The Most Important Phase of Video Production

Every video project can be broken down into three phases:

1. Strategy
2. Video Creation
3. Promotion and Deployment

If you get even one of those elements wrong, you’ll find it difficult to generate ROI.

Last week we discussed the importance of #2, high quality video creation, and how to choose the right production partner based on your goals.

This week we’re going to take a step back and focus on something even more important: your video’s strategy.

While production quality is important, it can’t overcome a bad strategy. I can’t tell you how many videos we’ve seen clients make that are gorgeous, but completely miss the mark on strategy.

Just yesterday, Todd and I were looking at a beautiful video that a client shared with us. It was obvious they were very proud of it, but we had serious concerns.

You see, the video was extremely slow. We waited 10 seconds before the first words were spoken, with 5+ second gaps between sentences (for “dramatic effect”). It took a full 50 seconds before the video said anything relevant to the intended viewers.

Even without looking at the analytics, we knew immediately that the video wouldn’t perform. Not because the production quality was bad, but because the strategy didn’t align with online viewing habits.

As I shared in a recent video, you need to get to point immediately if you want your viewers to stick around. And that’s just one tiny aspect of the strategy process for your video.

Here are some of the most important elements of an effective video strategy:

• Smart topic selection
• Great scriptwriting
• Disciplined pre-production (so you can stay on budget)

If you get those three elements right, then you’re setting yourself up to get a strong return on your investment. But if you get any one of them wrong, your entire video project is doomed to fail.

That’s why for This Week In Video Marketing, we’re sharing some of our best tips to help you get your strategy right, so you can hit a home run on your next video project.

Choosing Profitable Video Topics

Before you choose a topic for your video, it really helps to understand how videos affect return on investment:

[Business Impact] x [Exposure] - [Cost] = [Expected ROI]

As you can see, the cost is actually the least important variable here (although it’s still very important, especially if your audience is small).

There are two main keys when choosing topics for your videos:

1. Make sure that your topics have the potential for a high business impact
2. Have a long-term plan for how you will use the video (which leads to increased exposure)

Businesses that have large online audiences don’t need to be as disciplined with their topic selection, because every video they create gets a lot of exposure — even if it’s shared only once. And because there’s so much exposure, the business impact can also be smaller.

While that’s wonderful for them, smaller businesses run into problems when they try to copy what the big brands are doing, which is a recipe for disaster.

We created a free Topic Selection Worksheet that focuses on helping you identify topics that are likely to have a high business impact, but also helps you prioritize video assets that will get the most exposure.

By ensuring that each video you create adheres to that model, you’re virtually guaranteed to generate ROI on your video projects.

(That’s assuming, of course, that you don’t completely miss the mark on production or fail to actually use your video as part of your sales and marketing process.)

To get that free Topic Selection Worksheet, just click here.

4 Pre-Production Necessities For A Successful Video

Pre-production begins with designing the strategy — both for the video itself, as well as how you’ll use that video once it’s complete.

Then, after you have a clear vision for what your video should accomplish and how it will be used in your sales and marketing processes, the next step is setting a budget...and sticking to it!  

In this video, Morgan shares several pre-production tips for creating a successful video.

How to Write & Edit a Video Script

One of the most critical elements of a successful video is getting your messaging right.

That means writing a script that is:

• Persuasive
• Maintains attention
• Sounds friendly and conversational

We’ve already shared three scriptwriting templates that will help you with #1 and #2, but the third element is just as important.

It’s an easy detail to overlook, because most marketers think of themselves as good writers. And while many are, writing for the spoken word is very different from writing for text.

In particular, there are four key differences between the two types of writing, which I share in this video.