New visual languages, lower video production costs are changing how businesses communicate. Video is becoming a standard delivery medium for marketing and communications activities. Video can be a great way to get your message across, but it doesn’t work in all situations, that’s why planning is so important. Before you invest more time and resources, think about a few things. We assume that you know who is your audience? in a specific way, you know what are they interested in and how much time they spend on the web. If you have no answers to those questions, you need to go back to the basics because your idea may be interesting, but if it’s not relevant or useful to your audience, your time and effort will be wasted.

Here are the 5 things you need to do BEFORE starting the creation of your marketing video

1 *Define your intention

Before producing anything, think about the purpose for your video. What is exactly your intention, what do you expect from it ?

2 *Define your style

Regarding of the purpose of your video you won’t use the same style for a product presentations, demonstration or reviews, for a customer Testimonials, a success stories, a case Study or a ‘How-to’ video.You need to think like a viewer to define the style what will best serve your purpose : presentation, narrative, talking head, interview or a computer screen tutorial ?

3 *Create your plan

Now that you know your audience, your purpose, write them down and add the message you want people to walk away with, the estimated length of your video, the choice of your delivery media and how you are going to get the word out to promote this video.

4 * Create your  script and storyboard

The most important part of a video is the script and not the actual video quality. Whether you have a high quality video or a mediocre one, if the script isn’t good it won’t convert well. So you have to create a script with a storyboard which is a powerful document that contains all the visual, audio and time components of your video. It’s easy to do, you know need to make it fancy, but efficient, this is m eant to save time.

5 * Rehearsal before shooting

If you want to sounds conversational, you will need to know your script inside and out.  If you know exactly what you’re going to say and what words you will emphasize then you’ll forget the camera and act exactly as if you were talking directly to your audience. I always referred to a master of presentation  Steve Jobs Jobs because he was a  notorious for spending not hours, not days, but weeks practicing, revising, and practicing some more.

If you want an efficient marketing video, you have to take the time and do all of the steps I mentioned above. If you don’t have the time, don’t waste your money creating videos then.

So, do you see any other things to consider before creating a marketing video ?