As you've no doubt read from many reports, and many experts, video is an important element in modern digital marketing approaches, with more people engaging with video content, and seeking it out as a form of both entertainment and product research. 

But simply creating and uploading video content is not enough - your videos also need to be engaging, creative, they need to grab audience attention, and keep people watching, in order to maximize response.

And that's a far more difficult consideration. How do you create more compelling video clips, and what are the key elements that you need to factor in to your video approach?

To provide more insight on this, Facebook recently partnered with marketing measurement firm Analytic Partners, and insights agency The Lab, to conduct a new study into effective video approaches, and how marketers can create video content that generates greater cut-through, and maximizes audience response.

You can download the full, 16-page report here, but in this post, we'll take a look at some of the key notes and pointers.

First off, the report notes the rising ROI potential of video content, which is now driving significantly better response than static image posts.

As per the report:

"For some time now, Analytic Partners research has demonstrated the very high short-term return on investment (ROI) of most digital activity. Similarly, we have observed the very high long-term ROI of video - regardless of the screen it is on. Historically, social media rates highly for driving short term ROI, however the environment is changing fast. For a long time, social media feeds were largely populated with static images. Today however, video activity across Facebook, for example, is in the ascendance."

The increased usage of video has lead to higher long-term value for such content - but even so, not all video is created equal, with some driving great response, and others falling flat.

So what are the key elements that drive improved video marketing performance?

In a broad sense, the report notes that creative is the key driver, with executional elements (ad scheduling, targeting, etc.) a far less significant consideration.

But of course, that's a fairly broad element - how do you define best practice creative within this definition?

For this, the team from The Lab formulated a new measurement scorecard to rate various in-video elements, based on their relative performance.

"The effectiveness scorecard can help advertisers optimize the most fundamental components of online video in order to get results. The framework has been used both to build creative from the ground up, and to tweak existing creative for success in an online format. There are 11 best practice principles in the framework."

The initial seven core elements of the framework relate to the essential elements that should be included in all video creative.

While the additional four are highly recommended, and can also help drive performance.

The full guide includes more specific notes and explainers on each aspect, as well as case studies that underline how these elements have been put in practice, and helped drive significant results for brands.

And while breaking down creative into a prescriptive process is difficult, the measures listed here do provide some specific points of planning for your video approach, which are research-backed, and will improve your content performance.

At the least, they're definitely worth considering - you can download the full "Creating Online Video That Cuts Through" report here.