Creating marketing video content takes more than just producing a well-made final product; people actually have to watch it, too. You can follow every common best practice and still create videos that don’t lead anywhere.
Marketing professionals should start by asking themselves why someone should care about their video and what they should want to do after they finish it. It’s important to understand your audience and give them a clear reason to keep watching. When you create a video to answer a genuine audience question and fit into your broader content strategy, you give it a better chance of doing more than simply filling a spot on your content calendar.
Start With the Right Idea
Video strategy starts well before you turn a camera on. The decisions you make before filming can shape how well the finished video works. Start with a clear purpose for the project, whether that’s answering a common customer question, introducing a new product, or something else. A well-produced video can only do so much if the topic doesn’t connect with a real audience need.
Also keep in mind the information your audience already knows; instead of being told what they already know, they want to learn something new. That helps keep the video more engaging and fresh. It can be tempting to cover the basics in an effort to appeal to the widest audience, but that can make the message feel too broad to be useful to the people you actually want to reach.
Give People a Reason to Keep Watching
Once you know what the video is trying to accomplish, the next step is making it easy for people to stay with you. That includes writing a strong hook that pulls people in and focusing each video around a single idea instead of trying to fit all your ideas into one video. A few other basics are worth keeping in mind:
- Captions: Many people watch videos without sound and rely on captions instead, so double check that your transcript is accurate.
- Length: Based on the platform you’re sharing your video on, the kind of video people expect can look very different. A quick TikTok clip serves a different purpose than a longer how-to video on your website or a more detailed conversation on LinkedIn. Either way, keep the video as short as you can without cutting out information people actually need.
- Strong Ending: Don’t just add a generic sales-focused CTA at the end of your video. Consider what CTA makes sense as the next step based on what the viewer just watched instead of automatically ending with the same sales pitch every time.
There’s also one thing many video creators and writers can forget when they’re focusing on the technical part of the process. Storytelling matters, too. Answering questions and sharing interesting facts have their place, but if you have a strong story that acts as the backbone of your project, that makes a video more memorable. People are more likely to remember information when there’s something tying it all together.
The Best Videos Work With the Rest of Your Marketing
A video shouldn’t be treated as a one-off project, and it shouldn’t exist to just disappear from your social media feed over time. A broader strategy for video marketing means thinking about how your video complements other projects, like blog content, email campaigns, and SEO efforts. All these pieces of your marketing campaign can work together to strengthen each other while giving you ways to share the same topic on different platforms. A longer how-to video can support a related blog, or it can be cut into shorter clips for social media. The video can do its part without having to explain everything at once.
Thinking ahead can also help you get more from the time you spend filming. If you know a single shoot may support several projects, you can plan questions, talking points, and footage with those future uses in mind. You can even have sources explain the same topic in a few different ways, so the audience can get shorter, punchier messaging on TikTok but more professional messaging on LinkedIn. That way, you’re not forcing the exact same video onto every platform and hoping it works everywhere.
So, What Makes a Video Engaging?
A polished final product is important, but the strongest videos usually start with a clear idea of who they’re for and what they’re meant to do. When those questions are answered before filming begins, it’s easier to create something worth watching and find a place for it in the rest of your marketing.
Not sure where video fits into your marketing plans? Let’s talk about what you’re already doing and where video could make sense.