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If you can’t sustain someone’s attention they won’t listen to what you are saying. And if they aren’t listening to your message, then they aren’t understanding the value your business can offer them. So if you’re going to make a video to promote your business, it needs to be entertaining enough for people to engage with it, whilst also being informative enough to provide viewers with the information they need.
Keeping a viewer engaged and informed involves combining a few different key elements to strike the right balance. So here’s some tips on how you can make your next corporate video more interesting to watch and therefore more effective.
You’re making a video for a reason. This is a really simple concept, but it’s one so many people get wrong. Too often people start out making a video with a clear purpose, but along the way different considerations arise and that focus becomes blurred. Instead, keep that reason in mind when you’re considering any aspect of your video and use that overarching goal as your guiding light to drive all subsequent decisions.
Remember, as a professional video production agency, we are here to take care of all the detailed decisions. We’ve got years of experience in doing just this sort of thing for our clients with a wide range of needs and objectives. So don’t get bogged down worrying about small details and keep a clear focus on why you’re doing this and what you want your corporate video to achieve.
Most viewers will make a decision about whether your video is right for them within the first 20 seconds. So if you don’t give them a reason to stick around, they won’t. How you do this changes depending on the type of video you’re making and the intended audience, so here are a few examples:
If you’re making a promotional video for a landing page on your website, don’t start your video with a lengthy anecdote or a protracted tale about how your business was founded. Instead start with a hook, a unique benefit that you can provide your viewer (a potential customer) with, a question they want to know the answer to. Simply, make getting their attention your first priority, then expand with more detail on your subject from there.
If you’re making a health and safety training video for your employees, start with something dramatic. We did exactly this for BAE Systems as part of their Fire Safety Awareness training. Instead of the usual chairman’s introduction in a traditional office setting (often more likely to turn viewers off than on), we decided to film it in front of a simulated aeroplane fire at BAE Systems’ fire training facility. This serves two purposes; first it helps to reinforce the subject matter setting the tone for the video, and second it makes the opening sequence of the video far more visually stimulating, meaning viewers are more likely to pay attention to the vital information to come.
Here’s a short clip, demonstrating what we did.
You don’t have all day to sit around and watch lengthy explanations about why a particular product or service might work for you, and neither do your viewers. So make sure you use clear and concise language to get your point across clearly and efficiently.
Depending on the exact type of video you are making, the actual length of video you’ll want to aim for is different, but whether it’s a social media clip (maybe 15-30 seconds) or a detailed how-to video (perhaps 5-10 minutes), viewers want you to provide them with the information they need as quickly as possible.
Easy to say, difficult to do. It’s the reason why tv presenters are professionals - they’ve mastered the art of being relaxed and acting naturally whilst speaking into a camera. If you are planning to talk directly to your viewers, take the time to practice what you are going to say beforehand so that you can be relaxed and converse with your audience in a natural way.
There’s not much that’s less interesting (and looks less professional), than someone trying to recite a series of lines they’ve just looked at five minutes before they started filming. Doing that will seriously affect how viewers perceive you and your business as a whole. So make sure you know what you’re planning to say and that you’re comfortable with the kind of language you are going to use. Being relaxed and natural in your deliverywill engage viewers and they’ll pay a lot more attention to what you’ve got to say.
Chances are you didn’t go to film school, but I bet you can tell the difference between an amateur video and one that has been professionally produced. So can your viewers.
Your video content is a reflection of you and your business. So if you want to come across as a professional business then it’s important to make your corporate videos look and feel professional. More often than not the key to this is proper lighting and framing of shots.
These are some of the details of video production that I referenced at the start of this article, and if you’re hiring professionals it’s not something you will need to worry about. But if budget requirements mean you need to do it yourself, take the time to frame all your shots correctly and make sure your subject is well lit before you start rolling.
If your viewer has made it to the end of your video, you’ve done a great job of keeping them interested. So don’t let that interest go to waste. Even if it’s something as simple as a hold frame with your email address and contact details, having a call to action of some form makes it far more likely your viewers will get in touch with you, which for many corporate videos is the difference between success and failure.
