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THE ULTIMATE SHORT-FORM VIDEO PLAYBOOK
5 lessons on how to perfect your short-form video strategy for 2025...
Niall Ratcliffe
November 03, 2024
In partnership with
Morning!
The clocks went back last Sunday and ever since getting up early has seemed so much easier. It’s Saturday morning, the sun is out, and I have a lot I want to share with you.
Today, I’m going to break down exactly how you need to attack short-form video in 2025.
Including:
The tried & tested approach for short-form videos.
Alex Garcia’s “Pre-Validated” framework.
How you go from making “good videos” to the top 0.1%.
You can listen to the audio version of this breakdown HERE.
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO VERSION
BREAKING DOWN THE STRATEGY
In April 2020, I was stuck in my parent’s home in England and told I could only go outside for 1-hour per day to exercise.
At the time, it seemed like the whole world was falling apart. We were trapped in our homes, given fines for leaving, and wearing masks everywhere we went - it was crazy.
But while we were all locked away in our homes an unusual app seemed to emerge from the dust - TikTok.
It seemed like overnight it went from nobody knowing it, to the entire world being consumed by it.
People were going viral, influencers were popping up out of thin air, and tiny brands were making millions. But what seemed like just a covid trend, completely changed how we consume content.
Since then:
Instagram added reels.
YouTube added shorts.
LinkedIn added a video feed.
And brands have had to adapt quickly to the reality that consumers love to consume short-form videos. A Vaguara study released just last month showed that 73% of consumers prefer short-form videos to search for products or services.
No matter whether you’re a B2B manufacturing firm or a B2C fashion brand, if you don’t at least understand short-form videos - you’re going to be left behind.
So how in the world can you actually start using short-form video? How can you do it without dancing? And how can you still keep your brand’s authority while doing it?
That’s exactly what I have been figuring out over the last few months.
Here are the 5 biggest lessons I learned on how to master short-form video:
Lesson 1: Create A Repeatable Set-Up
The biggest issue with trying to start using short-form video is that it feels like you have to do everything.
Talking head videos.
On-the-street interviews.
Videos with graphic animations.
There are so many options.
But the people who leverage short-form videos the best simply pick 1 style and double down on it.
For Alex Garcia (a marketing expert) he uses this same shot every single time:
The video is crisp, the background is blurred, and he’s facing slightly away from the camera (presumably at his laptop).
For Simon Squib, he uses this format:
It’s raw, he’s on the street, and he’s holding a really small microphone in his hand.
And for Oren John (entrepreneur and self-proclaimed ‘Creative Director of the Internet), it’s this format:
A green screen background with him walking through a case study or brand campaign.
There are millions of different formats that work when it comes to short-form, but the key is to find one and stick to it.
This is key for a few reasons:
1/ People who enjoy it know what to look for: When they see that style, they think of you, so the next time your post pops up on their feed they immediately stop to watch it.
2/ People like the same thing: Why do people buy iPhones again and again even though they only make minor improvements between models? Because we like the same things. Once someone starts to enjoy your videos, the last thing they want is for you to switch it up.
3/ It makes it easier for you: Half of the battle with videos is trying to be creative. By sticking to one set-up it takes a huge load of creativity off your shoulders. You think about the idea, the format and style are already sorted.
Personally, I love Alex Garcia’s at the desk format. But all of these examples I used are people who are seen as respectable people in their space and all make their format work for them - which is the end goal here.
Lesson 2: Fail At Pace
About 2 years ago, I was scrolling Twitter when I saw a tweet from Alex Garcia asking people to follow him on Instagram.
At the time, I’d come across him from his infamous marketing newsletter - Marketing Examined. Back then he had 100,000+ newsletter subscribers and 100k+ followers on Twitter. He was huge in the space, but he must’ve only had around 6,000 followers on Instagram.
I enjoyed his marketing insights so it seemed like a no-brainer for me to go and follow him on Instagram. But when I got to his profile, I was kinda shocked by the low views he had on his content.
I think his best-performing Reel at the time had 8000 views. For someone with hundreds of thousands of followers on other platforms… that was very low.
But over the next few months, I watched Alex relentlessly crank out different types of content.
One day he’d post a vlog.
The next he’d post a comparison video.
Then he’d drop a marketing playbook breakdown.
Every day there was a new concept - he was just throwing mud at the wall. Yet time after time, his videos would flop.
But every so often, a video would pop off and get 10s of thousands of views. Then the next 3 would flop and the cycle would continue.
It was the definition of throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks, but that seems like the common theme across all the people who have successfully mastered short-form video.
Take Simon Squibb for example, on a recent podcast two members of his content team explained that the most viral format (that they now use for nearly every video) came about completely by accident.
Simon bumped into someone in Tesco.
The person began talking about a business they wanted to start.
Simon gave them £100 to go and start it that day.
Then he realised that he should have recorded it, so got the team together and shot a similar video the next week - which then went viral.
When it comes to short-form video it’s so easy to overthink every aspect of it, but the reality is step 1 is just failing quickly.
Lesson 3: Create Repeatable Content Series
The difference between okay performance on short-form videos and exceptional performance is repeatable content series.
These are a series of videos that you post regularly all within the same format.
Let’s go back to Alex Garcia, for example.
In the beginning, he was throwing mud at the wall, but every so often a video would hit. Now, rather than just celebrating the win and moving on, he turned the successful video into a ‘Repeatable Content Series’.
Two of those videos that performed great for him were:
Marketing playbook breakdowns: He uses a green screen background and explains a company’s marketing strategy.
Good Vs Bad Marketing Strategies: Showing what good marketing looks like Vs bad.
Since then, Alex has released 100s of the same format of videos and created this repeatable series for each.
Creating videos in these repeatable series has all of the same benefits that sticking to one set-up does:
1/ People who enjoy it know what to look for.
2/ People like the same thing.
3/ It makes it easier for you.
This is all great, but it’s in the next step where you begin to scale your approach…
Lesson 4: Extrapolate The Series
Once you’ve nailed down 2-3 repeatable content series, it’s time to start extrapolating.
‘Extrapolating content’ is a process I first learned when studying the consultant behind some of the biggest YouTube channels - Jamie Rawsthorne.
The idea is pretty simple:
Step 1: Find a type of content that works
Step 2: Change 1 thing and create a new series
It’s almost like a decision tree.
You start with 1 content series you know works and you slowly expand on it until you have 10-15 slightly different content series that also work.
This is what YouTubers like Mr. Beast are masters of. Keeping to something they know their audience loves, but changing it just slightly to always keep it fresh.
Alex Garcia started with Good Vs Bad Marketing.
Today he has series called:
Good Vs Bad Ads
Good Vs Bad Content
Good Vs Bad Marketing
Then he extrapolates even more with different niches.
Good Vs Bad Ads: Running
Good Vs Bad Ads: SaaS
Good Vs Bad Ads: Electronics
Then he does the same with all of the other series too.
What starts as one video that worked becomes thousands of pre-validated short-form videos.
And that is the end goal you should be searching for here, whether you’re doing this on a personal profile or for your company’s marketing - you want pre-validated concepts. These are concepts you know work before you even hit record.
Lesson 5: Perfect Each Series With Experiments
By the time you’ve got to this stage, you’re in a pretty great spot. But the gap between great short-form content and the top 0.1% is experiments.
A few weeks back, I talked about how Steven Bartlett has a full-time ‘Head of Experiments’ in his content team just to make sure they are constantly testing everything - and this is how you get into the top 1% with short-form videos.
You have to track all the data and make small adjustments to see what works.
That could mean:
Adding a progress bar at the bottom.
Adding a soundtrack behind the video.
Adding new lighting to brighten the videos.
Test, iterate, test, iterate, test, iterate.
Going back to Simon Squib who I talked about before, today he is known for his videos where he goes up to people on the street and asks, “Do you have a dream?”
Before offering them money to pursue that dream.
But that isn’t how this series started. On a podcast, his content team explained that the original question was, “Have you ever wanted to start a business?”
Then over time, they experimented with slightly different questions, tweaking 1 or 2 words each time to see if it positively affected performance.
Over time, they landed on “Do you have a dream?” as the highest-performing question that engaged the widest range of their audience. They started with a series that clicked, then experimented to perfect it.
Experiments. That is what separates the “Great” from the “Best” when it comes to short-form video.
🌱 THE GREENHOUSE
Things I’ve saved this week that are worth seeing:
TL;DR
Lesson 1: Create a repeatable set-up
Lesson 2: Fail at pace
Lesson 3: Create repeatable content series
Lesson 4: Extrapolate the series
Lesson 5: Perfect series with experiments
I’m going to be honest here, this breakdown was written for me more than you. Because video is a huge part of our marketing strategy for 2025 and I will be stealing these lessons as we attack it.
I also know I used a lot of creators rather than businesses in this breakdown, but I’m very confident the same lessons apply across both.
Often the best way to create great marketing is to steal from creators and apply to businesses - and that’s exactly how I’m approaching this.
Hopefully you learned something from this, if you did… why not share this with a friend?
Until next Sunday.
— Niall
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