7 Questions To Ask Yourself When Creating Commercial Video Content

Is it time you created some video content for your business? Almost every company is using video nowadays. It’s likely that you may be eager to create your own video. But before you start recording anything, it could be worth asking yourself a few questions. These could be important for determining exactly what type of video you plan to produce and how to make it successful.

Who is your audience?

Firstly, you need to consider who you’re making a video for. Most videos are designed towards customers, but it’s important to consider exactly what type of customer you’re appealing to. Are you targeting it at potential new customers? Or is it going to be targeted at existing customers? Will it be a video aimed at your entire customer base? Or will you be targeting a specific group of customers?

Videos don’t have to be targeted at customers. In fact, more companies are starting to create video content for employees for training purposes. Videos can even be targeted at potential applicants as a way of promoting vacancies or they can be used within pre-employment online tests.

To promote or to inform?

Traditionally, commercial videos have been heavily promotional. These types of videos are still commonly used and include the adverts you see on TV, before Youtube videos or on social media. Such videos are worth creating if you want to raise brand awareness or make current customers aware of new deals. However, they are not the only type of video you should be exploring. 

Informational videos can also have their benefits. These videos include webinars, explainer videos, customer tutorial videos, behind-the-scenes videos and employee training videos. Some of these may still have a promotional edge (for example, explainer videos are typically used to explain a topic to customers with the intention of making them more interested in a product or service), however their main purpose is to educate.

More people are learning to tune out promotional adverts, and hence these informational videos are starting to become more popular, helping to target the customers who may already be interested in your company. In fact, it’s often these videos that convert customers, whereas promotional videos tend to simply make potential customers aware of your product. 

Where will the video be shared?

When creating a video, it’s important to consider the platform on which it will be shared. This could determine the optimum length of the video, and the content you put in your video.

Some platforms will have limits as to how long your video can be. For example, TikTok videos have to be no more than 60 seconds long, while YouTube non-skippable ads can be no longer than 15 to 20 seconds (depending on regional standards). Other platforms may not have limits, but there may still be recommendations as to how short you keep them. For example, you generally want to keep promotional ads on Facebook and Twitter below 3 minutes.

It could be important to create an attention-grabbing opener when creating videos for certain platforms. For example, with skippable YouTube ads, you only have 5 seconds to grab customers before they have the option to skip. Meanwhile, with the likes of Facebook and Twitter, you have to be able to quickly grab people’s attention while scrolling. When creating a video for your website, such attention-grabbing tactics may not be as necessary as people are more likely to watch your video of their own accord.

With most videos it’s worth adding captions. This is particularly important with social media videos, which may automatically play on mute. In fact, it’s generally a good idea to avoid relying too heavily on sounds when creating ads for social media. When it comes to video adverts for audio platforms like Spotify meanwhile, sound could be an important tool to use when promoting your product. 

Live action or animation?

You should also consider whether your video will be live-action or animated (or both). Live action videos are most popular as they are the easiest DIY option – while adverts typically require hiring a video production company, you can easily host webinars or create short educational videos by talking into your smartphone camera. Live action videos are ideal for when you want to show real scenarios and real products (e.g. behind-the-scenes content or infomercials). 

Animated content can be ideal for things like explainer videos where you may want to visually describe complicated processes using diagrams or metaphors. You should always hire an animation studio to create animated content, unless you are a professional animator yourself. You’ll also need to provide a voiceover – this could be something that you do yourself, or you could hire a voice actor to do it for you. 

What is the tone of the video?

Videos can be fun and lighthearted, or they can be serious and solemn. It will likely depend on the nature of the content and what you’re trying to achieve. It’s possible to be a little daring and go against tone expectations (for example, humorous life insurance adverts do exist), however you need to be very careful when doing this. Watch other videos to get a good idea of what tone is right.

It’s worth noting that the platform can affect how serious or fun a video should be too. For example, a LinkedIn video will typically need to be a little more serious than a TikTok video. 

What’s your budget?

Some types of video content are more expensive to create and distribute than others. This is worth considering when choosing the right video.

For those on a very tight budget, it’s best to stick to simple DIY videos involving you talking into a camera. These can be shared on free platforms like social media, YouTube and your own website. Any money you do have to spend should be used to promote these videos if you can.

Those with bigger budgets can consider hiring video production companies and animation studios. This will make your videos feel much more professional. The most expensive videos to make are typically TV adverts as they have to be a certain quality to be approved, plus you have to then spend a lot of money to get a TV advertising slot. For small businesses, it’s best to avoid TV for this reason. 

How long do you have to publish it?

If you’re promoting an event in the near future or you need to make an urgent announcement, you may not have time to hire a video production company or come up with anything too complex. In these situations, DIY short videos are typically the best option. You can still rehearse these, but you don’t want to put too much time into them.

For less time-sensitive topics and promotions, you may be able to spend more time perfecting a video. These are the situations where it can be worth hiring professionals and coming up with clever scripts.