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How to set SMART goals for your sales videos? Let's see!
Sales videos are leaving audiences in awe, and creators in a hustle.
Behind every successful sales video is a creative individual who toiled to find a unique idea.
Even after the incessant toil, there is no guarantee that the seeds of creativity will find roots. Video production involves a lot. A lot of things, and a lot of opinions.
Not every creative idea is executable and not every genius thought can be realized efficiently on screen.
That’s why, when it comes to sales videos, you have to play it SMART.
SMART is the popular management acronym from the 80s. And surprisingly, it has managed to sustain itself even today.
If you are struggling to get your sales videos out and about SMARTly, then this blog post is for you.
We will be sailing across the SMART sea atop the waves of video. And we will find out how everyone from a genius John to an average Joe can find success with sales videos by setting SMART goals.
What are SMART Goals?
When it comes to being SMART, it is as basic as it gets. SMART is an acronym that can be used as a reliable guide for setting goals.
The acronym has stood for many things since its introduction as a management principle, but can be generally broken down as follows:
S is for Specific. This means that your goal should be unambiguously set with as much clarity as possible.
M is for the Measurability of goal. Your goal should be measurable with predefined metrics and easily distinguishable quantifiable figures.
A is Attainability of the goal. Although it is often characteristic of dreamers to set impractical goals, when it comes to creating sales videos, stick to a logical practical achievable goal.
R is for the Relevancy of your goal. It is pointless to create irrelevant goals, especially when it comes to sales videos because you will go unnoticed.
T is making your goals Time-Bound. You have to set a time limit within which the goal will be SMARTly realized.
And that’s it, when it comes to being SMART for sales video goals, you need a specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound goal. Let’s see how to get there.
How to Set SMART Goals for Your Videos
Every aspect of SMART can be encapsulated with video production to ensure success with sales videos.
The end product is as good as the goals you set, and sales videos are no different.
The better you work at creating the perfect goal that works for you, unique to your video marketing strategy, the better sales videos you will be able to produce and publish.
Setting Specific Focused Goals
The most important thing to produce a good sales video is the clarity of vision you have.
Trust me, when it comes to anything related to video production, whether it is just an Instagram story for your business account or an infomercial, you need to be completely clear about what you will be presenting to the audience.
To create a focused, pinpointed goal with a clear objective, start by doing some research.
This research revolves around multiple things, but most importantly around your target audience and your competitors. What kind of content does your audience seem to watch the most, enjoy the most, and take up action after watching.
To understand the subliminal messages from your target audience, you need a little bit of experimentation.
Moreover, you need to put yourself into their shoes. The number one platform that is relevant to research for almost all kinds of businesses is Reddit. After all, it is the Front Page of the Internet.
Reddit has a subreddit for every community you can imagine, and you are likely to find your audience on there, interacting with their guards down.
It is a space where you can find out honest opinions, and reviews about products, problems, inhibitions, absolute favorites, and much more.
Similar types of platforms exist on other social media platforms like Facebook. You can easily research your market through Facebook groups, and see the interaction on sales videos produced by your competitors.
Note what your audience likes, doesn’t like, dislikes, and hates. Few other tools are Quora, Twitter Advanced Search, YouTube comments, and LinkedIn Groups. Depending on your product and industry, go through the necessary research.
Once you are done with your research, you’ll either come out sharper and clear in the head about what you want to produce or completely confused and pessimistic.
Even if you come out confused, and think the audience seems to appreciate nothing, don’t worry. Prioritize. Even if your target audience hates virtually everything out there, find out what they hate the least and go with that, or create your creative idea to catch the attention.
Overall, create an extremely pointed resolute vision for your sales video. Follow this vision with the appropriate format, and subsequently with the script/notes.
For example, if your audience seems to love long-form content like tutorials, set out the best topics that your audience will enjoy the most. And find the experts you need to host these tutorials.
Meticulous Measuring
Videos give you a plethora of metrics to work with. And you need to employ most of these to your benefit, depending on the type of video format you choose for your sales video.
For example, if you indeed choose a long-form video content type like tutorial videos, you will see a high bounce rate. Because people tend to easily bounce off during longer videos. But you will see a higher rate of attention because the format of the video demands it.
For every video, you can have important measurements broader than the scope of just the view count.
StoryXpress offers its users a treasury of advanced video analytics for each of their videos. For every video produced, users can view a visual representation of user engagement through heatmaps.
Heatmaps include the marketer in the journey of the viewer, showing them the actions taken by the viewers over a grid of timestamps. The heatmap identifies segments of the video rewatched by viewers, or timestamps where viewers bounced, and what percentage made it to the end.
Further, using the StoryXpress Screen Recorder, users can unfold important user engagement analytics like actions taken, total watch time, average watch time, and much more.
These analytics will guide you through to success with sales videos with quantifiable, measurable results.
Even if you don’t do well with your sales videos initially, it is important to have these metrics in place to figure out why exactly your videos failed. Measurables also give you a deeper insight into your viewers’ perspectives and will help you produce better video content over time.
Practically Attainable Videos
When you get the creative juices flowing, it is hard to ground yourself to the realities of your operation.
When it comes to projects like sales videos, the one thing that will most definitely keep you anchored to the ground is your budget.
But, understand that even if you have a pretty low budget, creating good quality sales videos is still possible. However, if you were thinking of taking drone shots, then that’s out.
Budgets are probably not really in your control, and if they are, it is suggested you calculate the estimated per conversion cost to recoup your budget.
If you are sure of your marketing skills and have a specific goal set, then all that’s left is the measurables to determine the attainability of the goals. It is all inter-connected with SMART.
If you are aiming to convert an absurd amount of people with one sales video, stop right there. Can you do it? Consider a data pool of your audience, and assume the average conversions with market research.
If you indeed find the figure to match your absurd figure, well and good, if not, replace it with the number that you calculate.
Instead of goals like “Convert 1500 people from XYZ location”, use goals like “Get X amount of users from Z audience into the awareness funnel”.
Notwithstanding that, there are other aspects of attainability that you might need to determine before you go into full-fledged video production.
Some of these are production space, editing capacity, production capacity. And some others will be determined with the platforms you choose to publish videos on. As the platform will also contribute to the reach of your videos.
Relevance Reality Check
The relevance of your video content can be easily determined with a few simple market research checks.
For example, for tutorial videos, you select a topic. Well, does anyone even want to know about this topic? Will it rank? Are there enough organic views to be generated from this choice?
Answers to basic video marketing questions will help you determine the relevancy of your videos. If you are producing a sales video for email outreach, for example, and plugging in long-form video content like tutorials. Will you get the traction you desire through this?
Furthermore, relevance also has an integral role to play within video making itself. Certain things like the substance of your video should be aided by your journey as an organization.
If you are creating a wholesome “Our Story” sales video, do you even have an audience for this yet? Whatever you do in terms of videos, should be somewhat parallel to your overall marketing strategy, or in other words, relevant to your goals.
Time Thyself Ye Beast
No project is successful unless bound by the almighty principle of the cosmos, TIME.
So, you have a concise, specific, attainable goal, what is the time limit on it and, is it achievable?
Since video making is only a somewhat trackable task, we recommend planning everything before staying atop your game.
Allot time for pre-production activities such as gathering props, recruiting experts, finding a good cast, designing a production set. Whatever it is that your video requires before you hit record on the camera should be done within a certain set timeframe. You can't skip this step.
Balance out the time required with the proportion of pre-production effort required.
For example, if you want to be a rogue and still create good looking sales videos on time, don’t worry too much about other things, just download the StoryXpress Screen Recorder that lets you record your webcam and screen and the same time and create cool sales videos in a jiffy.
Also, give a decent amount of time to scriptwriting. Scriptwriting is subject to the format and the vision of the video, and generally, it is recommended you use a pointer sheet for direct conversational sales video instead of a restrictive script.
But, there should be a precisely documented version of your video in textual format. However, you deem it fit for your video.
If you are shooting an exceptionally intricate video, that will require a lot of elements to be sewn together. Then you need to set aside a greater time for editing than usual.
Always keep a few days extra, because you might be making multiple edits to get to your vision.
Having everything together, use a time tracking/project planning tool to implement a smooth train of operations as your move into video production.
This is extremely important for people who find it hard to stick to schedules. Keep your eyes on the goal always to ensure you make it in time.
There you have it, to be SMART is all you need to set the perfect sales video goals for your upcoming videos.
Don’t get stuck on one aspect of the process, this is just a guide. If your project is unattainable, but you are thinking, “I want to still give it a go”. Then evaluate the consequences, and make sure you are prepared for them.
Keep yourself completely open to accepting and rejecting ideas as you go along the steps of the SMART goal setting guide.
If you think you are too much of a novice to commit to creating SMART goals, don't worry. Download the StoryXpress Screen Recorder and start experimenting with video making head-on. Get some perspective, and then start making goals for your sales videos SMARTly.
