Pre-production: Who will help you in generating the idea for the video, who will help you storyboard the video? How will you find a director, actors, talents, voice over, equipment and location? These are all questions that fit in the strategy section of planning your video. It is one thing to have a great idea for a video but if you are unable to create it due to lack of resources then that is all it is, an idea.
Production: Where will you film the video? How long will it take? How much will it cost? Do you anticipate any difficulties? If you plan for an outdoors shoot, what is “Plan B” if the weather is bad? Have others that you know created a video and if so who did they use and how did it go? Find others that have done what you are thinking of doing and ask them some questions, normally they do not mind helping out, in fact many of them will go above and beyond to ensure that you do not go thru any headaches that they might have when they filmed their video.
Strategies & Tactics:
Now to reach your goals you must explain to yourself, using your notepad and pencil on how you will reach your goals. Tell yourself how you will answer the problems that have been placed before you, your video being the solution.
Achieving goals: for each goal put down how you will reach that goal, what sort of video or audio message will you use to attempt to meet the goal. For example, a young man can walk into the gym and begin foam rolling; this would be the psychomotor goal of “warming up”. The next scene would be of the man finishing his workout and smiling because he has no pulled muscles because he warmed up properly. These would meet an affective goal of feeling good about himself and his workout.
Now your video may not address all of these items but it still doesn’t hurt to skim over them to see if they are pertinent to your video. You will find that your video may have several goals so do not feel if you have multiple answers for this.
Psychomotor goals: Are there specific acts that you want the audience to be able to do at the conclusion of the video. Do you want them to react a particular way? Many of you should be saying yes, I want them to pick up the phone and call me, set an appointment, buy more products, visit my website. These are all things that your video must include within it to get the desired result.
Cognitive Goals: What do you want people to know when this video is complete? Do you want them to understand that they can get up off the couch and do some exercising and loose weight? Do you want them to get on your website and sign up for a monthly membership club and purchase more products? Whatever it is you want them to do once they finish your video you have got to plan for that within the video, at the end of the video and all the time while marketing your video.
Affective Goals: How do you want people to feel about the subject of your video? Do you want them to build their self-esteem? Do you want them to feel like getting out and losing weight? Do you want them to push themselves harder and become a better athlete? These are all good questions if you are doing a fitness video, so these are only a few of the questions you must ask yourself and see if your video will answer them. If your video is not fitness related then you must build questions to surround your video and its contents.
Social attitudes are also a part of the audience analysis, because knowing what their attitudes about their situation will also help you in marketing them when your video is finished. What can you tell yourself about how they think? For example: Are they impressed with technology? Do they own an mp3 player? Are they motivated to achieve? Do they have a low self esteem? These are only a few of the questions you should ask yourself when planning your videos project, because all these and more will eventually create your other products and your marketing plan.
Demographics are part of your audience because it lets us know who makes up the audience, whether it be females or males, short or tall, young or old. These are the people you will be marketing your video to but knowing your demographics going into the video sure saves a lot of time on the back end once the video is finished. Knowing the percentages of your targeted audience will help you in trying to attract those that make up the audience.
There are several ways to figure out your demographics, one way is to start looking at your current client list. Break the list down into categories, run a web survey or even a print survey at your place of business. Start looking at the information that you have about your clients and start grouping them into ages, gender, types of work that they do, do they travel a little ways to get to you or do they live close by. All of these things will begin to tell you what you want to know about your clients and what type of clients you are attracting. After that you simply begin marketing to the types of clients you already attract.
stay tuned….
thanks
James