Start With Your Plan
“He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of the most busy life.”
Victor Hugo
Video projects often fail because they are typically regarded as creative endeavours and are not subject to normal constraints. Every video project needs to be treated as a business opportunity and subjected to the same planning as every other business opportunity. To succeed with your video project you need to create a robust plan that will deliver the required outcome.
I have a simple 5-step process, which I use to plan my video project, which goes as follows.
1. Define Your Purpose
Every plan starts with a purpose. What are you trying to achieve what are your objectives? A video project is no different, you need to understand what part your video project needs to play in your overall marketing strategy. Having no clear objective for the project is the cause of many video project failures.
Start every video project with a clear measurable goal. Make your goal clear to everyone involved and define the goal in a simple manner. Test your goal definition by stating it in as few words as possible to someone unconnected with the project and see if it makes sense to them.
2. Research Your Audience
Once you know your purpose think about whom your audience is. The first task is to check if they are the appropriate audience to achieve your goal. Find out what kind of video content they like and what their expectations are. The more you know about them the better able you will be to tailor content to them. The more your video content resonates with them the more likely it is to prompt them to proceed with your “call to action”.
3. How To Measure Your Success
The outcome of any video project needs to be easily measured. Before embarking on any video project have a clear idea what success will look like and more importantly how you intend to measure it. If you cannot define success in quantifiable terms you need to revisit objectives and decide on how you can effectively measure your results.
4. Create A Plan
Once you know what your marketing objective is, who is your audience and understand what they expect from your video you can develop a strategy. Using your strategy you can then build a plan of action.
Good planning will detail the necessary steps on how you are going to achieve your objectives. It will also detail how you can allocate resources to achieve your outcome. Good planning should always be based on the required outcome and every step should contribute to that outcome. Your plan should detail the look and feel of your video based on your customer research. The plan should allocate the resources needed for each part of the video project.
The best video project plans need to be an exact blueprint of how you are going to create and distribute and market your video.
5. Review Your Plan
The most important planning step is the review of your plan. Test your objectives are in line with your business and marketing strategies. Check your objectives can be realistically measured. Review each step in your plan and ensure the resources allocated for meeting them are practical and don’t exceed your overall budget. Every video project has its inherent risk factors. Make sure you only include acceptable risks and check what risk mitigation factors you have included. Review the creative input and ensure it is in line with your audience’s expectations. Only sign off on the final plan when this review has taken place.
Plan For Success
“Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.”
Oscar Wilde
As Oscar Wilde once said you need the right conditions for success. Translated into creating a project, this means you need to plan for success. Think about what you are trying to achieve and who is your audience. Understand what success will look like and how you will measure that success. Only then can you start planning and finally you need to review that plan.