Importance of Purpose in Your Marketing Videos

When investing time and money into a marketing video, you’d take every step possible to make the most out of your investment, right? Unfortunately, many companies miss out on a key aspect during the early stages of the video creation process – defining a clear purpose for their video. In other words, what’s the goal?

We’re here to help define your video’s purpose, and why it’s so important – which will hopefully help you and your company make the most out of your investment.

Where Should You Start?

The purpose starts by asking yourself the following questions:

What sort of results are we hoping to gain from this? More website hits, more job applications, more purchases?

What information do we want the viewer to take away from the video? Do we want to focus on our culture, one of our specialties, or do we just want viewers to know our company exists?

What feeling are we trying to convey? Humans are emotional beings – we often make our decisions based on emotions, rather than logic. The mood and emotion the video will convey must be considered. Examples include inspired (ex. to make change), motivated (ex. to apply to a new job), intrigued (ex. To learn more about the company), etc.

Defining The Purpose

Once you have the answers to these questions, you’re able to move onto the next step – defining your video’s purpose in 1-2 sentences. Defining the purpose is similar to creating your company’s mission statement. Keep it short, sweet, and easy to understand. Some examples below.

“This video will entice viewers to apply for job positions within my company by eliciting feelings of motivation, ambition, and intrigue for the company by displaying our awesome culture, work-life balance, and other benefits.”

“This video will share a moving testimonial story from a patient who benefitted from my company’s service, showing viewers that we are capable and trustworthy.”

Answering these questions and defining your video’s purpose will provide a framework before you jump into production. Spending time developing the story and planning the shoot prior to production is vital to making the most out of your video.

Keeping your video’s purpose in mind as you plan will be key in using your filming day wisely. You can prepare interview questions that direct answers to the video’s story and goal. You’ll be able to choose who will speak best on the topic, and people who would be most relevant to the story. The production team will also be able to create a well-curated shot list that features key elements of the video’s purpose.

Starting a project without a purpose is like running a 10k without a finish line – Purpose shapes the framework for the entire video project. With a specific purpose and goal in mind, you are able to work backwards to build out the steps that will bring you to that finish line. Purpose statements help flesh out your goal. They also help narrow down what is most important to capture on the shoot day. Reduce miscommunication and multiple revision rounds, and make the most out of your video investment by determining the purpose of your video project early on.