Corporate Video Production: Grow Your Business

Corporate video production (or video production for business) is truly an art form.

A solid video can be a key component in any business strategy. It’s a versatile asset that can be used in multiple channels to achieve multiple goals. Sales, marketing, internal culture, training, recruiting - basically ALL the elements that lead to overall SUCCESS.

Obviously, we’re a little biased... but we think corporate video production deserves extra attention and investment. If your video doesn't engage your audience, then it’s not an asset; it’s just an expensive time-suck.

But whether you’re partnering with a professional video production company or doing it DIY, understanding the production process, best practices, and overall benefits is an essential first step to planning video for your business.

Benefits of Corporate Video Production

Watching a brand's video has convinced 84% of people to buy a product or service. And having a well-produced corporate video can:

Engage your audience (build trust, increase traffic & brand recognition)
Make a powerful impact (increase referrals, generate trust, build loyalty)
Inspire action (grow sales, grow your team, grow repeat business)

We don't want to sound like a TV commercial pitchman, but that's not all!

Improve SEO

When you take the time to optimize your video SEO, you’re going to boost your SEO altogether.

Use a target keyword when naming your video file.
Incorporate the keyword naturally into the video title.
Optimize the video description
Use relevant keywords in video tags and organize your video into categories.
Add subtitles and closed captions.

Having a well-thought-out video SEO strategy will take a bit of time, but it will be worth the effort.

As we’ve mentioned before, you will increase your overall search engine ranking when you implement video SEO. And the more Google-friendly your website is, the higher it will climb on the Google ladder.

Not only that, but you’ll also get…

Increased Website Traffic

Engaging content leads to longer view times on your website. The longer people stay, the more trust you earn from Google.

With these higher customer retention rates, Google will realize your site has valuable and high-quality content.

But there’s more to it… Videos can earn backlinks, encourage social shares, and improve your click-through rates on search engine results pages (which increases organic traffic by 157%)! All of that adds up to better SEO performance.

What makes this important? The majority of searchers never scroll past page one of Google, so you'll want to be where the action is.

Types of Corporate Video Production

Testimonial Video Production

Client testimonial videos are often used to build trust. They allow a “behind the scenes” look into what it’s like to work with you and your brand.

This type of video shows a customer sharing their genuine experience with your product or service. It’s extremely relatable, and viewers are more likely to trust user experience over any other company marketing.

Video testimonials should:

Share a bit of background about the business or challenges the customer faced so viewers understand the reasoning behind a customer's recommendation.
Include video clips of interviews as well as supplementary footage. It may be the customer using your product or service. This provides more visual context for the audience and also allows you to hide cuts in the edit.
Avoid "scripted" responses: Giving customers pre-scripted responses to questions or having them read off a teleprompter will normally ruin any attempt for "authentic" sounding content. During the interview, the moderator should ask questions that provide more "conversational" responses and pose a question in different ways to get the response you're aiming for.

Animated Video Production

Animated videos aren’t just for kids! Animated videos are the best approach to explaining difficult concepts in a way that’s easy to understand (and remember).

What makes a good animated corporate video?

Keeping it short and sweet
Scripts that are well-written
Solving a customer's problem
Staying true to your brand
Ending with a call-to-action

Our brains are hardwired to process video content because images can be processed 60,000 times more quickly than text. This is why animated videos are so effective at simplifying complex ideas.

Since the majority of people won't take the time to read pages of text, an animated corporate video will certainly capture their attention (especially if it can break things down quickly and easily!).

Live-Action Corporate Video Production

Live-action video is a term used to define video content that is captured on film (or digital media) and is not animated. This is typically captured on location and can feature casted talent, or fellow employees.

This type of video is best suited for highlighting a company's leadership or demonstrating the use of your products. The beauty of live-action videos is that they can be whatever you want them to be! Fun, informative, entertaining... The world is your oyster.

Why do live-action videos work?

They’re engaging and grab the attention of the viewer. Live-action videos that tell real stories are more relatable and create a lasting emotional connection with your brand.

The best way to motivate customers is to let them know how your business can have an impact on their lives – and quickly. Since they don't want to be bombarded with too much information, live-action videos are a fast and effective way to leave an impression.

Recruiting

If they aren't already, recruitment videos should be an important part of your recruitment strategy. With a well-designed recruitment video, you can easily reach your ideal candidate.

If you want to stand out among potential candidates, recruitment videos do the heavy lifting before (and after) the interview. Recruiting videos can:

Increase job posting visibility and application rate
Demonstrate your company's culture in a way that connects
Ensure your candidates are going to be a good fit before the investment of onboarding
Ensure your messaging to new potential recruits is consistent and always includes the most important employer value points

If your recruitment video can speak directly to your ideal candidates, you’ll make a memorable impression that can win you the best employees.

Corporate Video Production: The Process

The production process for corporate video production follows the same three stages as any other type of video production (pre-production, production, and post-production). However, there’s one (often overlooked) additional step that should happen before you even start... the production brief.

The Production Brief

A production brief will serve as the foundation of your production and should be completed regardless of whether the video is being produced in-house or if you’re planning on contracting a professional video production company.

The production brief doesn’t have to be super long or complicated... but what it should do is communicate the following succinctly:

Production Brief Questions

What is the high-level objective of the video you’re producing? For example, a recruiting video may have an objective like “The objective of the video production is to give prospective job candidates a better idea of our company culture.”

Who is the target audience? - Try to be specific with this one... are you targeting new college graduates or seasoned professionals?
What are the key points you want to communicate through the video? - try to keep this to three or fewer... any more, and you’ll risk going too long and losing your audience trying to cram too much in.
Where will the video live? - is this for use on your website, in presentations, for promoted social media ads, etc...
What are the expected outcomes from the video? - Going back to the previous example of the company culture video, the desired outcome of the project might be a video that helps entice more job applications from your pool of ideal job candidates, and less from those that aren’t a good fit for the culture and whose resumes may be clogging your HR department now.
Finally... how will you measure success? - This one is very important... will you have a clickable call to action at the end of the video that will take the viewer to a landing page? Those clicks could be the way you measure success, or perhaps just the change in website traffic is enough... the more you can tie success directly to the video, the better. A landing page or 800 number only used in your video other easy ways to attribute conversions.

Additional items to consider...

You can add more specifics like budgets and creative concepts in this stage, or save those for when you start pre-production with a separate “creative brief”... ultimately, getting the production brief signed off by all project stakeholders before you get started will allow your corporate video production to run smoother and will serve as a key point of reference as you make decisions through all stages of production, and help to re-center you if your messaging starts to stray.

Want to start with our recipe for success? Check out Video Secret Sauce | The Recipe for Effective Video Messaging

Pre-Production

When your production brief is green-lit by all project stakeholders, you're ready to start pre-production. In pre-production, you're planning out all the details required for the execution (Production) Stage. If you haven't yet established the creative approach (treatment) and budget, you'll want to start there.

If you're working with a video production company, they can typically use the production brief and any existing branding to help build creative concepts, which may include"style frames" to give you a better idea of the visual direction they see for the video creative approach. Style is important, so if you’re picking a pro production company, make sure they can produce in the style that fits your brand.

Once the creative format is established, you'll typically either fall into scripted (which can include live-action or animated video) or non-scripted (editorial video like testimonials or interview excerpts). For scripted content, you'll start by building the script, while non-scripted editorial videos may have a rough story arch outline developed, with interview questions to support them.

After your script or outline is developed, you'll go into the storyboarding process. Animated videos always have storyboards, while live-action videos may have storyboards, shot lists, or both. Complex commercial live-action productions will go into additional steps such as production design, casting breakdowns, props, locations.... and more. Once all the creative is approved, you'll be ready to move into the next stage.

Production: (The Fun Part!)

Now it’s time to put all your plans into action!

For animation and narrated videos, production can start with getting final voiceover reads from the voiceover artist you cast in pre-production. Additional production activities for animated videos may include character design and rigging characters for motion or developing scenes and visuals.

For live-action production, you’ll be following the schedule and shot list you developed in pre-production to bring your storyboard to life! For larger budget productions, you’ll quickly learn why it’s important to have specialists and departments focused on their parts of the production... there are A LOT of moving parts in a live production.

When you’re shooting non-scripted interview content, make sure you leave enough time to capture adequate b-roll footage with not only a variety of content but varied shot framings from tight to wide... this will give your editing team more options in post-production.

Post-Production:

Post-production is one of the most important parts of your video process.

For animated videos, you’ll be editing, ensuring the scene transitions are smooth, doing final sound design, and then adding any finishing touches or effects to really bring it home.

Scripted live-action videos with dialogue will start with organizing all your shots in your editing software, then assembling each scene with the best takes. If your script is performed by a voiceover artist, you’ll organize your footage to follow the narration to build your visual story.

Non-Scripted editorial videos may start by transcribing interviews and assembling a “paper edit” of the narrative using the text transcriptions, then putting together all the selected parts from the paper edit into the main assembly. B-roll is then overlayed on top of this where it’s needed to illustrate the point the speaker is making visually, as well as to hide transitions between different shots and speakers.

These are just the basic parts of post-production that most productions will include. For larger budgets, you may have additional post-production stages such as visual effects, color correction, music scoring/composing, and sound design, to name just a few.

TLDR

Corporate video production is a game-changer in overall business strategy. It can:

Boost traffic, engage your audience, build trust, close deals, GROW YOUR BUSINESS

Some great video types for corporate video production:

Animated: explainer videos | product videos | marketing videos
Live: (scripted) marketing videos | brand videos
Live: (unscripted) customer testimonials | employee testimonials | recruiting videos

Stages of corporate video production:

Pre-production: laying down ideas, style, framework (getting your ducks in a row)
Production: shooting live, animation & design (getting all the needed assets+)
Post-production: creatively weaving all the pieces together to tell your story with polish & impact