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Our team has worked with over a thousand clients producing over four thousand videos in the last decade. And we’ve experienced first-hand the immense power of video. We’ve used video to dramatically increase landing page conversions, to help sales teams move prospects down the sales funnel, to drive lead gen and to raise awareness of important social issues.

And our clients consistently report that we are a delight to work with: they’ve called us “responsive”, “creative”, “strategic”, “easy to work with”, “accommodating” and “exceptional”. Scroll down to read our brand video strategy tips or contact our managing director, Jamie (hello@toplinefilm.com) to discuss your brief.

A picture of a video camera focused in on an interview between two men, whilst they sit blurred in the background, on the brand video strategy page.

Our brand video strategy tips

Think about objectives

Any video marketing strategy starts with clear objectives. What are you trying to achieve? And how will you measure success? Your video objectives might be around sales, marketing or lead gen. Or they could be around brand awareness, employee engagement or customer actions. Whatever you’re after, this needs to be defined at the very start and you should continually check in to make sure you are focussing on activity that will get you closer to these objectives.

Set KPIs

The best objectives are measurable. And while you might not be able to report on objectives until after you have completed your video project, you should always set KPIs that will help to determine progress along the way. These could be around people reached with your content, messages delivered, engagement achieved or changes in attitudes or behaviours. We recommend measuring against your KPIs weekly or monthly to provide a feedback loop that will help you optimise your content marketing strategy.

Analyse resources

It’s easy to get carried away with big ideas when pulling together a brand video strategy. But amazing video content takes time and investment, so it’s worth understanding budgets and team capacity before you get started. If you’ve got your objectives and KPIs clearly defined, you will know what your video marketing strategy needs to deliver in order to break even or be deemed a success, and you should use that to identify what resources you might require to make it happen.

Know your audience

Once you have your objectives and KPIs in place, you need to learn about the audience you are targeting. How do they consume video? Which devices do they use? Which platforms do they prefer? Which influencers do they follow? Which competitors do they engage with? Your video marketing strategy has a much higher chance of success if you are able to build your content and ideas around a genuine understanding of your audience.

Open ideation

While you might already have an idea of what will work for your audience, we always recommend holding a facilitated brainstorm in which you build out ideas and talk through the mechanisms by which they will achieve your objectives. How can you employ interactive video, immersive content or personalisation to turn your creative video idea into something that will generate leads or change behaviours? We have trained facilitators on staff to drive this process because we believe it’s critical to a successful brand video strategy.

Plan for distribution

Whether your strategy is video-first or whether you are incorporating video into your wider content plan, understanding your distribution channels is key. If you’re using YouTube or your website as your primary platform, then you need to focus on video SEO. Facebook, Instagram and TikTok will all require specific approaches, and if you’re working with the online media, then there are ways to encourage them to publish your video. It’s useful to think about this early in the process so that you can tailor your content to the right channel.

Test and optimise

From split-testing messaging and thumbnails to running micro-campaigns with niche audiences to identify whether the campaign should be expanded out, there are so many tools available to the video marketer to help you make your campaigns vastly more effective.

Measure what matters

Your objectives and your KPIs will tell you what metrics you need to focus on. It’s essential that you collect this data regularly so that you can identify what’s working and course correct if necessary. Fortunately there are loads of video analytics tools available to help with this.

I only have positive things to say about TopLine. We pushed the team hard on timelines to animate a new video explaining what Carfused (part of Confused.com) is and we are really happy with the results. The team are easy to work with, responsive to feedback and love the creativity they bring to the table.

Matthew Crole Rees Head of ECRM, Confused.com
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Discuss your brand video strategy requirements with our MD, Jamie Field.

Contact Jamie