How to make a promo video that sells (10 easy steps)

What is a promo video?

Promo videos or promotion videos are basically a short film that showcases your brand in a short period of time. 

Promo videos are similar to a teaser video that draws people’s attention into your brand which makes them eager to know you and your brand even better. Promo videos help show how your product or service works and how it can benefit your customers. 

Promo videos are extremely fun to create. It is an effective way to convey information to a larger community, especially time-sensitive information. To be specific, you can convey more information in videos than in pictures that your consumers can easily understand. In fact, 95% of a message customers see in a video remains with them. This is something you can't pull off with photos.

Videos let you establish authority and a more personal feel to your message. You will be far more likely to connect on an emotional level with your audience if you use video versus another content type. Videos, if crafted in the right way, are extremely addictive and connecting, and videos give users a personal connection to what they're watching. 

Promotional videos are a part of digital marketing that overlaps with content marketing. Which means, both go hand-in-hand. 

Uses of promo videos

1. Marketing: the most important use of a promotional video is for marketing purposes. It is one of the basic elements of the market mix, which includes the four Ps, that is, product, price, place, and promotion. Strategic marketing often results in the growth of your business. If you successfully educate customers, keep them engaged, create a strong reputation in their minds and smartly sell to them, your business is most likely to do well. 
2. Brand awareness: promo videos help you in promoting your brand and raising awareness about what you do and what your brand offers. Brand awareness establishes trust and builds equity for your product. Brand awareness also helps you to achieve a range of business objectives and goals. It can expand your audience, increase website traffic, build brand affinity, and generate leads.
3. Easier communication: Promotional videos are usually short and help you convey your message in a short-period of time. Complex messages are hard to convey in words or pictures. Marketing through video gives businesses the opportunity to quickly showcase important features of their business while integrating fun graphics, a spunky voice, engaging music, or stylistic pictures. 
4. Better customer engagement: most of the businesses that use videos believe that it has increased user understanding of their product or service. Video increases brand engagement because it is easier to comprehend and captures more attention than text or static images. Video generates more shares than both images and text.
5. Gaining customers’ trust: A lot of people believe that promotional videos help in building trust among customers. It assists people in developing confidence in the brand and service that a business provides. This in turn, helps in increasing the number of sales and customers. Thus, investing in promotional videos can help businesses attract customers. 

Types of promo videos

There is a world of options when it comes to different types of promo videos.

• Event videos
• New product launch videos
• FAQ videos
• Product videos
• Explainer videos
• Customer review videos

And much more…

What makes a good promo video?

The main aim of a promo video is to generate interest and enquiries from your target audience. But what are the key features that make a great promo video? Let’s dive into this!

1. Include compelling visuals: Visual content is online content that's primarily image-based. Common forms of visual content include pictures, diagrams, charts, infographics and memes. Add visuals to well-researched and useful content and that content is much more likely to resonate with the audience for a longer period of time. Use visual titles to help the viewer focus on what you want them to remember.
2. Focus on the main things: While making a promo video make sure it consists of all the important features and thoughts about your brand. Promo videos are usually very short and sometimes, it may be hard to know what the video should actually consist of. Know your service, and your goal and things will get easier! If you are promoting a new product, keep your promo video all about the new product. 
3. Be entertaining: Scientists say our brains process visuals almost 60,000 times faster than text. That's why our brains love watching videos. And when the videos get a little more entertaining and fun it’s always a cherry on top! Creating an engaging promotional video is super easier than you think it is. A good way to make your video a little unique and entertaining is by adding a little comedy to it. Comedies usually show a hilarious scene for people to enjoy and laugh at. This way you could even make people smile. Isn’t that a lovely thing?
4. Think like a movie teaser: The main goal of a promo video is to let your audience know what the product is just about. Do not get into much details just like a movie teaser. A teaser arouses curiosity in the audience as it lasts less than a minute and does not provide details of the whole thing. And this is exactly what you want! 
5. Keep it short and informative: Try to keep your promo video for less than a minute. Always remember that ‘too much is too bad’. Be on the point and include only a single topic in a promo video. 

How to make a promotional video 

Step 1- Identify your goal and the main target: Know what is the purpose of creating this promotional video? Is it going to help you in promoting your product or event? Take some help from your friends and co-workers and jot down all the important goals of the video and set a target audience before you proceed to the next steps.

Step 2- Choose a direction: Below are a list of directions you could follow:

• Introductory: Introduce yourself or your brand to your customers and audience and tell them who you are or what your brand is all about
• Explanatory: Here you explain to your audience how a specific thing or feature works and how they can go about it.
• Solution: Show them a problem and tell them how your product or company is the solution to this problem. Your main goal is to make your customers' lives easier when they use your services.
• New product launch: Introduce the new product and tell them about the features.
• Testimonial: interviews, reviews or quotes with customers around a specific topic or product. You can also use a celebrity or influencer approval to your service to build trust among new customers and audience. 
• Informative: Informative videos are generally in which you educate your audience about a specific topic or give them a short and easy tutorial.

Once you know your direction, all the next steps go hand-in-hand. 

Step 3- Prepare a video script: A video script is a document that outlines how your marketing video is going to run. Essentially, it conveys the narrative and message of your video. Don’t be afraid to get creative with video storytelling. Giving yourself and your team the freedom to be creative without restrictions will often lead to your best ideas. Surprise yourself with new ideas and you’ll be more likely to surprise your audience too. 

Use visuals and sound to convey the message you want to share through your story rather than stating it outright. Finding the right words that spur potential customers to hire you is crucial. But pictures can be just as important.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that longer is better. Short stories can be just as compelling as long ones and also, the video has to be less than a minute. So, think smartly and include all the important points into the video script. 

Step 4- choose a video style: For entrepreneurs or video creators who are diving into video marketing, it’s crucial to know the different styles of video and when you should use them. 

below are different styles your videos can take:

• Animated videos: When images are played together one after another, they give the illusion of movement. Animated videos can be cartoon-like in 2D or 3D.

• Real actors: Here, real people narrate or introduce you to the new product or event your promo video is about. 
• Whiteboard videos: Whiteboard animation tells a creative story with pictures drawn on a whiteboard. Whiteboard videos are great for number-heavy presentations because they make it easy to get a good rhythm of alternating, talking and writing to maximize viewer comprehension.

• Typography videos: Moving text or kinetic typography is an animation technique that blends movement and words to express ideas. 
• Motion graphics videos: Motion graphics are pieces of animation or digital footage which create the illusion of motion or rotation. 

Step 5- create a storyboard: A storyboard is a visual representation of a film sequence and breaks down the action into individual panels.

With storyboarding, you will visually outline your promo video. The storyboard is a very important part of the pre-production process because it clearly conveys how the story will flow. It improves communication and builds a story between everyone involved in promo video creation. It also links images and audio. 

Step 5- gather all the footage: now it’s time to finalize all the clips and shorts that you would like to include in your promo video. Videos can be short using mobile phone or camera as long as they are clear and have a good sound quality to make your video look professional. 

Step 6- Edit your promo video: editing your video is one of the most crucial steps when you make a promo video. When editing your promo video, do not forget the time limit. It should be short like a teaser! 

A powerful video editing software will enable you to enrich your video with elements that keep the viewers engaged and fascinated. You can add music, subtitles, your brands logo and make it look more colorful and unique. Make sure that the colors you use, align with the colors in the background. 

Your promo video is ready to share!

Now, you can go out and promote your upcoming offers, products, services, discounts and events with an attention-grabbing promo video!

Due to its flexibility, a promo video can be a highly effective marketing tool that helps business utilize to their advantage, attract customers and increase their sales. 

Hurry up! Create a promo video right away!