How to Make a Promotional Video in 6 Simple Steps

By Contributing Author

Digital marketing can be intimidating for many people. There are so many different elements that experts say must be included, such as promotional video content, several long-form blog posts of between 1500 and 2500 words per week, a website, and regular posts on different social media channels.

Video producers describe a promotional video as a business video designed to promote your brand’s products or services to its target audience. Its fundamental aim and purpose are to drive customer conversions and increase sales. 

The good news is that drafting a successful digital marketing strategy does not have to be overwhelming. An in-depth understanding of the individual elements that make up a successful digital marketing strategy as well as a comprehensive understanding of the brand’s products or services will stand you in good stead when it comes to formulating marketing tactics that drive customer conversions and increase the company’s top and bottom lines through increased sales.

Therefore, let’s start this discussion by looking at how to make a promotional video in 10 easy steps.

1. Have an understanding of the promotional video concept and construct

Video producers describe a promotional video as a business video designed to promote your brand’s products or services to its target audience. Its fundamental aim and purpose are to drive customer conversions and increase sales. 

There are different types of marketing videos, including promotional videos, instructional videos, use case study videos, testimonials, and product videos. Although all of these videos’ ultimate goal is similar, each has a slight bias or emphasis. And when used together, they form part of the perfect digital marketing strategy. 

The promotional video is typically 60 to 90 seconds long and is designed to personalize the marketing message without blatantly selling the products or services. The pertinent point here is that the marketing message is overt. An excellent example of a promo video is a “Happy Holidays” video where the brand wishes its target audience a happy, prosperous, and safe new year. And through these sincere best wishes, the consumer believes that the brand cares about their well-being. 

Note: These good wishes must be sincere. There is nothing worse than an insincere message. Consumers see right through any insincerity, resulting in the reduction of sales and customer conversions. 

2. Think like a member of your brand’s target audience

Defines a target audience as the “demographic of people most likely to be interested in a company’s product or service.” In other words, a target audience is a group of people who are identified as a likely source of loyal customers. 

A target audience consists of multiple persona types. For instance, some of the different persona types for vegan products will include the following descriptions. 

• The health-conscious individual. This persona-type is both male and female, although more likely to be female. They are most likely Millennials, prioritize exercise, and personal health. They believe that mostly following a vegan diet is the best way to go. They are not regimental in their belief and will sometimes enjoy food that is not on a strict vegan diet. 

• The environmentally aware person. This persona-type is both male and female and is religious about reducing greenhouse gasses and the negative impact on the environment by consuming meat and dairy products. They can get upset if challenged by non-religious vegans. Again, the target age-group is more likely to be included in the Millennial generations (Gen Y.1 and Y.2). They also prioritize healthy living and both mental and physical health and well-being. Finally, they are likely to attribute human emotion to slaughter animals, dairy cattle, and egg-laying chickens. 

Consequently, if you know who your target audience is, you will think like them; thereby, having an innate understanding of what marketing message to use. 

3. Ask the relevant and important questions

This point follows on from points 1 and 2 highlighted above, especially point 2. You need to quantify your target audience’s problems and how your products or services will solve the problem and add value to your target audience’s life. Therefore, the following questions must be asked and answered in no particular order.

• What does my product or service help customers achieve?
• Why should my target audience adopt my brand’s product or service?
• What does my brand offer the consumer that its competition doesn’t?
• What does my brand’s target audience care about?

The answers to these questions will help develop your promo video’s key message and build a simple but powerful story around this message.

4. Plan the story arc in detail

At this juncture, it is essential to plan the video’s story arc in detail, write the script, and draw up a detailed storyboard. The more in-depth the details are planned and plotted out, the quicker the filming and post-production phases will be. Simultaneously, the ROI on video marketing is excellent and worth the time, effort, and money invested; creating videos can be costly. Therefore, the better the pre-production planning, the easier and more cost-effective the production and post-production phases will be.

5. Choose a shoot location and actors

Where you shoot your video is largely dependent on the key marketing message which drives the video’s theme and look and feel. The location must suit the story the video tells. Otherwise, the marketing message will be lost in translation and a waste of time, effort, and money.

The second step is to decide what actors to use. The simplest form of promo video is actually a whiteboard video that you can install in your office or boardroom, allowing you to draw out the video’s story on the whiteboard with whiteboard markers. However, it is preferable to shoot a video using human actors. There will be a greater connection between the video and its target audience.

6. Create the final video

Once the raw material, including B-roll, has been filmed, the second-last step is to use editing software to combine all of this material into the finished product. It is a good idea to shoot extra video material to ensure enough high-quality material to create the final product. It’s a delicate balance, but if you film multiple copies of the different scenes, you will have more material to work with when creating the final video.