Create a video strategy to further your business goals

You can waste a lot of time and energy with online marketing if you’re just doing something because you’re “supposed to.”

Online video is no different! And because it’s a pretty trendy type of content right now, it can be easy to get swept up in thinking that because “everyone else” is doing it, that you should too.

Can video be useful for your organization? Of course! But it’s important to have a strategy for your online videos—a strategy that’s based on your business goals. And “everyone else is doing it” just isn’t a very good strategy.

If everyone else was jumping off a cliff, would you do it too?

What a weird question. Anyway, how do you create a video strategy based on your business goals? Here’s how we created ours.

1. Define your values

First, think about what’s important to your business. You might call these your core values, or you might just know that there are some big-picture ideas driving the way you do business.

Write those down.

For example, one of our core business values is helping people. So that went right up at the top of our list. We also think it’s important to build relationship with key strategic referral partners, so that went on the list. Being seen as an industry expert got added to the list as well.

2. Identify your goals with your online videos

After you have your core values in your mind, think about how your online videos are going to further those values, or fit in with what’s already important to your organization.

In random order, we wanted to make sure our videos did these things:

• Help people
• Reach prospects and strategic partners
• Gain new subscribers
• Demonstrate credibility

Now, those aren’t all the things we want our videos to do, but they are the most important. And knowing our main goals helps us make decisions about what type of content we produce, and the topics we cover.

These are going to be very broad, big-picture goals. That’s okay! We can get to the details in 3, 2, 1…

3. Start figuring out your clear next steps

Once you have goals based on your organization’s values, it’s time to figure out your clear next steps. What are you going to do, specifically, to make sure you’re meeting those big-picture goals?

It might help to create clear next steps that fit into the SMART goals framework (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound).

Since we started really digging into our strategy after we had already been producing videos (don’t try this at home!), a lot of our clear next steps were changes or tweaks we could make to bring our videos more in alignment with our values and goals.

But whether you create a strategy before you start shooting any videos, or sometime after that, it will help you narrow down your focus so what you create and publish is doing the work you want it to.