How to Create a Promotional Video

Taken from Annie Maguire, “8 steps to creating a promotional video,” Medium 2016
https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-create-a-promotional-video-707fa7a63019

Step 1: Identify your goal

Before you sit down to write your video, you’ll want to take a step back and consider why you want to create a video in the first place.

Here are some common reasons many companies create promotional videos:

• Brand awareness
• Drive sales
• Drive traffic
• Increase customer engagement
• Educate customers
• Persuade investors

Step 2: Choose a direction

Now that you have your “why,” it should be a little bit easier to determine what makes sense in terms of direction.

To give you some ideas, here’s a list of possible directions you could go in:

• Introductory: tell your audience who you are, explain your mission, etc.
• Explanatory: explain how something works (like your product or a specific feature)
• Problem/solution: show the old way/new way and how your product is the solution
• Narrative: use story elements (like plot, conflict, resolution, etc) to subtly introduce or explain something
• Drive action: get the audience to do something (i.e. — shop now)
• Product-focused: introduce or showcase a specific product or feature
• Testimonial: interviews, quotes, soundbytes, etc, with customers around a specific topic or theme
• Endorsement: use of celebrity or influencer approval / likeness
• Informative: educate your audience about something specific, tutorial-style, etc.
• Entertainment: delight or inspire your audience using story, humor, etc.

Step 3: Set the tone

Tone is defined as “the general character or attitude” of something. But to make it simple, you can just think of it as how your video is going to make your audience feel.

For example, do you want to make your audience laugh or do you want them to be emotional? Do you want them to feel informed, or do you want to tell them a story?

Below are some various tones you can explore for your concept and creative direction:

• Dramatic — moves you emotionally. Example: P&G Olympics commercial
• Straightforward/informative — clear and concise. Example: gumroad
• Conversational—casual and authentic. Example: Glossier “get ready with me” video
• Urgent— urges you to take action, like now. Example: Macy’s holiday sale
• Fun/playful —uses fun creative devices (like anthropomorphism, for example). Example: Slack
• Humorous — comedic; makes you laugh or smile. Example: Old Spice
• Quirky — uses peculiarity or the unexpected to drive home a point. Example: Zazzle
• Cutesy— something that makes you go, “awww!”. Example: Cheerios
• Entertaining — aims to inform and entertain. Super Bowl ads typically fall under this category. Example: Nerd Skin Care
• Inspirational —uses inspiration to drive action (manifestos are typically done in this style). Example: Squarespace
• Artsy /hip/cool— feels youthful, stylish, trendy, etc. Example: Converse
• Luxurious — shiny, fancy, flashy, sexy, rich. Think luxe car commercials, high-end hotel chains, etc. Example: Vegas Hotel commercial

There are certainly many more tones and directions you can explore, but hopefully this gives you some ideas as to how your video may come to life.