The businesses within the professional services industry that are excelling with video have a well thought out video content strategy. Whether you are already creating video or are thinking about starting, your job is to drive the most powerful return possible and ensure that your video content is working well.
We follow a 10-step framework for content strategy, and we guarantee it will have a powerful effect on the return you are driving from your videos.
In this blog we’re going to look at the first 5 steps of this framework and how this might apply in the professional services industry.
The first thing you need to do is define your ultimate business objective for creating your content. Do you need to create content that gives an overview of your services? Educational content on subjects that your clients struggle with? Or perhaps you are looking to show you are up to date with the latest regulations?
Whatever your objective, it will underpin everything else you work through in the strategy, so it’s important you are honest with what you want to achieve.
Next you need to decide who you are targeting. Are you looking to reach students, retirees or young families? Perhaps you want your content to target your internal team. Whoever you want to communicate with you need to know who they are, so that you can research where to find them and make content that will appeal to them.
It’s also important to think about the section in the Buyers Journey your content is created for; are you targeting students in the awareness stage who might need to be educated about how to get started with their finances? Perhaps you are targeting families in the decision stage who might be looking for the best life insurance options.
Now you know what you want to say and who you are saying it to, you need to use what you know about your audience to decide what distribution channels you can use in order to engage with them.
For example, if you are creating content aimed at students then a TikTok video might be ideal, but you might not want to take this approach for retirees! Understanding who your target audience is as well as where they spend their time means you can optimise your content specifically for their needs.
Now you need to think about how much time and money you are prepared to invest in your content. Do you have the capacity and ability to create your content in-house or do you need to work with a video production agency?
Whatever your choice, it’s important to be honest about what you can invest, to ensure you are not spending more money and time than you are able to.
Now you know why you are creating your content, what you are looking to achieve, who you are looking to target and how you are going to reach them. So, you can finally think about what your video (or videos) might actually look like.
As you know who you are targeting and what type of content your audience resonates with, you should already have a few ideas when it comes to the creative. Equally as you know where you are going to be sharing your content, you should also know how to optimise it in order to get the most from that platform. For example, if you are targeting families who might need further information about life insurance, you might be looking to use Instagram and then you need to ensure your videos are square.
This is just the beginning of creating your content strategy, it’s also important to make sure you think about reporting, how to optimise your content and reviewing your reports regularly so you can ensure your content is always giving you the results you deserve.
Need more help? Why not watch our full deep dive video below to walk through all 10 steps, so you can get started with your content strategy.
Need more? Learn how to track and report the ROI of your video content by downloading our free 8-step blueprint now!