HubSpot Research reveals that 54% of respondents would like to see video content coming from businesses and brands they support. This is just one of many reasons why video marketing seems to be at the top of many marketer's to-do lists. While there's no question that video marketing is a channel worth investing in to achieve business growth, there are a lot of questions around how to actually get started -- like what equipment you'll need, where you'll find talent, and how the heck you'll figure out how to write a video script. 

Before you let those overwhelming "I don't know how to do anything of this" feelings sink in, let's take a step back. 

At its core, video marketing is an engaging, modern marketing strategy that introduces video content as a format for telling stories, delivering business messages, educating your audience, and so much more. No matter what the format, length, or style of the video may be, it’s considered video marketing if the end goal is to get your brand, product, or service in front of a desired audience through the use of video.

In other words, video marketing offers a ton of flexibility -- and depending on your company's needs, you can (and should) use that creative space to incorporate it as you see fit. This might mean starting with just a focus on video for social, or case studies, or how-to videos for blog posts. 

Regardless of where you see video fitting into your strategy, Hubspot put together a series of educational videos and related templates and resources aimed at taking some of the guesswork out of video strategy. We broke all the information down into three stages -- pre-production, production, and post-production -- so you can take things one step at a time on your way to video marketing mastery.   

pre-production | How to actually get started

Think of pre-production as your planning stage -- your opportunity to get all of your video ducks in a row. Before you fire up the lights and hit record, it's important that you spend a considerable amount of time thinking about the role video could or should play in your larger marketing strategy.

This is because, in most cases, the foundation for a valuable piece of video content starts with a thoughtful and strategic plan. 

How to Have Productive Video Marketing Brainstorms

Before you start throwing around ideas for your first marketing video, you first have to determine what the overall goal of the video will be. To do this, you can start by ask yourself two questions:

1. What do we want this video to inspire people to do? (buy a product, schedule a call, attend an event, read a blog post, etc.)
2. What resources do we have available to create the video? (talent, video editors, animators, equipment, etc.)

All things considered, answering these questions will help you narrow your focus enough to have a more targeted, effective video brainstorm. For example, let's say you determine you want to:

• Drive people to read a blog post you recently published
• You have a video editor to work with, but no bandwidth to film any net new footage

Using this information as a launching pad for your brainstorm, you can direct your focus towards video ideas and formats that appeal to folks in the attract stage of the buyer's journey that can be created using animation or repurposed video content. 

The result? You might end up with something like this!

Another way to make the video brainstorming process more productive is to simply start with the stage of the buyer's journey you want to target: 

• Awareness: Prospects are experiencing and expressing symptoms of a problem or opportunity.
• Consideration: Prospects had now clearly defined and given a name to their problem or opportunity.
• Decision: Prospect has now decided on their solution strategy, method, or approach.

https://youtu.be/MhegveUTVBk

In the case of video content creation, the buyer’s journey provides a model to help keep the buyer’s behavior, information needs, and problems central when determining the format and topic you select for the video. To get a better sense of how to use the buyer's journey to inform your video brainstorm, check out this video: 

https://youtu.be/eWERDfFYypg

Need a little more direction to get the wheels turning? Use this handy tip sheet, complete with 20 video marketing ideas, to kickstart the discussion.

Remember: The key to a productive video brainstorm is to identify your goals and resources upfront. The more you know about why you are creating the offer and how you will approach the actual production given your resources will help to inform what the video should cover. 

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How to Write a Video marketing Script

Once you've got your idea, it's easy to want to jump right into script writing. After all, writing might be one of the more familiar parts of this entire process for you. However, we recommend that you start by putting together a simple brief, designed to answer the following questions:

• What’s the goal of this video? Why are we making the video in the first place?
• Who is the audience of this video?
• What’s our video topic? 
• What are the key takeaways of the video? What should viewers learn from watching it?
• What’s our call-to-action? What do we want viewers to do after they’ve finished watching the video?

It's likely that you uncovered the answers to some of these questions in the brainstorm phase, but putting together this brief will ensure that you've fully scoped out the idea before moving forward. 

With a brief complete, you can start drafting the script. To help you get started, check out this video script template -- the very template we used to map out the scripts for this offer. 

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And as you write, here are a few key things to keep in mind: 

• Write conversationally. You want to write the script how you want the video subject to speak. Keep sentences short and crisp.
• Make it thorough. A script doesn’t just include dialogue. If your video will require multiple shots, characters, or scenes, include these details. 
• Write for the audience and the platform. Is your audience made up of young teens, middle-aged professionals, or older retirees? Will your video live on Instagram, YouTube, or your website? Make sure you're keeping it conversational for the people you're trying to connect with -- and infuse humor, tone, and inflection accordingly. 
• Differentiate the main narrative from B-Roll, text overlays, and voiceovers by using different formatting or callouts. If your video will transition from the subject speaking the primary narrative to a close-up shot of your product with a text overlay, you’ll want to call these things out in your script so anyone who reads it knows what’s supposed to be read on-screen -- versus incorporated into the editing process. 
• Script every single word. Without your message fully documented, it's tough to communicate it as clearly and concisely as possible. We suggest scripting every last word to keep you organized during filming and save you loads of time later.
• Keep it brief. When it comes to marketing, shorter videos are more compelling than longer videos, and to make short videos, you need a short script. Don't write a script any longer than two pages. If you can keep it to one page, even better. 

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Jesse Kerr - Creative Commissioner | Sandbox Centre

Jesse is always multitasking.. . . and seems to thrive when juggling priorities and deadlines.  He'd tell you he's adaptable because he builds in room for error, adjustment, improvement, alteration and mitigation of foreseeable road blocks into his vision. However, anything that falls outside of this range of acceptability is quickly dispatched because "ain't nobody got time for that"! He's not good at collaborating in large groups - but he sure is good at entertaining them!  We're pleased to offer you his perspective that includes his margin for error; alongside an imagineered vision of greatness. Question is - are we going for good, better or best? Cheers!