Nine Innovative Tips to Create a Video Campaign That Makes an Impact

Videos are one of the most consumed pieces of content on the internet. By 2021, people will spend around 100 minutes per day on average watching videos. This is one of the factors as to why 92% of marketers say that videos are an important part of their strategy.

Other factors highlight the effectiveness of videos in encouraging engagement, generating leads, increasing sales, and so on.

This is why you should do a video campaign, however, note that it isn’t going to be easy. There’s a lot to analyze, not to mention the factors you need to consider when making a video.

If you want to create an effective video campaign, check out these nine tips to get you started.

1. Determine Your Goals

Before you even start on the production, decide what you want to achieve with your campaign. Do you want to spread brand awareness, introduce a new product, announce a promo, showcase your identity, or increase your brand value?

Knowing what your goals are will help you determine the right strategy. It also helps you determine what metrics to track.

For example, views and unique reach matter if you’re pushing for brand awareness. Completed video views count when you’re introducing a new product or telling a message. It tells you how many people got your message.

Furthermore, targeting the right audience is almost not enough nowadays. You have to target them at the right time. Without clear goals, you won’t have a clear idea of who your audience is in the first place.

You also won’t be able to gauge the success of your video campaign. How will you know you’re reaching your goals if you didn’t define one?

2. Appeal to the Emotions of the Viewers

Appealing to emotions is one of the most effective forms of video marketing. Emotions are an important part of building a relationship with the consumer. As such, you might want to create videos that elicit strong emotions from your viewers.

Videos are more capable of stirring up emotions than images can. You can use that to your advantage and tell a story that will either make your viewers cry, laugh, and more.

There are eight basic emotions you can target: ecstasy, admiration, amazement, terror, grief, vigilance, rage, and loathing.

However, you may want to focus on generating positive emotions as they’re more effective. Happiness is contagious, and people are more likely to want to spread happiness.

Emotional videos tend to generate social buzz, too. If that’s your goal, consider telling a story that can invoke the feelings you’re looking for.

You’ll have to take note of what your audience will likely feel, though. For example, millennial men tend to get more emotional when watching videos.

The same study also found that women of 18 to 24 years of age have the strongest brand recall. Women who are 55 years and above are more likely to have feelings of sadness, warmth, and surprise.

3. Learn to Have Fun

Humor is a great way to capture an audience; after all, who doesn’t want a good laugh? You want your audience to associate positive emotions with your brand. Making them laugh is the most common way to achieve that.

If they can’t skip your video, they may as well enjoy watching it. Humor is the most effective way to become memorable to people.

If the tone is too serious, people tend to get bored. You have to go to great lengths to make them invested in a serious video.

Nike’s latest video campaign that spliced several couples of videos side-by-side to create one scene is an example. It doesn’t have a humor aspect, and yet its entertaining value is off the charts. They targeted the emotion of amazement pretty well.

High-quality videos like this are hard to achieve. This is why marketers tend to turn to humor instead. That’s not to say that it is an easy route though.

Humor is pretty hard to do right, and it is hugely dependent on your audience. Not to mention that memorable humor also has the chance to offend a portion of your audience. Still, once you make them laugh, you’ve won half the battle.

It also increases the chances of going viral. People love sharing things that can also make others laugh.

4. Don’t Be Afraid to Try Something New

When people see the same format over and over again, their interest wanes off. The default reaction to an ad is to shut off our brains and ignore it.

However, when a video excites them, makes them laugh, or intrigues them, they’ll be more receptive to its message.

The Dollar Shave Club, for instance, was a bit unknown before they released their famous ad. It started with CEO Michael Dubin staring straight at you, introducing their company.

It wasn’t like all those clean, well-presented commercials that blend in with the rest. Within the first 15 seconds, he drops an F-bomb, something that could shock his viewers. It proceeded with more humor and more clutter.

It turned out to be a hit, though. It provided something refreshing, and so it reached thousands of people. Four years after releasing that ad, Unilever went on to acquire the company for $1 billion.

It somewhat reminds you of Old Spice commercials, which are also great hits. The Dollar Shave Club video campaign is spot-on for its audience, 18 to 35-year-old men.

It didn’t have a great production value, but the refreshing tone of being something new made it a success.

5. Tell a Story That Sends a Powerful Message

Videos that sell a product or service are a dime a dozen. As such, people are getting so immune to it by now that the natural response to ads is to ignore them.

To combat this, focus your video campaign on a story that comes with a powerful message. Storytelling gets people engaged and it gets them to invest feelings in the video. They’re more likely to respond to finish the whole video to get the message.

This is what the Always campaign #LikeaGirl did right. It attempted to redefine what the phrase “like a girl” means.

It tackled the social notion that “like a girl” is an insult, but an insult that young girls are oblivious of. It also mentioned self-confidence as something girls going through puberty are struggling on.

It drew a line between the phrase as an insult and the plummeting confidence of pubescent girls. Then, it finished by delivering the powerful message that girl is not synonymous with weak. To do something like a girl can mean to do amazing things.

Like what Always did, tackling a social issue that’s still relevant to your brand can make for a powerful video campaign.

6. Don’t Forget the Visual Appeal

The overall message and script are important. Still, you can’t dismiss the importance of visual impact. The viewer has to like what they see so they want to continue watching.

The visuals are what catches their attention before they even process the message. Remember that some people watch on mute, so even the best script ever made won’t stand a chance to these people.

You’ve probably heard the slogan “sex sells,” and it is undoubtedly true. While you don’t need to have a sexual component to your campaign, what it means is that the visual aspect of your video is of utmost importance.

There are lots of interesting things you can use, depending on your audience. Good-looking people, cute things, or something that can make them intrigued or go “wow” will work.

The shots must be of high-quality as it must be pleasing to the eyes. Otherwise, they’ll have more reasons to skip the video.

Visuals also work better than some dialogue. Instead of saying something is of high-quality, why not show it instead?

People are getting tired of hearing a promise. They won’t likely believe the next guy who says their product will change their lives.

7. Pay Attention to the First Few Seconds

The first few seconds of your video is important. Use this to show what’s in store for viewers if they keep watching. It must generate enough interest so they will see enough of the video to get your message

The script and visuals will work together in this aspect. The visuals can lure them in, while the script can make them interested in what’s to come next.

Always assume that your viewers will skip your ad as soon as they have the chance. Around 65% of people skip ads by default, so you must hook them in from the start. Building up to the climax is okay, but you have only a few seconds to convince the audience to see that climax.

In YouTube advertising, you only have five seconds. In Facebook marketing, you have about ten seconds.

In reality, though, you might have even less than that. A study in Canada found that people tend to lose concentration after about eight seconds. That’s a four-second drop from the previous average attention span of twelve seconds.

If you think about it it’s understandable, given that we now have so much content to consume. This is a challenge for advertisers, though, as they have that amount of time to prove their content is worth watching.

8. Utilize All Platforms

You need to understand that certain platforms are the best for certain types of goals. Each platform also has a different userbase.

Facebook, for example, is great for building brand awareness. On the other hand, YouTube is ideal for driving CPIs (cost per install).

You don’t have to confine yourself to one or two, though. You only need to do a modular approach to your campaign to fit all types of platforms.

For example, you can post a video on YouTube and then pull out 15 or 30 second cuts from it for Instagram. You can publish them piece by piece, giving you more mileage from a single video.

You should plan this from the start as it can be hard to cut and splice content when you didn’t plan for it to be modular in the first place. Each bit of video you publish must stand on its own, but collectively, they must have one message.

Every video piece should also lead to the same landing page. It ideally contains the full experience you’re promising in the videos.

In doing this, you not only get to post on every platform, but you also get to cater to different audiences. You can get more longevity too. You might even be able to run the same campaign for more than a year or so.

9. Put a Call-to-Action at the End

Don’t forget to put a call-to-action (CTA) in your video campaigns. How you do it depends on your goal, but it tells the viewers what they need to do next.

Launched a new product? Have them visit the product page with a click of a button. If you want a wider reach, encourage them to share the video with their friends. This makes it easier for the audience to do the action you want them to do with your campaign.

“Learn More,” “Buy Now,” “Visit Our Website,” “Follow Us,” and such are the most common CTAs. However, you’re not limited to these.

Reebok once launched a clever campaign that reminded people of how many days an average person has. In case you’re curious, it’s 25,915 days.

The idea is to live each day to the fullest as we have numbered days ahead of us, something people tend to forget. At the end of the video, there’s a CTA button that says, “Calculate your days.” It takes the viewers to a calculator that tells you how many days you still have left.

Your CTA doesn’t always have to be clickable, though. It can be as simple as putting your website address or Facebook page to let people know where to find you.

Create an Effective Video Campaign Now

Before creating a video campaign, you have to review different data sets, determine your audience, create a script, and many more before you proceed to the actual production.

It can be a bit overwhelming, but we’re here to help. Feel free to read more of our guides or sign up for a free digital marketing review.