Researching an Audience to Make Engaging Video Content

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If I asked you the essential foundation for creating engaging video content, what would you say? A compelling script, maybe? Good video editing or animation? All of those things are very important, but the key to creating good video content is to have a solid strategy. And that begins by thoroughly understanding your audience.

You see, creating an engaging video marketing strategy is not a matter of luck. How compelling an audiovisual piece is, directly relates to the interest that it sparks on its target audience.

If the audience is interested in what your video has to say, then you’ve already won half the battle.

Yes, you’ll need a good script, design, and video editing to fully succeed! But if you don’t have the core of your strategy down – knowing your target audience’s interests and needs – you’ll be doomed to fail. And nobody wants that!

Today, we’ll take a look at the best ways to research a target audience, so you can make sure that your high-quality video content never falls on deaf ears. Let’s get to it!

You Want to Know Your Audience? Talk to Them!

Researching your audience has a lot of using tools to get hard demographic data about them, which is a vital part of the research process, and we’ll discuss it in a bit. But sometimes, there’s information that you won’t get with these tools — more nuanced answers that will help you paint a more thorough picture of your audience. And how do you get this information? Well… by asking nicely!

That’s right. Conducting surveys is a great way to actually listen to your audience’s needs — learn what they like, what they expect of your brand, and your product. All of this will point you in the right direction to start creating videos that provide real value to their viewers!

If you’ve got a good number of followers on social media or newsletter subscribers, then that’s a great place to start! Just ask them to fill a short survey about your product (maybe add a small discount code at the end of the survey or any similar incentive), and you’ll be good to go!

Social Media Listening Tools

Wouldn’t it be useful to know exactly what your audience likes and dislikes? To know what they say to their peers regarding your brand? Well, let me introduce you to social media listening tools.

By using these services (there are many of them, like Buzzsumo and Buffer, just to name a few), you’ll be able to understand the popularity of your brand, and how much influence it has over your audience’s decisions. You’ll just need to set up certain keywords so that the platform can follow the conversations that surround them, and, well, listen.

These tools are something that video production companies have been using for quite a while now, specifically those that specialize in video marketing strategies. That’s because when you know what your audience is talking about, you’ll be able to create video content that matches their desires exactly.

Using Google Analytics to Get the Real Facts

Learning what people talk about on social media is very useful, as well as asking them direct questions. But there are some user behaviors and certain hard data that you’ll only find by analyzing your audience with a tool like Google Analytics.

By using Google Analytics, you’ll get very useful information — demographic data, your viewers’ locations, the number of visitors and views that you get, their traffic sources, and so on. All of this will give you shape your video content to make it more relevant to your audience’s needs.

Not only that, but you’ll also get information about bounce rates and session duration of your audience on a certain site or landing page. If you’re using videos to keep your audience engaged when they visit your website, then you’ll be able to get an idea of how much your audience is engaging with your content.

Gather Extra Information with a Sweepstake

Sweepstakes are getting more and more popular among starting businesses that want to increase their follower count and overall awareness among the public. They’re also widely used by more established brands when they want to promote a new product or service! But increasing awareness is not the only way to take advantage of a sweepstake.

If you’re strategic about it, you can also gather some valuable information about your target audience and even establish a solid database for your future marketing moves.

Just by asking contestants to leave their contact information (you know, in order to deliver the prize!), you’ll be able to get valuable info from them — their full name, email address, zip code, phone number, and so on.

Just make sure that the prize that you’re offering is tempting enough to make people excited to participate, but also keep it in line with what your company is selling. Popular prizes (like a brand-new smart TV) will attract a lot of people, but you’re not looking for quantity here. Instead, you need quality leads: people that are bound to be interested in your product.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

So there you have it. By using these research tools, you’ll be able to gather whatever information you need about your audience in order to create video content that engages them!

The best part is that none of these tools are hard to implement. You just need to dedicate a bit of your time, but this will be an investment that will have a high return in the long run.

But as I mentioned at the beginning of this article, you need to keep in mind that having a video that speaks directly to your audience is a very, very important part of creating an engaging video strategy, but it’s not the only part of the production that matters! In order to have a great video, you’ll have to put some effort into the production as well.

Make sure to have a compelling visual design as well as a script that’s concise and informative. If those things are aligned with your audience research results, then you’re bound to have a very successful video strategy! Good luck!

Victor Blasco
Víctor Blasco is the founder and CEO of the explainer video company Yum Yum Videos. He is also an audiovisual designer and video marketing expert. Aside from running the business, he loves studying Chinese Philosophy and is a real geek for science fiction films and comics!

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