Branded Videos: 5 Key Traits to Success

branded videos

The power of branded videos is immense – ask any business that has already taking advantage of it. With video usage rising exponentially over the last year, it clearly is the best path to building a relationship with your audience.

Not to mention gaining tremendous brand exposure!

If you look closely, you’ll notice that all branded videos share the same common characteristics. We’re not saying it’s impossible to succeed without having all of them on board – but we are saying it’s unnecessarily difficult.

branded videos

Entertainment Before Advertising

There’s a very thin line between being entertaining and being pushy. One sign of crude advertising and you’ll lose most of those who were interested in to what you had to say.

The key to accomplishing this is to stay within the universe of the brand. Create characters, tell stories, make your users crave the next video. Be clever about the way you choose to promote your product – wrap it in one of those stories and be consistent.

Your audience will appreciate it – everyone likes a business that’s different from all the others that tend to fall into the pitfall of blunt advertising.

branded videos

Relatable Content

Creating content that resonates with your target audience is the way to save time and gain viewership. Spend time listening to your users – really get to know them.

When you’re authentic and you tell the right stories that manage to hit close to home, you’ll know you were successful. A compelling story in branded videos is one that inspires action.

When your video resonates with your audience on an emotional level, you’ve already won half the battle.

Short and Concise Wins Every Time

I spend a lot of time on Facebook. Lately, I’ve been enjoying the never-ending surge of videos popping up in my news feed.

It happens often that I come across a video thinking “This is exactly what I was looking for,” just to click on it and realize it’s 15 minutes long.

99.9% of the time, I close it.

My attention span, along with everyone else’s has significantly decreased. That, coupled with the lack of patience the last few generations are marked with, equals less eyeballs on your content.

The only way to amend this is to make sure all of our videos are short and sweet, easy to digest and compelling enough for us to stay engaged, like this branded video from Pepsi:

Shareable Content

We love showing interesting findings to our friends. On a daily basis, I probably tag my friends under a picture or video on social media around 5 times.

It’s in our nature: we love sharing our experiences with others. When you turn your branded videos into an experience instead of a commercial, you’ll get people sharing them quicker than a coin toss.

What would you prefer to see: a ketchup commercial or a story about a farmer in Asia and his process of growing tomatoes in his little farm while supporting a family of 8?

I thought so. Branded videos that have shareable content like the Volvo video below, can have a cumulative positive effect on your viewer engagement.

Branded Videos that Inspire Action

As we already mentioned: successful branded videos are those that inspire action.

When this moment comes, you need to be ready for it. What do you want to encourage – more traffic to your website? More conversions? Clicking the “Share” button?

It doesn’t even have to be a direct call to action. In fact, the subtler, the better. Because it leaves us with the impression that we have a choice, instead of twisting our arm into doing something.

If you look at successful marketing videos, you find a video with a compelling story. In addition, this story resonates with consumers on an emotional level. That’s the key to YouTube video branding because it’s basically the best video marketing tip you’ll ever get.

By incorporating these 5 traits for successful branded videos, you’ll get engaging content that contributes to your brand.