When creating multiple videos for your business for social media (or anywhere, really), you’ll oftentimes find yourselves making and testing very different videos to target very different demographics or achieve very different marketing objectives.
That’s where having a signature opening for your videos can help you stand out and create greater brand recognition. Having a signature opening is a simple idea that can help your social video marketing more than you know.
It’s not just brands and companies that benefit from this technique, either; you’ll notice movie trailers on YouTube and Instagram now have three-second openers to hook you into watching a full 60-second or two-minute trailer. And think about the opening of your favorite TV shows – the best ones set the mood and get you excited and amped to watch the show.
It just makes sense, right? If your audience only sees the first few seconds of a video while scrolling through their feeds anyway, don’t you want those first few seconds to be about you?
To see this technique in action, check out this series of videos we created for our client Dental Specialists of South Loop & North Shore, who provide periodontal and endodontic services across Chicago:
Each video has its own theme, its own subjects, and even its own theme music, but every video has one thing in common: that opening title card (a graphic with the company’s logo) featuring a time-lapse shot (a long camera take sped up over time) of the South Loop/North Shore skyline.
Not only does this opening signature prioritize the company’s branding with a graphical representation of their logo, but it features the company’s location front and center, too; no matter what other subject the videos cover, you know we’re talking about services in Chicago.
Think about how you can use similar marketing and filmmaking techniques to highlight your company’s branding at the top of your video. When you only have a few seconds, you need to get (and keep) their attention quickly.
Time-lapses of your city are a great visual way to capture anyone’s attention, especially if you’re looking to target a particular neighborhood. Plus, they’re both natural (look, nature!) and unnatural (why’s it so fast?!) at the same time; perfect for engineering a digital double-take.
However, if you have another signature visual, like a cool proprietary piece of technology or some delicious signature dish, put that front and center and slap your logo on it to wow your viewers first and foremost.
Once you’ve reeled in the hungry mobs and gizmo-seekers, then you can begin testing your other content ideas across multiple videos with the same opening signature title to create long-term brand recognition.
Skeptical? Test different opening shots to find out which one gets the most views and clicks before committing to one look. You may find different opening images work differently with different target audiences, and that’s totally OK. The point is to test and see what resonates most. By including your logo and branding front and center, you’re putting your brand front and center so you’ll be remembered. Just make sure you also give your audience amazing, useful content to remember you by after your awesome title sequence, like one of our favorite shows does week after week…