7 Tips for Making High-Impact Brand Videos
By Cassandra • 6 min read, Jun 25, 2018
Eight out of ten people have made a purchase after watching a brand’s video. According to WordStream, 45% of people watch more than an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos a week.
In other words, video is an essential piece to add to your marketing mix. But don’t rush it — when you create videos to share on your website or social media accounts, you want to make sure they represent your brand in the best way possible.
Here are 7 tips — a checklist of sorts! — on how to make a brand video that resonates with your target audience.
1. Think about your objective
First things first: you’ll need to determine what you want to achieve with your video. This’ll help you figure out what types of brand videos to create.
Are you looking to spread awareness about yourself, your company, or a product? Try creating a share-worthy video that’s entertaining or inspirational or a compilation of interesting stats or facts about your industry. You can also share your expertise with an educational video, like this recipe video:
Interested in sending traffic back to your website? Try creating a teaser for on-site content that piques interest and entices viewers to click through to learn more. Check out this brand video example:
Want to drive sales? Create a sense of urgency with a short ad featuring a limited-time offer, like this one:
2. Think about your audience
Next, it’s time to think about your audience. Not every video will resonate with every audience, so understanding the people you’re trying to reach will help you create a video that piques their interest and keeps them watching.
For example, if you’re addressing an audience that has no idea about your product, field, or expertise, the content of your video will likely need to explain the basics. However, if you’re talking to existing customers, you can focus on adding value beyond what they already know.
If you’re selling a product and targeting the person that would use it, your messaging will be different than if you’re targeting someone who would buy the product as a gift for a friend or loved one.
By catering your video content to the specific audience you’re targeting, you can more readily capture attention and show your customers (and potential customers) that your brand really gets them.
Check out the video below featuring 3 examples of effective content targeting:
Still not sure who your target audience is? Here are some questions to help you get to know them:
- Where do they live?
- How old are they?
- What’s their gender?
- What language do they speak?
- Do they fall into a specific demographic?
- What are their interests or hobbies?
- What social platforms do they use?
- Do they know about your product or service yet?
3. Select on-brand assets
Once you know what type of video you’d like to create, and what audience you’ll be targeting, it’s time to gather everything you need to create your video.
You may have photos and video clips on hand, in which case they’re probably already on-brand. But if you’ll be sourcing your assets from a stock provider, you’ll want to be sure to select photos and video clips that match your brand aesthetic. If you wouldn’t use an image on your website, don’t use it in your video.
You’ll also want to make sure that all the assets in a single video match each other. It can be jarring when a series of images or video clips with similar lighting or vibe is interrupted by something with an entirely different look and feel.
In the example below, the image in the top left corner is much darker than the other three. Removing it from the equation ensures that all of the assets in the video contribute to the same light, airy feel.
4. Speak in your brand voice
Remember, your videos are an extension of your brand identity, so be sure you adhere to the same voice and messaging as you would in your other marketing materials.
Need a little help? Try pulling copy directly from your website. If you have someone speaking in your video, whether it’s on camera or in a voiceover, they shouldn’t say anything that they wouldn’t say when speaking to a customer in person.
When it comes to text in videos, there are no official rules on how it should be done. You may decide to caption your videos with complete, punctuated sentences, short snippets, titles in sentence-case or all caps, or anything in between. That’s totally fine. Just be sure to keep a consistent brand voice throughout your video.
And, of course, don’t forget to check your video for typos before posting!
5. Use your brand colors
Speaking of text—when you include text in your videos, it’s a great opportunity to incorporate your brand colors. This can make it easy for viewers to recognize that the video is coming from you.
If you don’t have text in your video and are shooting new photos for video clips, it can be fun to incorporate your brand colors within the frame. In the Animoto HQ, some of our walls are painted with Animoto teal. Shooting in front of these walls creates an on-brand feel:
6. Set the mood with your editing style
The style in which you edit your video can also help set a mood and look that can be associated with your brand.
On Facebook, for example, any fan of Tasty can immediately recognize a Tasty video, thanks to the way it’s shot and the style in which it’s edited—quick cuts that take viewers through long processes in no time, bringing value to viewers in a way that feels easy and doable:
Ask yourself, what mood am I trying to evoke with your brand? You can set a similar mood with the way you edit. Fast, quick, flashy cuts may work nicely for a trendy fashion label, while a relaxing spa might opt for smooth, slow, fluid transitions.
7. Add your logo
Finally, don’t forget to include your logo! Including it in the corner as a watermark throughout your entire video, as opposed to just at the beginning or end, can help ensure brand recognition with every view, no matter where a viewer begins watching.
This is a common practice on social media and can help tie your brand to your content in the news feed.
For video, you may have to make some alterations to your logo file. If it’s on a white or colored background, you’ll need to create a transparent PNG file so that just the logo appears over your video, rather than a logo within a colored box. (Note: With Looka’s Premium and Enterprise packages, you get transparent background versions of your logo!)
Similar to our example about including brand colors in the photos or video clips you’re using in your video, you can also incorporate your logo within the context of your video.
This is a nice practice for YouTube TrueView ads, illustrated by this example from SmartStop Self Storage. You’ll see the logo on the boxes in the background.
Getting started with video
If you’re not using brand videos yet, getting started can feel overwhelming. Animoto is an online video creation tool that makes it easy for anyone to create professional marketing videos.
With customizable, drag-and-drop video templates, it’s simple to personalize everything from Facebook video ads to fun listicle videos, how-tos, explainers, and everything in between. Download the complete guide to video marketing for beginners today to get started.