Our Agency’s Internal Checklist for Launching Any Video Project

Every amazing and high performing video, whether it’s an explainer, or a promo format, starts the same way: not with animation, or design – but with total understanding and alignment. And here at Zelios, after delivering over 1000+ different video assets of all formats, shapes and sizes across SaaS, AI and other tech-driven brands – one thing that always combines them is careful research and a refined process.

With this article, we are taking a look at some of the general, important steps in our checklist.

1. Strategic Discovery Call

Before any production or planning can start, we absolutely need to have a robust briefing and research process. Beyond asking the usual “Why this video”, and “Why now” – we also ask the “How” – how this video will play into the overall strategy or funnels, and what’s the ultimate place of this video in the overall client marketing machine.

Example:

This video we’ve created for Supahub, was meant to become a 10 minute, step by step explanation of the product – and the client wanted to use it in ads, nonetheless…

But by doing our homework, we were able to create a stunning, informative yet engaging video that does a great job at delivering the value proposition.

Tip

If your video agency skips this step, it risks wasting your budget on a beautifully irrelevant video for your future needs. It’s their job to do discovery and provide their expertise in a consultation.

2. Message & Script Clarity

Messaging comes from the previous step – of doing a solid research and bringing clarity forward, to the viewers that will watch the video. Give your script copy to a 6th grader to read – if they understand it, it’s a good sign. People won’t be dealing with complex explanations – so it’s your task to make your message clear and compelling.

Example:

When we’ve built the video for StoreTrack – we wanted to make the problem statement catchy and relatable, while making the further explanation of the workflow as straightforward as possible.

But this video is by no means basic – as we’ve supercharged the animation and visuals, to work smoothly with the clear and simple messaging.

Tip

Skip the jargon, speak like a human, make the message punchy, get leads. Simple, right?

3. Visual Direction & Storyboarding

Going straight into design without doing styleframes and moodboards is a recipe for extra days and weeks of reworks, reduced customer satisfaction and mismatch of the client branding and video style. Instead of this, we create styleframes to test different takes on the style, as well as moodboards so everything down to the mouse hovering, and the smallest elements on the page – are all nailed down and approved with key stakeholders.

Example:

Making the video like NeuraFlow, especially working with gradients – you can easily crank the visuals to a hundred and the client branding gets lost in the sauce. But with the use of a moodboard and robust internal quality assurance, we were happy to produce this stunning result.

Tip

The more “gates” of quality assurance the agency you work with has, the better and more polished final outcome you will receive at the end of the day. Prospects associate the quality of your marketing materials with your brand, so that’s why it’s really important to not miss the mark.

4. Timeline & Production Milestones

All of our production stages are broken into classic phases, like scripting, design, animation, voice over and any post production and revision needs along the way. But apart from that, we also have multiple quality assurance phases, that are sometimes broken into 3 and even 4 steps. This makes it so that the deliverable received by the client is already vetted by key team members, like design, animation, creative direction (sometimes even by account management team) – which brings only the refined assets in front of the client team. 

Example:

With productions like LangEase – there are so many moving parts, from footage to animation work, that it’s easy to make or break the video. But with these robust quality checkpoints, this high risk and high reward production looks stellar.

Tip

Creating intricate videos introduces a lot of complexity, and only teams with robust production processes can really make it right. Freelance and small teams are not at the level where robust quality assurance checks can be possible, leaving clients to do clean up and quality assurance on their end – which is frustrating and wastes time.

5. Platform-Optimized Final Delivery

Depending on the package, we offer a modular approach, and a variety of assets we suggest to our customers, to make sure their strategy is optimized, and we leave them with a toolkit of assets to bolster their marketing efforts.

We export versions for LinkedIn, YouTube, ads, and landing pages – plus subtitles versions, cutdowns and gifs – everything you might ever need for your promotional content.

This way, we don’t just create one-off videos, but build video systems and assets that will move the needle and drive real ROI for your business.

Example:

After building a robust video system for Allfred, we’ve also gone ahead with creating a variety of different assets to serve across the variety of needs, like pitch deck and trade shows.

Tip

Work with an agency that can anticipate and consult you about your video strategy – even before you know it, they will be able to advise on the best formats for you to scale your efforts.

Final Thought

Not all explainer video production companies follow a system that can bring about a stunning video, or build a strategic video system. At Zelios, this checklist and some of the other parts of secret sauce, ensures that each project receives a strategic and creative treatment for it to be a success.

From startup launches, to scaling SaaS platforms or Enterprise needs – we are built to help you move fast and smart with your video needs.

Reach out today and let’s get to work!