5 Must-Know Tips to Create Effective Brand Videos
Brand videos are diverse, and there are countless ways to create successful ones. Use these tips to ensure your brand video is authentically you, memorable, and speaks to the right audience.
Image via: Noble Bison Productions
Brand videos are one of the most effective ways to set yourself or your company apart from the competition. They diverge from traditional product or service advertisements by concentrating more on brand awareness versus direct sales. They aim to inform viewers what or "who" your brand is, which grows your brand recognition, builds trust, and stimulates consumer interest.
A fantastic way to go into creating your brand video is to ask yourself and your team what you want people to feel when they think of your brand. What's your style and vibe? What does your brand value? Brand videos give you the creative space to show customers what is uniquely you (aka your brand).
In this sense, brand videos are pretty diverse from one another, and there are countless ways to craft successful ones. But, in the same breath, many brands use similar methods to accomplish the same goal. So, let's explore some of these key practices that will inform a richer strategy for crafting your next brand video.
5 Must-Know Tips to
Create Effective Brand Videos
Know Your Audience (Learn about your customers)
Communication Style (Determine language, voice, tone)
Brand Story & Values (Relate to your audience)
Quality Video Production (Importance of production value)
Design and Logos (Significance of brand design and logos)
1. Know Your Audience
'Knowing your audience' is to recognize who needs your products or services and how your brand relates to those people. There are a handful of ways to learn about your target customers.
To start, you can gather data via:
Pulling analytics from your social media site(s)
Read industry-related group forums
Study industry research like surveys and tests
Trial various marketing campaigns with your audience
Those are great avenues for compiling valuable information about your ideal customers if you have the time and resources. Deep-dive research like this will help you create detailed buyer personas. Which, in my opinion, is the best way to develop a deeper understanding of your customers. If you want to learn more about creating buyer personas, check out the YouTube video below:
Video: SEO link builder Julian Goldie
On the other hand, a fast-track way to get to know your audience is to compile firsthand perspectives from your customer comments, reviews, and personal feedback. The trends you find there will highlight your brand’s key characteristics and what they find valuable or unique about your products or services. Get additional insight into target audiences by researching your competitors’ reviews and comments.
And lastly, identifying frequently asked questions (FAQs) can help you understand customers’ needs, troubles, and desires. Reference the brand video below as an example of how knowing your audience’s interests and concerns can guide the video’s script while still incorporating the brand’s style.
Video: Denver Bouldering Club Video
The more you understand your target audience, the better you will be at grabbing their attention and communicating with them — which leads us to our next point.
2. Communication Style
IMAGE VIA: DOLLAR SHAVE CLUB BRAND VIDEO
Brand-consumer relationships, like all relationships, excel with good communication. Language is one critical aspect of effective communication. Your content is much more appealing (and persuasive) to prospective customers when using language that resonates with them. As noted above, direct feedback, product forums, and the like allow you to gather customers' vocabulary and other ways they communicate about products or services in your industry. Take note of the particular words and common phrases consumers repeatedly use to describe something, even if they aren't technical terms.
Companies should generally leave industry jargon behind unless there is a benefit to sharing these concepts or a campaign that specifically aims to educate the customer. But otherwise, brand videos that include difficult-to-follow ideas and stuffy diction can quickly lose their audience.
Tone and voice are also important aspects of communication that you should establish when crafting any videos for your brand. Each element will change based on the energy and messaging of the video. It’s all up to how you want your brand to communicate with its audience.
If you choose not to be verbal in your brand video, the visuals, sounds, and music will have a tempo and style that acts as your communication style.
Sometimes the trickiest part about communication in marketing is the balance between promoting while also being digestible for your audience. The following topic can help close these gaps between companies and people.
3. Brand Story & Values
Exploring your brand story is a great place to begin when brainstorming ideas for brand videos. You can often learn a great deal about a company’s values through its brand story. Sharing your company's "humanity" side is relatable to viewers. Great brand videos draw interest in this way. Your ideal customers see that you care about the same things they do and want to support you.
Spend time working on these questions:
What is your brand story?
What matters most to your brand?
Why is your brand what it is versus any other way?
As long as it's genuine, your brand story/values are solid approaches for crafting powerful brand videos. Whether your company focuses on sourcing materials ethically or something more abstract, like never compromising your artistic integrity, by incorporating these values into a brand video you are more likely to resonate emotionally with your target customers. Stirring up emotions leaves a lasting impression on your audience, helping you to be more memorable to them.
4. Quality Video Production
Image via: Noble Bison Productions
Quality video production may be one of the most important tips for producing compelling and memorable brand content. In today's digital world, quality video production is more critical than ever — without it, no one cares. Even if the content is interesting, studies show that people will quickly abandon a video if the quality is lacking.
Use the best practices in video production, things like image and sound quality, to help you get the most out of your video projects. These practices will improve your brand image, establish credibility, and demonstrate authority in your industry.
Consider hiring a video production company for your video production projects. They can provide top-quality equipment and expertise in the following areas (and plenty more):
Pre-production - storyboarding, location scouting, set design
Video – crisp images, professional camera work, top-notch equipment
Audio – quality mics, no sound interference
Editing – pace, style, color correction, music overlay, VFX
Video production companies can even help with scripting, casting talent, and creating animations — the list goes on. Consider building a relationship with a local Denver video production company that understands your brand and can help you grow.
5. Design & Logos
“Design is the silent ambassador of your brand.”
-Paul Rand
Image via: Noble Bison Productions x Brune M
Brand videos are where you show off your brand's design. The design of a company should speak to its ideal customers and make them feel a sense of interest and desire. A good example is Apple; they have cool, slick products, packaging, and commercials. That's their brand design. Steve Jobs developed their brand to make PCs attractive to consumers who weren't tech-savvy types. Today, their design resonates with a mainstream market that wants the latest, cutting-edge computer technology — in style.
What does your brand's design say about you? A different angle to flesh this out is considering what your design says about the people who support you. Maybe you can identify ways to develop your brand design, make it more identifiable, or create a design style that transforms the way we look at a particular product like Jobs did.
Logos themselves are not your brand. Again, a brand is more of a feeling, a style, a vibe, if you will. However, logos are necessary for establishing a company's identity and ownership. Take a moment and think of any big brand, and surely their logo will come to mind. Apple. Starbucks. Coca Cola. Customers will come to equate your logo with your brand, which is one form of brand awareness and recognition.
Big things can come from small beginnings. In time, people may come to recognize your brand more profoundly. Every logo ever created was first made without anyone having seen it before. A graphic design student named Carolyn Davidson created the iconic Nike swoosh for $35. Who would have thought it'd grow into a global company back then? This is all to say that you should make sure your efforts aren't lost by always incorporating your logo into your marketing content, especially videos.
A fun example of brand recognition is Doritos "anti-ad" campaign launched in 2019. They released commercials and billboards without their brand name or even using their logo. Instead, they heavily imply it in how we know Doritos as a brand, colors, shape, and even sounds. Their brand recognition is so massive that they were able to produce an advertisement like the one below.
Video: Doritos Anti-Ad
To conclude,
Each technique will mean something different across each industry and, more specifically, each brand. It’s really about having a solid grasp of your personal brand and sharing it with your target audience.
I want to emphasize that brand videos are creative projects that shouldn't be limited and dull—quite the opposite. Have fun and think outside the box. Don’t skip your research, and please remember to incorporate your brand design and logo!
Noble Bison Productions would love to work with you on your next brand and corporate video production projects. Click the button below to get in touch and start your free project quote:
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