There’s a persistent problem right now in the world of marketing. People are investing in videos without knowing if they will succeed.
There’s a lot of discussion around what video success looks like. Most video success KPI’s focus on analytics and data. Marketers want numbers to prove the validity of their investment in expensive videos. I totally understand the desire to have numbers. There’s nothing wrong with demanding analytics and data to prove ROI on a spreadsheet. But if we focus solely on the numbers, we’ll miss several important indicators along the way.
You see, focusing on data alone is like a doctor treating a symptom without working to find the root cause of the problem. You might think success has been achieved, but there’s a bigger problem lurking under the surface that will make its appearance in another way at another time, probably causing more damage than it would have previously.
In this analogy, videos are medicine. If we create a video and it gets likes, shares, and views, but it doesn’t actually persuade the audience to think, feel, or act differently, then the long-term effects of its message on the audience/customer (the patient in this analogy) will be negligible. Sure, in the short-term it will look like the audience/customer is doing great and behaving in a desirable way, but because business is about a relationship and trust, it’s important to go deeper than numbers.
We need to dig into the qualitative success of a video. At VeracityColab, we’re firm believers that the qualitative success of a video should be determined first so that the data and analytics that follow support the deeper human goals associated with your customer’s behavior. We believe that this type of success is founded on two basic principles, the Key Persona™, and the Key Persuasion™.
Key Persona
Videos are weapons of persuasion, but you can only persuade someone once you know who they are and what they want. It’s incredibly important to know who your Key Persona™ is before you attempt to persuade them with a video.
So, how do you determine who your Key Persona™ is? In a B2C brand, they’re most likely your customer, and in a B2B sale, it might be the decision-maker. The Key Persona™ for one video might not be the same for your next video. The most important question to ask for every video project is, who do I want to persuade with this specific video? The answer to that question is... the Key Persona™ for that specific video project.
Next, you want to determine what your Key Persona™ wants regarding this specific video project. Typically, they want something to relieve their pain. People don’t buy vitamins, they buy pain killers. To persuade them to think, feel, or do something, we need to put our finger in their wound and push on it. Find the wound, and you’ll find what your Key Persona™ wants.
Once you have the Key Persona™, it’s important to learn as much as you can about them. How do they react to certain types of messaging? What type of research do they do before buying? Your research will vary depending on what you’re communicating and what demographic/psychographic your Key Persona™ is in.
Now that you have your Key Persona™, you know what they want, and how they’d like to be talked to, it’s time to develop the Key Persuasion™.
Key Persuasion
There are only three ways to persuade a human. You can persuade a human to think, feel, or do something. A video can only do one of those three at a time while being effective.
The Key Persuasion™ is a statement designed to clearly articulate the singular vision for how each video project will persuade the Key Persona™. The structure looks like this:
When [Key Persona™] watches this video, we want them to [THINK, FEEL, or DO description].
Perhaps an example will help show the importance of this exercise. Here is a video that we produced for Life Happens. The Key Persuasion™ was:
When parents watch this video, we want them to feel the effect of life insurance on their loved ones.
It would have been easy to make a video that tried to communicate too many things, thus having no deep effect on the audience. But because we had a Key Persuasion™, we were free to focus very specifically on one goal. The results were amazing. Every single parent who has watched this video walked away feeling the effect of life insurance on their loved ones.
To summarize, we keep it simple by only persuading one person per video. And we only persuade that person, the Key Persona™ in one way, desiring one outcome. By having the discipline to stick to this formula, you can make great videos that succeed every time.
To highlight a few other successful projects, here’s a recent article... Five Lessons From Five Brands Who Wisely Invested In Video. I hope this gets you excited for you next video project.