Short-form video platforms like TikTok, Facebook and Instagram have had a huge impact on the world in our personal and professional lives. Now YouTube has really embraced the short form, and even LinkedIn is catching up with video content. These short-form videos catch the attention of billions of users every day, and engagement is growing each year. It’s all age ranges who watch this content online; it’s not just young people (though if your audience is young people, you’re really missing out). And it’s not just B2C – there are many opportunities for B2B.
This shift in consumer behaviour has significant implications for corporate video production and your video marketing strategy, and brands must be on these platforms to compete in the modern world. In many ways, corporate video production is overlapping with social media video production.
Why Short-Form Video Matters for Businesses
Short-form videos are highly shareable, making them a powerful tool for increasing brand awareness. Businesses, brands and non-profit organisations can use video in a new way to step away from the traditional corporate video idea and establish a more modern and relatable image by creating consistent, high-quality content, particularly among younger audiences.
These short-form, but still professional, videos can drive website traffic and conversions when used strategically with exciting ideas, a humanistic approach, calls to action, links, and consistent posting.
What’s out in corporate video
Long, Monotonous Videos: In the past, corporate videos often ran for 10 minutes or longer, usually filled with speeches from 1 key person and slower-paced visuals. Videos frequently shown at meetings or on a computer had a more captive audience, so they could get away with this more.
Overly Formal and Stiff Tone: Traditional corporate videos often have a more formal and stiff tone, with C-level people delivering heavily scripted lines.
One-Size-Fits-All Approach: In the past, companies often created a single corporate video to cater to all audiences; the same video would be played everywhere without adaptions.
Neglecting Mobile Optimisation: Traditionally, with online video, corporate videos were primarily optimised for desktop viewing. This means they were landscape in size to fit a large monitor, and the mobile user would be forced to watch it tiny, and be far less engaged.
Unfortunately, we see all too often that some of these strategies are still being done by businesses and organisations with their video products today! By avoiding these outdated ideas of corporate video production, companies can create more effective and engaging videos that connect with audiences. So that was what’s out, what is in?
Strategies for Effective Short-Form Video Marketing
Know Your Audience: Understand the preferences and behaviours of your target audience. Are they on short-form platforms? Do they mainly browse on a phone or computer? Which platforms do they prefer? Answering these questions and looking at your own analytics will help you create a more targeted approach, with videos tailored to specific demographics and platforms. On your website, viewers browsing many pages may still want long-form video – it’s not vanished, but this type of content isn’t suitable for your socials.
Create Exciting Content: The first few seconds of a short form video are so important – these days, you have just about 3 seconds to stop someone in their tracks. You can open with eye-catching visuals, interesting questions, or surprising facts to quickly grab attention. A good thumbnail (the cover image) use is also crucial; you can choose an exciting or intriguing frame from the video or upload a new one.
New Stories: Corporate video is no longer just your company story; the types of video content organisations are publishing are Branded stories, such as short films, series, and documentaries; How-to or explainer videos; interviews with influencers and experts; Case studies, testimonials and customer stories, or Thought leadership with company leaders. It’s not all about you.
Keep it Concise: Short-form videos typically range from 15 to 60 seconds. Get to the point quickly. You also want viewers to reach the final CTA at the end so they know what to do next. For a business video, up to 90s can work, but beyond that drop off rates tend to increase dramatically unless they’re much longer and more educational in nature – not as salesy.
Keep it accessible: To improve the audience experience and be more inclusive, accessibility measures in your video content, like subtitles and descriptions, help improve perception and make the content watched by more people for longer. Even corporate videos on your website should always have the option to add subtitles.
Aspect Ratio is important: Depending on the platform, you should consider vertical videos in your corporate video strategy. Vertical videos engage users four times better on Facebook, for example. With vertical advertising, users watch it to the end in 90% of cases (for comparison, the figure is 14% for horizontal video ads).
Be personable: Modern audiences prefer authentic, relatable, and conversational content. This is across all kinds of industries from education to healthcare, charity and more and is evidenced by TikTok Video (among others), where you see all kinds of homemade-style videos that tally up millions and millions of views. You don’t need to go to that end of the scale and film it all on a phone, and a mix or professional and UGC can help. You can still be ‘corporate’ and a real person. Avoid following scripts if you can; you don’t always need to film professionally, and you can use more relatable language. You don’t need to suddenly say dude! Just less formal and proposal-like. (and don’t rely on Ai to create all your scripts)
Use Trending Sounds and Effects: Incorporating popular music, sounds, and effects can help your videos gain traction on social media. For example, selecting trending audio can help boost your videos on Instagram. Or catching onto new trends with your versions of memes can bring a lighter side and help increase engagement. You don’t need to do this every time, though, as it can start to feel inauthentic.
Adapt Longer form Content: You don’t aways need to start from scratch with a video production. If you have a longer existing corporate video with some good parts but is overall the wrong size/length, etc., for other platforms. Then, you can often speak to the video production company who created it to adapt it to a short-form version. They’d look at it with a trained eye to edit it as concise and eye-catching as possible while reusing existing content.
Collaborate with Influencers: They sometimes get a bad rep, but Influencers still have influence; it’s a billion-dollar industry! Partnering with influencers can help you reach a larger audience and increase brand credibility. They don’t need to have a massive amount of followers; micro and macro influencers are often within reach budget-wise; it’s essential to see their niche so that they are as relevant as possible, the style of their video content, and past results of sponsored content, and the usual engagement they receive.
Track and Analyse Performance: Use analytics tools to measure the success of your short-form video campaigns and identify areas for improvement.
By embracing short-form video and all that surrounds it, businesses can take advantage of new opportunities to think about corporate video, develop new video strategies, connect with their audience, drive brand awareness, and ultimately boost their bottom line.
If you would like to boost and modernise your business’s corporate video strategy, then just get in touch
