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WHY YOUR VIDEO NEEDS A GOAL

It never fails. I talk to new clients and we get to the question, “What is the goal of this video?” It’s a simple question, right?! But you would be surprised at how many times I ask that and get blank expressions. It’s scary (to me) how many companies will invest time, energy, and resources into a video campaign and have no real metrics in mind for any return on investment.

Trust me. Your video needs a goal.

But the good news is, you don’t need to trust me. Trust yourself after reading why all of your marketing needs a goal.

WHAT’S IN A GOAL?

The most obvious reason to have a goal for your videos, or any aspect of your marketing, is to make a clear way of measuring results. How can you know if your time, energy, and money were well spent if you don’t have a goal? Right?! But that’s the most basic function of a goal. When you look deeper into what a video can do, it gets even better.

The biggest reason we encourage every video to have a goal is to inform and refine the production process.

If you look at the different goals you might have for a video, this makes lot more sense. For example, if your goal for a video is to build awareness for a new product, you’re targeting is probably split between people who already know your brand and some who don’t. That means you can create a video based on previous videos fed to viewers in the places you already know they are looking. You have less of a need to gather attention and can rely on familiarity to get your message across.

But if it’s an awareness video for a new business, the target audience is completely new. Now you have to work harder to gather attention and keep it. You have to establish new expectations with your viewers and start from a fresh perspective of asking for their attention, rather than relying on them having a level of trust with you.

Every scenario you can imagine for creating a video can be made better by clarifying your goal.

WHY JUST ONE GOAL THEN?

A lot of video campaigns suffer from confusion. That’s the problem with having too many goals. As you add goals to any marketing campaign, it suffers from clarity. That confusion the viewer feels from a lack of clear direction is deadly to gathering their attention.

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T-rex from Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park was a huge hit in many ways. Some of the most remembered scenes of the movie feature the huge Tyrannosaurus Rex stomping around and striking fear in the audience. The creators of the second film in the series thought, “Well, if one T-rex is scary, two ought to be twice scary, right?!” What actually happened, though, was that it made each less scary. It confused the audience an by splitting their attention and giving them too many antagonists to think about.

The same idea is true with goals. Ideally, each video should only have one, explicit goal. It should aim for gathering awareness, or convincing you about a benefit, or demonstrating a product. When any visual tries to do more than one thing, it will always suffer in terms of clarity.

One caveat to this idea is that sometimes a video can have unintended goals. Occasionally, a video can have a goal focused on the benefits of a product and, in doing so, reach a new person and function as an awareness video. That’s totally fine. As long as the goal of your video is clear, you’ll be fine.

HOW TO PICK A GOAL

Goals are like opinions, there is never a shortage. You really could have an unlimited number of goals to choose from when planning a video. That being said, there are several goals we see often and can vouch for their effectiveness. Here are a few:

  • Awareness
  • Feature/Benefit
  • Brand
  • Behind the Scenes
  • Testimonial
  • Interview
  • Company Culture
  • Engagement
  • Explainer
  • Employee Highlight

The best way to pick a type of video for your needs is to have a goal. The goal informs the type of video you should invest in.

CONCLUSION

Hopefully, you’ve seen how important it is to decide on a goal for your video before you start production. The difference we see in our videos that start with a goal is huge. Regular videos usually get a 1-3% click through rate. Videos with goals get upwards of 5-10% click through. It makes that much of a difference.

If you’re still unsure about what you goal should be for a video, we would love to talk to you. Start here.