The BROAD Model: How to plan your next video

For many, the pre-production and planning of your video content is by far the most challenging aspect of your video and content marketing efforts.

At Story Ninety-Four, we have developed the BROAD Model, a comprehensive framework that will provide you with a solid foundation for your video production projects. Now, this model is BROAD by name and broad by nature. It won’t tell you explicitly what to do, but the model will give you a really good foundation to continue building the rest of your strategy on top of it.

Over the years, the model has been refined to effectively take video briefs, understand its purpose and provide guidance that’s best suited for distribution to your audience.

While the BROAD model was originally developed as an exercise tool for our clients, we are now sharing it with everyone, so please continue reading as we  take you through the five distinct sections of the BROAD Model.

Brief: Telling Your Story

The first step in the BROAD Model is developing your brief. What story do you want to tell?

Whether it's showcasing your event, introducing new products, or sharing your start-up story, keeping your brief concise with key messages is crucial. Your brief needs to be specific to prevent the waste of time, money and energy, but try not to get too bogged down in the details. You don’t need to worry about goals or objectives yet. For example, your brief could be as simple as wanting to film your event. In this example you have identified;

a) That you want to produce a film.

b) What you want to film.

From here, you are able to begin exploring the “plot points“ of the story you want to tell. In the case of an event, these “plot points“ could be filming presentations, networking or interviews with attendees from the floor of your event.

By identifying what you want to film and exploring plot points, you lay the groundwork for a compelling video and are prepared to move onto the next stage.

Restrictions: Embracing Challenges

After developing your brief, it's time to identify the restrictions you might face in creating your content. Shortage of time, lack of knowledge, budget limitations - these challenges may seem daunting, but they can actually foster creativity.

The BROAD model is deliberately designed to develop the brief first, with the restrictions to follow. Many fall into the trap of fixating on the restrictions of a project before it has the chance to get off the ground, leaving many promising projects written off, having been convinced that it’s not worth the time and effort. The BROAD model encourages the mindset of embracing these limitations. It guides users to innovatively find solutions and work around these restrictions, injecting a unique sense of creativity into their project that might not otherwise exist.

By considering the restrictions after your brief, you are not pre-emptively limiting your potential, but rather motivating yourself to think outside the box and find ways to overcome these hurdles.

Objective and Outcome: Defining Success

Now, let's think about what you want to achieve with your video. Do you want to increase website visits, generate sales, boost brand awareness or is there another metric you want to consider?

Once you have identified your objectives, take the time to consider the desired outcome - what do you want viewers to do after watching the video? This outcome is your call to action (CTA).

For example, if your objective is to increase the number of visitors to your website, the outcome of the video is to send people to your website.

Alternatively, if you want to increase the number of sales, you may want to gather the viewer’s email address so you can add them to an email marketing campaign. Some platforms, such as Vimeo, even support email capture from within the video player.

While measuring the success of achieving your objectives can sometimes be difficult, with rich analytics data available on most platforms, you can track engagement and shares to gauge the effectiveness of your content.

Audience: Targeting the Right Viewers

To ensure that your video resonates with viewers, it is essential to identify your target audience as they will play a large role in deciding the tone of your video. Consider their demographics, industry, location, needs and values.

By understanding your audience, you can tailor your video's tone, style, and messaging to effectively connect with them.

Although you are using the BROAD model, when it comes to identifying your target audience, much like your objectives, specificity is key as a broad target audience won't yield the desired results.

You will likely already have a target audience for your products or services, so use that as a starting point and refine from there.

Distribution: Reaching Your Audience

The final section of the BROAD Model is distribution. How are you going to share your story? Now that you know your target audience, it's time to determine where they are located so that the content you share will get to them.

If you are already active on several platforms, you may already know where your target audience is, but if you don’t yet know, there are a variety of ways that you can identify where your target audience is. One method is to conduct social media monitoring to gain a better understanding of who is on each platform and compare them against your target audience. Alternatively, you could research other businesses in your industry and identify where they are most active in sharing their content.

Whether it's your website, YouTube, social platforms or newsletters, choose the channels that align with your audience's preferences and maximise your reach.

Conclusion

By this point, if you have followed all five steps, you should have a good overview of your video production project. The reason why the BROAD model works so well is because each section builds on the last. Without your brief you can’t identify your restrictions, without your objectives you can’t target the right audience, and without your target audience you don’t know where to distribute your content.

By following this model, you'll have a solid foundation for your pre-production planning, enabling you to create compelling and impactful videos that captivate your audience.

To learn more about the BROAD Model and how Story Ninety-Four can help your business with video production and content strategy, visit our contact page.