by Keira Baker
In today’s digital climate, it’s important to construct your message in a way that clearly connects with your target audience. Video is becoming an increasingly important business tool due to its ability to capture authentic voices and emotion—facilitating engagement with important topics.
So, how can video aid you in connecting with your target audience?
Emotional Connect
To effectively connect with your target audience, consider how you want your audience to feel: Excited? Empathetic? Supported? Inspired? Informed? This is an important step in conceptualizing your video strategy.
Leaders in the field of health video production, for instance, recognize that many organisations have important messages to convey, in subject areas that can often be sensitive. This requires a compassionate and thoughtful approach to film-making. However, if the tone and messaging is approached appropriately, organisations can build a powerful connection with their audience with video content.
Let’s take the example of making a video on cancer survivors. They should ideally be interviewed in a familiar and comfortable location (often their own home) - allowing them the “breathing space” to tell their story. This intimate perspective encourages a genuine emotional response from viewers that can lead to a deeper connection with an organisation and a desire to learn more.
Due, in part, to the high rates of social media engagement with video, the not-for-profit and health sectors are experiencing a significant increase in demand for video as a communication tool. Clips can be utilised to motivate and uplift, promoting authentic stories and voices that connect with viewers undergoing similar issues or facing the same obstacles.
More Accessibility
Visual content has scope to educate and motivate with messages that can easily be pushed out to a broad target audience. This ability to engage is becoming increasingly crucial with the declining attention span of audiences.
Video is accessible and shareable anywhere, on any device - allowing you to continually broaden your influence.
Due to this expansive potential, the more targeted and relevant your content is, the easier it will be for you to cut through the clutter and engage with your audience on all relevant platforms.
In today's overflowing media climate, nearly 80 per cent of all internet traffic is video, which demonstrates that audiences hungry for this type of content. This is why video is increasingly at the core of any communications strategy.
More Versatility
Once you've identified your target audience, it's important to discuss the best type of video content to speak directly to them.
Consider the foundational message or “call-to-action” that you want to depict. Do you aim to raise awareness? Or perhaps encourage people to donate? Purchase? Share? Or educate?
All these questions are essential to consolidate which format will resonate most with your intended audience.
For example, an animated “How-To” video would be a good fit to instruct viewers, simplifying complex information for training or onboarding. Case studies and interviews can provide a more authentic voice, a powerful tool for not-for-profit organizations to speak to people’s emotions and raise awareness.
All projects present diverse challenges and should be approached in a unique way. This is particularly true given the amount of video content out there competing for eyeballs.
Consider the different type of communication platforms your target market use, and how you will reach them in a format that is accessible.
Despite the continuous rise of video marketing, there’s still a lot of untargeted content out there that struggles for relevance and cut-through. The key to creating engaging campaigns is to realise video’s capacity to connect, capturing real storytelling and emotion that speak directly to your intended target.