What should my video be about?
I gave a talk to a room of Norfolk businesses recently, and this came up almost as often as how long a video should be.
It's a fair question, but it usually gets asked in the wrong order. Most people come to video with the video already decided. They want a brand film, or they've seen something a competitor posted on LinkedIn, or someone's told them they need Reels. Then they work backwards to find a reason for it, and they end up with something that looks fine and doesn't do much.
Four things, and the order matters.
When I run training, I put four words on a slide and ask the room to put them in order of priority: content, platform, audience and message.
Almost everybody starts with content. A good number start with platform, especially if they've been told they need to be on TikTok. The order that works is this:
1. Audience. Who's it for? I mean an actual person with an actual problem, so "small businesses" or "our customers" won't do. If you can't picture them, nothing after this will help.
2. Message. What's the one thing you want that person to think, feel or do afterwards? If you've got three, you've got three videos.
3. Content. Now you can decide what the video is. An interview, a demonstration, a walkthrough, or something a bit funnier.
4. Platform. This comes last. Where that person watches things decides how you cut it, how long it runs, whether it needs captions and whether it's landscape or vertical. It doesn't decide what the video's about.
Two kinds of video.
It's also worth knowing that video splits into two sorts, and they behave very differently.
Evergreen video keeps working. A homepage explainer, a customer testimonial, a how-to, a product demonstration, anything that deals with a problem that doesn't go away. You make it once and it earns for years.
Perishable video has a short life by design. Adverts, event films, seasonal pieces and most social content. It's useful, but it stops working quickly and has to be replaced.
Both are worth making. The trouble starts when a business only makes the second kind and then wonders why nothing on the website is doing any work. If you've got the budget for one video this year, I'd make it an evergreen one.
So what should yours be about?
Most of the time, the answer is the question your customers keep asking you.
It's the thing you find yourself explaining on the phone for the fourth time this month. The bit of your process people don't understand, or the objection that comes up every time you send a quote.
That video already has an audience, because you've met them. It also does the job twice, once for the person watching and once for you, because next time you can send a link instead of having the same conversation again.
One film that answers a real question will do more than five that say you're passionate about quality.
How to decide in about ten minutes.
1. Write down the last five questions a customer asked you before they bought something.
2. Pick the one you're most tired of answering.
3. Decide exactly who's asking it.
4. Decide the one thing they should think once it's been answered.
5. Now decide what sort of video that is, and where it's going.
If the video's obvious by the end of that, you've got your answer. If it still isn't obvious, go back to step three, because it usually means you haven't pinned down who it's for.
Not sure what you need?
That's where most first conversations start. Tell me what you're trying to do and I'll tell you what I'd make, roughly what it would cost, and whether you'd be better off learning to do it yourselves.
Or if your team would rather make their own, here's the training.
Tom Vince
I'm the director of Revel Studios, just outside Norwich. I've worked in video for fifteen years, including time at Archant and Mustard TV, and these days I split my time between making video for organisations across Norfolk and Suffolk and training their teams to make their own.
Over the years I've trained hundreds of people, from journalists, camera operators and editors to marketing teams and small business owners, most recently with the Federation of Small Businesses in Norfolk and Suffolk.
If anything here has raised a question, email me. I answer my own email.
tom@revelstudios.co.uk · 01603 336273
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