overarching business goals.

2.  Know Your Audience: But like realllly know your audience though. Understand their preferences, pain points, and behaviours. Really drill down into this data (and ensure its recent – see tip 6) without relying on old assumptions. Tailor your video content to resonate with their needs and interests, to boost relevance and engagement.

3. Plan for Diversity Across Your Video Content: Don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach. Diversify your video content portfolio to cater to different stages of the customer journey. Consider things like explainer videos, customer testimonials, behind-the-scenes footage, and company culture video to engage and educate and inspire your audience throughout their interactions with your brand.

4. Create a clear and robust plan for your video marketing. This should include the types of videos you wish to create and the associated goal/audience, along with resource allocation, distribution plan and topline brief. Plan the frequency of your video output across the year, while considering industry trends, seasonal peaks and events, and audience behaviour. We recommend using work management platforms such as Mondays for this, as you can edit your plan in real-time and cross-collaborate with other members of your team. 

5. Storytelling as a brand pillar. Elevate your brand through compelling storytelling, because storytelling sells. Craft a narrative that speaks to your audience and stays with them. This storytelling approach not only builds brand affinity and humanises your business, but it also sets the stage for long-term customer loyalty.

6. Stay Agile and Data-Driven: Data is your North Star. To know if your video marketing efforts are working, you need to dive into your video metrics (think: views, watch time, shares, click-through rates, and conversions). You’ll then identify trends in audience behaviour that should give you some solid insights into how you can adjust your video strategy to continually improve. Use this data to refine your strategy continually. A/B test different video formats, CTAs, and distribution channels to optimise your approach based on real-time performance data.

7. Integration Across Channels: Forget siloing your videos – let your video content permeate through multiple channels where appropriate. From social media platforms to email campaigns – to help maximise your video marketing budget, seamlessly integrate your video content across channels. Consistent messaging and visual aesthetics create a cohesive brand narrative, reinforcing your identity in the minds of your audience.

8. Keep Up To Speed On Emerging Video Trends: Stay on the cutting edge of video marketing by embracing emerging technologies. Engage your audience with interactive video experiences. From clickable CTAs within videos that trigger an action when tapped, to immersive 360-degree content, and interactive AI elements that transform passive viewers into active participants. This not only enhances engagement but also provides valuable data on user preferences.

So to sum up, as you embark on planning your video content for the new financial year, remember to set clear objectives, understand your audience, diversify your content, and remain agile in response to performance data. Data = power, people! By implementing these strategies and leveraging the expertise of video production professionals (like us!) you can position your brand or business for sustained growth and engagement in an increasingly video-centric digital landscape.

Need help with your brand or business’s content marketing plan? Or got a brief or a bunch of loose ideas to run by our video production team? Hit up info@weknowvideo.com.au or shoot through a project enquiry via the Request a Quote button on our website.