One of the most powerful ways to market your business is through promotional videos. Promotional videos are made to help promote your product or service, optimize brand awareness, build customer trust, and increase sales. In fact, audiences spend an average of 19 hours a week watching videos online. This number is up from 10.5hrs in 2018.
You have probably heard someone use the term “promo video,” but what does that actually mean? Well, there is no “one size fits all” solution to promotional videos, and each business has unique needs for the type of promotional video production services required.
When it comes to producing promotional videos, there is a wide range of videos you can utilize. There are event promotional videos, products, testimonials, services, how-to, and PR-style promotional videos. Promotional videos are fantastic marketing tactics because they engage a viewer’s senses on multiple levels.
The viewer is able to see the product or service being used in action. This is key because, unlike photos and text, it gives the customer a sense of real-world application. It allows the customer to feel as if they had already purchased the product or service and what to expect. Plus, promotional videos can showcase additional benefits and features of the product/services, testimonials from past customers, and answer common questions they may have. All this happens while being entertained and getting to know the brand and the culture.
When Should an Organization Use Promotional Video Productions?
Here at Blitz Studios, we get asked this question all the time. Our customers know they need a fun and exciting promotional video, but they don’t know what approach to take. Luckily, we have been experts in promotional video productions for over 5 years and have learned a thing or two along the way.
Event Promotional Videos:
If you have an upcoming conference, tradeshow, networking event, etc. promotional videos are a must. Potential new customers want to see what they are signing up for, so the more information you provide them, the better. A promotional video can provide all the details they need to know about the event to make a decision on if it is right for them. An event promotional video helps bring to life the atmosphere of the event. It showcases the live interactions the people have and the experiences being created at the events.
There is also another type of event promotional video production that is often slept on by organizations. Creating a promotional video/short film to play during an event can have a huge impact. When you gather everyone in one room who all have a common cause/mission and play an emotional meaningful video…it’s game over. I have seen this first hand on various occasions. The impact a video can have when everyone comes together to watch it is unlike any other form of communication.
Here is a great example of this. We created a promotional video in Cleveland for a non-profit called “Food Strong”. The goal was to have a video play during their annual gala to raise funds for the program. Not only was the video a huge success, but they were also able to raise more than two times the funds of the previous year. You can see the short film here.
Company Promotional Videos
These are typically the homepage “About Us” style videos. They will provide new visitors an overview of what your company does, and its value proposition, highlight customer testimonials and add a face to the name. Customers like to see who they are working with, so highlighting your team and employees goes a long way for potential new clients. Having a professionally created promotional video by a video production expert also highlights professionalism and brand quality. It will set the expectations of the kind of service or goods the customer can expect.
Content Promotional Videos
Oftentimes, companies are doing amazing things in their local communities or industry that they want to highlight. Blitz Studios will go on location and create short-form videos for businesses to post on social media. These videos could highlight a fun event a company attends, speaker engagements, new announcements, etc.
Product Promotional Videos
Rather than the company overview video, clients look to create promotional videos for specific landing pages, products, or services. Instead of highlighting the entire organization, we will create videos specific to one line of business, product, or service.
How To Create a Promotional Video?
Now that you understand the different types of promotional video productions, it is important to understand the process of creating one. We always recommend consulting a video production expert when thinking about creating a promotional video. The value you will get from hiring a professional who understands compositions, lighting, editing, etc. will provide a greater return on both your financial and time investment. Many of our clients come to us after they spent hours trying to create their promotional video, realizing they had no idea how complicated video productions can be.
There are a few guidelines we recommend to create successful promotional videos.
1. Set Goals, Understand Your Objective, and Define Your Brand
Before hitting record, you need to have an understanding of the end goal of the video. First, you need to define your target audience, brand messaging, distribution of content, and budget. Are you a fun and outgoing brand that will rely on catchy music and comedic relief? Are you a luxury product trying to stand out as a high-end brand? Understanding your value proposition in the marketplace and aligning your video with that messaging is key to success.
2. Assessing the video requirements
Now that you have an overview of your brand and goal for the video, it is time to decide on the type of video production services needed. There are likely a handful of video production companies near you, so take a look at the different providers and see what company may fit your needs best. Most importantly, look at their quality of work and the different types of projects they focus on. For example, we provide promotional video production services for companies in Cleveland, Akron, Pittsburgh, and the surrounding areas. We fit a lot of our client's needs because we provide extremely high-quality professional videos that are much more affordable than a lot of large studios in the area. Our ability to maintain a level of quality that the client is looking for, but not cost $50,000 to produce, is very attractive to many small and medium-sized businesses in the area.
3. Video Production Services
Now that you have your provider picked out and have begun storyboarding and drafting a vision for the video, it is time to start shooting. Every project is unique, but most of our promotional video productions include filming on-site interviews, b-roll, testimonials, voice-overs, and more. We spend the day bringing our professional cinema cameras and lights to make our clients look and feel fantastic on video. We create storyboards, shot lists, and schedules to make sure we stay on track and film everything we need.
4. Post-Production
Once you have wrapped all the shooting, it is time to dive into the editing lab. From here, you will cut the different angles up, find royalty-free music, create motion graphics, color grade, and apply visual/audio effects, and sound design. You want the video to be engaging, clear, and concise. On average, our attention span is a mere 8.25 seconds, so making sure you have the video edited properly is paramount. This can make or break the ROI, so you don’t want to cut any corners in post-production.
5. Distribution & Promotion
Once the promotional video is finalized, it’s time to distribute and promote! Make sure you have the video posted on the proper channels such as YouTube, websites, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. You can also use videos in email campaigns and other relevant online channels.
Conclusion: Bringing It Together
We hope this post helps you understand the importance of promotional video productions in your marketing and communication strategies. If you are interested in having a promotional video created for your organization, please don’t hesitate to give us a call or email. We have worked with clients of every size and industry and can help determine what videos might be best suited for you.
