Video Branding 101: How to Use Video Marketing to Build Your Brand

There are some brands that seem, somehow, larger than life. They go beyond the business itself, and have become something special. Maybe they’re seen as authentic, or funny, or innovative, or good to the world. You’ve got everything from Wendy’s well-known snark to the adventurous Red Bull to the determined, Just-Do-It Nike.

These are brands that become household names, and they become the go-to that you’ll turn to when you need something. The first time I needed to buy running shoes, for example, I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew to start with Nike.

Actually building a brand can be challenging. It’s hard to create something distinctive that resonates with your audience and spreads like wildfire, but video is one of the best ways to do it. In this post, we’re going to look and video branding and how you can use video marketing to build a brand that will scale with your business.

Popular Types of Branded Videos

Video branding is the practice of distributing your brand message in a recognizable, distinct way through video. The idea is to both promote brand awareness and recognition while also helping you to define what your brand is and what makes you different.

Any video that does this (or attempts to) can be considered a branded video. Some popular types of brand videos include:

• Product videos, which showcase specific products and what makes them unique
• Tutorials and how-to content, which may or may not involve your product or service directly and serve to offer value to your audience
• Behind-the-scenes content, which can vary from showing how things are made to the set up before an event
• Brand story videos, which focus on telling the brand’s story, or the stories of those who started the business
• Interview videos, which often include interviews with prominent influencers, employees, or important executives

While there a large number of different types of videos that you can create to promote and establish your brand, there are a few best practices that you should always follow to get the results you want.

Focus On Brand-Building Messages

When you start fleshing out your brand early on and deciding what you want to be, your products, business’s story, and other personal missions likely contribute to this. All of your video content should keep these key facts in mind and find ways to share these building blocks to help establish your brand.

It’s not just about keeping viewers entertained, after all, it’s about giving them some new information about your brand in a way that will stick with them.

Lush is one of my favorite examples, because they regularly post behind-the-scenes videos showing how the product is made. This really emphasizes that handmade factor that they win over so many customers with, backing up their claims.

Another good option is telling the business’s story outright, because if superhero movies have taught us anything it’s that we’re all suckers for an origin story. Whether you’re featuring the business owner/CEO or employees who helped you get there, this is an important part of brand building.

Incorporate Visual Branded Imagery

Visual branding can make significant progress towards brand recognition; think about how you know those golden arches mean that a Big Mac is nearby. That’s instant recognition.

You can use your video marketing to both promote visual recognition of your brand, and use a prominently featured logo or brand name to let users know when a great video is coming from a brand they trust, bringing everything full circle.

This can be subtle. You can have a “Shakr presents…” at the beginning of the video, or include a brand name and/or logo in the corner of the content for its entirety. You can always toss in a CTA at the end to check out your site. Whatever you do, just make sure that it’s prominent enough to notice without taking away from the video itself.

Keep Some Video Elements Consistent

Some businesses will create a series of branded videos to help keep viewers engaged. Others simply find a style or format of video that works for them well and want to stick with that.

Either way, if this sounds like your case, it will benefit you to keep some video elements or formatting consistent. This can include the style of the video, the type of music you use, or even the video layout all together. Sameness breeds familiarity, which can turn into recognition and favorability, too.

Here at Shakr, we have hundreds of customizable video templates available for our subscribers. If you want to take things a step further, you can also check out Shakr ONBRAND, in which we’ll create a customized, just-for-you template to suit your business’s marketing and branding needs. You can learn more here.

Make It Worth Watching

This is an important tip that is often overlooked. Just because you’re creating promotional content doesn’t mean that it should read like a boring, standard commercial that’s the advertising equivalent of elevator music. True branded videos are going to be interesting, informative, or some combination of both to offer value for the people watching.

Let’s take a look at the above example. This is one deodorant commercial that’s entertaining and compelling, keeping you watching. And by the time the video is over, you love the brand even if you’ve never heard of or tried the product. It’s memorable, and it’s made a connection. Whenever you hear “lume deoderant,” you’ll remember this supposedly-elegant woman in her orange dress making you laugh.

Conclusion

Using video marketing to build and establish your brand can be wildly successful– it even created this almost mythical brand for supposed-event-turned-disaster Fyre Festival. If you want to see these results, however, you can to use video branding strategically, focusing on consistent brand building instead of just your typical advertising campaign.

We’ve created Shakr ONBRAND specifically for that purpose, and our customized, made-for-you templates combined with your brand’s stories and value propositions can help you create video branding campaigns that will help you make a name for your business like no other.

Are you ready to take your video’s branding to the next level? Learn more about how Shakr ONBRAND can help.

The post Video Branding 101: How to Use Video Marketing to Build Your Brand appeared first on Shakr Video Marketing Blog.