Making a great promo video can work wonders for your business. Learn what makes a great promo video and best practices you should follow when creating your own promotional video.

Although promo videos have helped many businesses over the years, many people are still curious about what promotional videos are, how to make them, and the cost to produce a promo video for their own business.

This article is going to show you what makes a great promo video, examples of great promo videos, and what promo videos you can produce.

What Is A Promotional Video?

A promo video or promotional video is a video used to promote a specific product, service or marketing initiative.

Think of promo videos as an exclusive gateway to catching your viewer’s attention, gaining more traffic to your website, and also building trust/relationships between you and your customers.

Why You Should Use Promo Videos

Life itself is a video; think about all the billboard adverts you see on your way home from work. Your brain stores very little vital information about each of these advertisements.

While some marketers believe a promo video is just a fad, many business executives have used this powerful tool to generate some great traffic and better ranking on search engines.

Your audience is more likely to click on a video than read an article or listen to a podcast sharing the same view.

This is because videos are eye-catching and alluring – I mean, who doesn’t like videos?

Your business should use promo videos because they are the most effective way to communicate information to your audience, broadening their understanding of what you offer through visuals.

What Makes A Great Promotional Video?

What attributes or characteristics make a promotional video “great”?

A great promotional video is one that grabs attention, highly converting, precise [not necessarily short], fun, and user-engaging.

If you want to create a promotional video that converts, make sure it has the following characteristics.

Attention-grabbing

The best promotional videos can catch the viewer’s attention.

A video that will grab your audience’s attention will do so from the very first second.

Internet users have a lot to do with their time; they have better things to do other than wasting time on something that isn’t productive. But a great promo video, no matter how long, will keep your audience fully focused up-to the end.

Explains what your business does in an easy-to-understand way

The purpose of creating a video may differ depending on the immediate need for a business.

While some businesses create promotional videos to generate leads, other businesses’ needs may be to generate sales.

Regardless of what your business aims to achieve with promo videos, the information must be disseminated in this pattern – clear, concise, and easy to understand.

A great promotional business explains what your business does and what it wants to achieve in an easy-to-understand way.

If you can get a “Yes” to this question “Does this video help us achieve our goal?” then you have successfully made a great promo video.

Keep people engaged

A great promo video isn’t boring! Avoid long videos, they are a turnoff, especially when they lack essential ingredients needed to inspire your audience.

It’s not far from the subject matter, it comes with illustrations and graphical representation of what you want it to achieve.

The best promo video out there, that one which you fell in love with at glance, was engaging, emotional, and precise; that was why you fell in love with it in the first place.

Ends with a CTA [Call to Action]

What’s the essence of creating a promotional video if not to educate your audience on what to do next?

A call to action is an instruction given to an audience on what they should do after watching a promo video.

Your call to action could be for your audience to subscribe to your newsletter, make a purchase, get a percentage off or discount code for an event or service, it could be anything.

No matter how inspiring, engaging, and descriptive your video is, without a call to action, it’s like going to the shopping mall without cash or a credit card. You’re buying nothing – you’ll get nothing!

How To Make A Great Promotional Video?

There are steps you need to follow before making an engaging promotional video.

It’ll be a disaster if you invest time, money, and effort to the wrong audience. As a company, you want your promo video to convert [drive traffic or trigger sales or gather leads].

So what do you need to consider when putting together a promo video that will gain traffic and ward off competitors?

Steps 1: Budget

The first step to any promotional video is to determine the video production time and costs.

There may be so many free video marketing tools out there but most of them are for beginners with little or no budget that are just getting started.

Most of these tools cannot create a video as though it's professional. Besides, with so many videos being watched, internet users are expecting to always see high-quality videos.

You first want to set a marketing budget each month which would cover the production cost then you can now outline the tools that you’ll need – a quality microphone and a video camera that works with both free and premium software.

Step 2: Preparing the script

Once the video production costs have been determined, the next step will be to prepare your script.

A script is an outline of the video; it states how long the video would last, what you want to achieve with the video, the cast, the venue, and all that.

We usually recommend between 30 seconds and 1 minute because it is easy to focus on important details within that timeframe.

A well-written script should contain the following:

• Find a problem that your target audience is experiencing
• Educate them about the solution and how your company can help fix it
• End things with your company name, tagline and a Call-to-action [e.g. purchase, call-in, sign-up]

Planning a video is a vision that’ll take time because it’ll determine the success of the video. You want it to be short, informative, and engaging than that of your competitors.

Step 3: Create your storyboard

If you are creating a promo video about an upcoming sale, creating a storyboard on “how-to” style the product that you are selling is important.

Alternatively, you could keep it simple and demonstrate with the right video aids.

The essence is to show the customer how he/she can benefit from your product or service and by watching a live demonstration.

Step 4: Content of your video

SEO [Search Engine Optimization] also works for videos. During your demonstration, focus on keywords that you want your audience to remember about this promotion.

I do recommend this approach as it limits you from attempting to cover too much information – such a system eventually confuses your audience.

Sometimes, it is more advantageous to focus on your brand slogan, like for Nike, it is “Just do it!” or give viewers something they will use to connect with your business like the core values of your business.

Remember to KISS [Keep It Simple & Short] and don't always pitch sales – let your audience flow with your content.

Step 5: Record your video

Recordings can be done in two ways:

• Using a software e.g. Camtasia
• Using a video recorder e.g. laptop webcam

The software can be used to create an abstract video concept about how your audience can make use of your product or service.

With software, you don’t need to shoot from your store or business address. All you need is a level of creativity to translate your script and story in a video.

If you are creating a promo video for an even, you’ll need to shoot on the event location so your audience will have a clearer view of what you want to educate them on.

Step 6: Edit your video

Editing your video is necessary to make sure you have everything put in place. Video editing software such as Camtasia [Windows], iMovie [Mac], PowerPoint [Windows or Mac], and ScreenFlow [Mac] can help to keep your video smooth in transitions.

Graphics help add professional-looking effects and highlight key information. You can create a highly polished promo by maximizing them.

Step 7: Publishing/promoting your video

Now that you have successfully created a great promo video, it’s time to let the world know about your business.

Before publishing your video, you want to add a good title, description, and keywords or tags.

These are good SEO practices that will help people find your promo video via search engines.

There are lots of sites that are free to add your video to including YouTube, Vimeo, Google, Yahoo Video, Veoh, and Viddler.

After uploading, be sure to share your video to promote your business and website.

Final Thoughts

Creating a promotional video can be complicated and time-consuming but it’s well worth the time and effort.

When done right, great promo videos have a chance to blow up and get you seen all throughout the internet. Which in turn brings leads, sales, and customers.

Are you ready to create your own promo video? Keep this list in mind; it’s a sure way to generate big traffic and sales for your business.

Need help creating a promo video? Reach out! We’d love to help.