Creating a professional video is a real asset for your company, therefore it has to be taken seriously. So, how is this process organized, from the beginning until the final product? It is not about shooting a video and publishing it on any platform. The lifecycle of a video is made of various crucial steps.

1- The upstream preparation

A professional video starts with an objective for the company. The business’ presentation, an opinion to share, news to bring forward, in short sharing a message through images! And since a video has more impact than words, it is all about choosing the right support! However, a good idea is not enough: a complete upstream preparation is necessary, it is called pre-production.

Set a precise goal, and a clear message:

A video project has to be given serious consideration and serve a precise objective: to improve the brand image, to sell a product, to create a buzz, to develop the brand’s notoriety…

Choose a target audience

When a goal is set, the target audience has to be defined. For example, a brand wishing to create a buzz will target influencers and social network pros, who will be more likely to share the video and talk about it. As a matter of fact, viewers exposed to a video targeting them in particular have a 3,2% higher purchase intention than non-concerned viewers.

Set a budget

Big ambitions are good, an adequate budget is better! The goal is to produce a high-quality video with the right budget. Furthermore, a study by Tubemogul (a brand advertising software) shows that very high budget videos (+$100,000) become viral only 1% of the time! On the contrary, lower budget videos ($1000 to $10,000) represent the highest success rate with 30% of them becoming viral videos.

Keep an eye on trends

What is done currently on the market? What is successful on social networks? What are the interests of your target audience? What do your competitors do? Thinking about these elements helps developing an interesting concept.

2- The creation of the perfect video

The creation process is made of two steps: production and postproduction.

These two steps are tightly related and represent the biggest part of the work.

During production, the video foundation is created:

Everything starts with searching for actors and supporting roles, they fit the brand image and will be at the heart of the video;
Then comes the video shooting, registering all the footage;
The artistic direction takes care of the visual and artistic aspects of the video, in line with the transmitted message;
Sound recording will bring in all sound elements needed for the video.

Once images and sounds are recorded, all is left is combining them for creating the perfect video! It is the role of post production:

Video editing allows to add texts, special effects or to cut some parts of the footage out;
Voice-over recording adds narration to the video if needed;
Sound processing is about improving the quality of sound elements;
During the mastering step, the content is transferred on an adapted support for the video;
Finally, the video is exported into different formats.

3- Distribution, the last step of a the lifecycle of a video?

The video is ready? All you have to do is share it!

The goal is to share the video with the target audience and generate engagement. It is about setting up the distribution strategy previously defined, but not only! The content has to be “alive”: optimize referencing on search engines, share on social networks, reach a diffusion network…

But what about the lifecycle of a video, once it has been published? Different analysis showed the success of a video can be evaluated quite quickly after its diffusion (from the first week following the release). As a matter of fact, media, bloggers and social networks addicts seize the information very quickly if it seems interesting to them!

Still based on the Tubemogul study, in most cases, 25% of the audience is reached before 4 days, 50% during the first 15 days and 75% within the 45 first days.

However, the phase during which viewers will watch and recommend the video can expand up to several weeks and even months.

Finally, do not forget that a video never really dies: nothing stops a medium from re-discovering the content a few years later and making it viral again!

Do you have any question or opinion about the lifecycle of a video? Do not hesitate to share it with us in the comment section!