Planning Your Promotional Video: 4 Important Tips

Creating a short video about your business can be a great way to extend your reach within your community. Videos give your business the chance to introduce yourself and your business, allow you to show off, and ultimately separate yourself from others. Furthermore, with the utilization of regional and location filtering advertising, you can alter where your video can be seen, and reach the exact audience you want within your community. As we just released our Untap Your Potential video, we wanted to dive more deeply into the world of video shoots and share our experiences and learnings. While this is a great way to increase your brand awareness, here are four tips for planning your video shoot to ensure it runs smoothly.

1. Know your intended audience

Whether you own a restaurant, landscaping company or sell physical products, knowing who your intended audience is very important when creating a video. You must put yourself in the shoes of that audience and know their wants and needs from your product or service. Once you understand what they want, you need to put it in a format that they will understand and have them wanting to come to your store. Prior to shooting our videos, we do extensive research on the audience we want to reach. For example, if you are a family-style restaurant that has dishes for the entire family, you’d want to advertise a family-friendly environment, food that the whole family will enjoy, while also having areas for the kids to have fun in too. Prior to releasing our Untap Your Potential video, we wanted to further understand our audience and found that we are aiming to reach small to mid-sized businesses and non-profits. Moreover, when working with our clients to create videos for them, we had to keep in mind their audience, and how they would respond to that video. Regardless of the industry you are in, there are benefits in every situation, you just need to tap into those and convey your message in an effective way.

2. Understand the amount of time it takes to complete a video shoot

No matter how much planning you do prior to filming, there will always be hiccups along the way that will delay your video shoot. Whether it’s the weather not cooperating, needing to film more takes than expected, or not having the correct clothes, things will inevitably slow down production. Video shoots rarely take just one day or even a couple sessions, so understanding and allocating more time than what is particularly needed will only allot more time for the editing phase or other areas if needed.

3. Be Selective of Talent

You have a video project in mind and now want to see what prospective talent will work best for your video; how do you go about this? First and foremost, find a talent agency and schedule a time to meet with them. Upon meeting with them, keep in mind what your video is about and put the talent in the shoes of the character in the video and, more importantly, who the intended audience is. You want to match up the talent in your video to the audience you’re trying to reach, so be selective! Picking someone who matches your intended audience and has the correct cadence and flow is essential to having an effective and resonating video. You can also hire the talent on your own, however establishing a contract and setting expectations is key to ensure the video runs smoothly. Moreover, to avoid any issues with the wardrobe, do the outfit fittings before the day of the shoot if possible. It is also important to add variety to the clothing the talent is going to wear, to keep the look fresh and not make the video look bland.

4. Know Where You Can and Can’t Record Drone Footage

If you plan on using drone footage in your video, we recommend doing your research into the area you plan on recording. There are certain areas within the city where you can’t record drone footage, like near airports, government buildings, etc. These areas are different depending on the city and state you live in, so do your research to prevent any wrongdoing.

Conclusion

Filming a video can be a fun, yet stressful task for your business. With many outside variables, it’s important to do as much prep work as possible to ensure a smooth process. With these four tips, you can have a successful and stress-free video shoot! Next month, we will be diving deeper into the day of the video shoot, with helpful tips about lighting, filtering and more. Stay tuned for that!