Creating Video Content for Your Target Audience

That’s the biggest secret in video marketing.

Video content can be split into many different categories. Firstly, you have the staple videos that every business or brand needs. A landing page explainer, a social media promo, your event showreel as examples. They each play a part; they each have a place in your marketing master plan, but they are not what your audience is actively searching for.

What we want to talk about today is video content created for your target audience. Your potential customers. Completely bespoke video that they are spending their time watching right now. And it’s not just the content but the way it is delivered and where too.

They are not out there right now searching for your showreel or your explainer video. They are watching videos about problems, about entertainment, about concerns and interests.  So, we need to find out exactly what they are watching and work out how you can fit in to it.

There are some great techniques that can help you with this. But first we need to find out who your target audience. Before we can find them, you need to ask yourself some questions. Work out in your head the type of person you are looking for.

Who are they? Where did you find them? Why did they choose you over your competition? Is there a specific platform that performs better for you and your content? Did you get most sales on Instagram or are you hitting more valued connections over on LinkedIn. All these things are important for the style of video content that you’re going to push.

Where does your audience live? How old are they? If they’re in the states, is it coast to coast? What time zone are they in? All these things effect the plan moving forward.

This is where using your social media analytics becomes so important in providing this audience research information. They can help you understand who is interacting with your social accounts, even if these people are not yet customers. NOT YET.

Another great tactic for audience analysis is to check out what your competitors are up to. This can help answer some key questions. Are your competitors going after the same market segments as you? Are they reaching some that you have not considered? What content are they putting out and does it work? Its not as heavy in the detailed analysis but it will help you on your path to finding your audience.

Another great tip for finding out what gets your target audience going can be found in social media activity logs, so on LinkedIn for example:

• Find your ideal customer, based off the work you’ve already put in this should be too hard to find.
• Once you’ve connected with them you can then view their activity log – this shows all of their engagements across the platform. What videos did they like? What did they comment on? This gives you frontline evidence on what your target audience is connecting with and might even throw up some content ideas from your competitors in the field.

If they’ve liked a video of a conversation between two experts at an event, then at your next event you need a video guy. If they’ve been watching an episodic series released weekly where a company reviews products in the industry, then bulk film an episodic series that you can release weekly where you review company products.

It’s really that simple. Activity logs show patterns and with a bit of ground work you can utilise this to your advantage.

By creating content to help their needs and wants it tells them you care. It’s where you share your product benefits, and you can be direct here. Stay clear of generic terms like saving time and generating traffic, they’re heard this a million times before.

It’s really that simple. Activity logs show patterns and with a bit of groundwork you can utilise this to your advantage.

By creating content to help their needs and wants it tells them you care. It’s where you share your product benefits, and you can be direct here. Stay clear of generic terms like saving time and generating traffic, they’ve heard this a million times before.

It’s important to run tests on your target audience. Don’t go all out creating a series of videos or a big production without first testing the waters. By using your social media analytics, you can work out what people are reacting to and run trials and tests on various topics and video types before committing. Similar to how there will be a pilot episode put to a test audience before a TV station commits to 12 episodes.

Also consider A/B testing once you’ve got your campaign up and running to double-down even further on what works for your audience.

Our last piece of advice would be to create a target market statement; something that aligns itself with your brand and this is the first step to creating a brand positioning statement. The target market statement needs to be everything that you’ve discovered here, boiled down to one sentence. When crafting this try to include the most important demographic and behavioural characteristics you’ve identified.

For example:

Our target market is [gender] aged [age range], who live in [place or type of place], and like to [activity].

Remember to stay current and on trend with your target audience, it might change and evolve over time, but for now hopefully this helps you to go a long way to discovering what your target audience is watching and to understand exactly who they are.