Completing the strategy questionnaire

The first step in creating a B2B brand film is to set the project’s goals.

During the questionnaire lesson, you will learn how to sit down with your team to establish the project’s goals, the competitive landscape, and your most valuable customer. In other words, who are you talking to and why?

Download the course packet below for all materials referenced throughout the course.

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Transcript

The first step along our brand film journey is to do a video strategy questionnaire.

This is essentially a brain dump where we identify things like what your brand is, who your competitors are, your ideal persona that you’re targeting. We kind of flush everything out and put it all on paper so that we can use it later on along our journey.

In your organization, there are assumptions that everyone understands exactly what our brand is, what it stands for, who it’s targeting, all that stuff. And usually what this step in the process does is unearth a bunch of stuff where maybe you weren’t in alignment or potentially things that, you know, you thought everyone understood, but didn’t, fill it out like you’re explaining not to someone in your own organization, but fill it out like you’re talking to me or just someone next to you on an airplane or bus or whatever.

There’s going to be a big element fighting you along your journey of making a brand film. And that’s your curse of knowledge. You’ve been in this business for years. You’ve worked in your company for years and you have assumptions and biases that you don’t even know you have.

What this step does is forces you to get it all out and not assume that everyone knows everything. This is our first step in fighting the curse of knowledge and, uncovering insights that are there hiding in plain sight.

So let’s go through the parts.

So we want to get stuff out on paper that’s like your mission statement, what problem your company or product resolves, adjectives and emotions around your brand and your brand strengths and weaknesses, both internal and external. And so there’s a little mini SWOT analysis.

It’s been said, what happens if you blindfold the best archer in the world? Well they’re going to miss the target, because the best archer in the world needs to see the target. They need to see the goal.

Honestly, there may be big discussions and big debates you have with your team in this step. It’s usually we find that teams are not in alignment on what the heck the goal is? What do you want them to do after watching the video? And why would they do this? Basically, what’s the value prop that you’re trying to convey.

Now, we want to get into the competitive landscape. In two phases from now, we’re gonna do a competitive analysis, so you don’t have to do that right now. Basically, who are your top three direct competitors? So if you’re a proposal software as a service solution, your direct competitors are people that do online proposal software as a service solutions. Your indirect would be maybe Adobe or DocuSign. Solutions that people would use other than you, but that still do the same thing. And then what sets you apart from them? We’re gonna leverage this info later on.

And finally your most valuable customer. So if you’re a B2B brand, you probably have buyer personas. What we wanna do is identify the most valuable customer. Who is the customer that gives us the most, drives the most profit for our company, who we like working with, who likes working with us.

As with personas, same thing here, this is a blend. This person doesn’t exist. It’s an average, but here’s what we’re trying to do is I use this analogy of when you get weighed, they use the scale that has the big weight, right? And then they, they do the small weights. So first they kind of size you up and try to put you in a 50 pound bucket. Then they worry about the precise thing.

In the strategy step in this phase, you have to think because you don’t wanna have analysis paralysis. You’re just in the clunk, clunk, clunk, the lower, bigger weight when you get weighed. Right now, we’re just trying to find a 50 pound range. We don’t have to be precise.

You can use your persona questions, but try again, try to boil that into just one person. If you simply cannot do one person, two people max, the more you are boiling and boiling and boiling and distilling and being okay with being in a 50 pound range of what is right. Your creative ideation process for the video will become exponentially easier. So try to make some hard decisions here.

Again, don’t debate right now. Just get stuff on paper. If there are debates that come up with any of these questions, put them in a parking lot for the next step, the questionnaire discussion. So take an hour, schedule your team, meet and fill out the questionnaire. I’ll see you in the next video.