How to Make a Promotional Video in 7 Easy Steps

YouTube is one of the largest social media networks with over 2 billion monthly logged-in users. Many brands have started to make their presence known on it, and you should be doing so too. But for that, you must know how to make a promotional video.

Over 500 hours of videos are uploaded every minute on YouTube.

And that’s just one of the numerous platforms on which you can upload videos and reach your audience.

Basically, all of the major social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram, have been investing heavily in video promotion functionalities in recent years. Audiences love watching videos, and the newsfeed algorithms love surfacing them.

If you don’t know how to make a high-quality promotional video for your brand and your products or services, you’re already lagging behind in the race.

Nearly 85% of businesses already use video as a marketing tool and 92% of marketers say that it’s an important part of their marketing strategies.

And that’s not all…

One of the other major reasons why videos are important is that they can help you build customer loyalty and retention too.

So, now that you know why making promotional videos is important, let’s take a look at how you can start creating them for your brand and reach your audience.

How to Make a Promotional Video in 7 Steps

When you want to create a promotional video, you not only need to have the right plan and strategy in place – you also need the right tools.

So, before you start to make a promotional video for your brand, you should consider getting a promo video maker such as Boosted. It will come in handy and make your video creation process simpler and faster.

That said, here are the steps you need to take to make a promotional video for your brand:

1. Figure Out Your Goal

Just like any other form of content, you need to know the end goal of making the promotional video content.

Without having a clear goal defined for your video, you won’t be able to channel your efforts into reaching it. In fact, no video marketing strategy is ever complete without goals.

Some of the goals that you could plan for your promotional video are:

• Improve brand awareness
• Grow your sales
• Generate leads
• Boost your traffic
• Educate your audience/customers

To figure out your goals, you should also consider where you’re publishing the video.

For example:

If you’re posting the video on your website’s homepage or landing page, it’s likely that you’d need to create an introductory video. This video will educate your visitors about your brand and the products or services that you offer.

If you have multiple goals, you should consider creating promotional videos for each goal separately. That is, each video should ideally cater to one particular goal.

Once you’ve defined why you need to make a promotional video, you can move on to the next step.

2. Decide on the Type of Video

Now that you know the goal of your promotional video, you need to decide on the type of video that you’ll be making.

As mentioned above, if you’re uploading a video to your website’s homepage or landing page, it will likely be an introductory video.

Similarly, if you want your audience to learn more about a particular offering from your brand, you will need to create an explainer video.

So, let’s take a look at some of the different video types that you can create:

• Introductory Videos: Introduce your brand, mission, team, etc.
• Explainer Videos: Talk about the functioning of your products or services.
• Action-Based Videos: These videos are created to get the viewers to take a particular action.
• Testimonial Videos: Promotional videos meant to convert your leads based on testimonials from existing customers.
• Problem/Solution Videos: Explain how customers can solve problems using your products or services.
• Informatory Videos: Solely meant to educate your audience.

For example, note how Airbnb has created this video to explain what the platform is all about:

Image via YouTube

3. Decide on the Video’s Tone

The next step in making a promotional video for your brand is that of deciding on the video’s tone. Your video could be dramatic, quirky, formal, or even conversational.

You need to decide on this tone before you start creating it.

Why, you might ask?

Because the video will represent your brand and you need to ensure that it aligns well with your brand’s overall tone.

And that’s not all…

When you’re preparing the script for the video, the video’s tone must be taken into consideration.

The different types of tones your video can have are:

• Conversational: Casual tone that isn’t very promotional.
• Formal: Clear and right to the point.
• Humorous: Incorporates the use of humor and may have some creative elements to make your audience laugh.
• Quirky: Adds unexpected elements to make the video stand out.
• Urgent: Primarily used to instill fear of missing out (FOMO) among viewers to push them to take action.

For instance, note how this promotional video by Old Spice has an element of humor in it. This has helped the brand generate over 58 million views on YouTube.

Image via YouTube

4. Determine the Duration

After you’ve figured out the tone of your video, you need to move on to determining the duration of your promotional video.

Finding out this video length in advance is essential because your video’s script and flow will all depend upon it.

Without a time reference in mind, you’ll likely end up with a video that might be too long and unfocused.

So, what factors should you consider when deciding on the duration of your videos?

• Publishing Platform: Website, social media, etc. Videos on a website can be longer while social media videos should be shorter as people may not watch a long video.
• Video Budget: Longer videos may require a larger budget.
• Goal: Different goals will require varying video lengths. Videos that promote sales or events can be short while those that explain your products may need to be longer.

But what if you need to increase or decrease the length of your video?

Boosted has you covered. This tool not only lets you make a promotional video but also has an easy way through which you can increase or decrease the length of the video.

All you have to do is click on the “+” or “-” sign and the platform will add or remove sections of the video for you.

Image via Boosted

The average video in 2018 was about 4.07 minutes long. However, only 52% of viewers would watch such a long video until the end. For videos that are less than 60 seconds long, about 68% of viewers will watch it until the end. So, for the best results, try to keep your videos shorter.

5. Figure Out the Video Format

Now that you’ve got a clear idea of the goal, length, and tone of the video, you can move on to finally deciding on the appearance of the video.

And that’s where the video’s format comes into the picture.

Why is this important?

Numerous formats of videos are available out there and before you get to the scriptwriting phase of video creation, you need to decide which format you’ll be choosing.

The script heavily relies on the format of your video as well. For instance, the script of a video with people in it will be different from that of one that has a single narrator.

Some of the visual formats that you can choose from are:

• Animated Video: This format involves 2D and 3D animations and is cartoon-styled.
• Screencast Video: Typically this is a recording of a computer or mobile screen with or without a voiceover.
• Real People Video: This incorporates people in the video and they may or may not talk in it.

6. Create the Script

Finally, it’s time to create the script for your promotional video. Based on all of the factors that you’ve already identified, you’ll have a clear idea of how long your script needs to be and what it needs to contain.

For instance, if your video involves two people or characters talking to each other, you might need to have dialogues written.

However, if there’s just narration, you’ll need to come up with a script that outlines what the narrator will say.

This is also the point where you’ll conceptualize the appearance of your video and its flow before you make the promotional video.

7. Make the Promotional Video

After you’ve come up with the script, you’re ready to move on to the final step of making a promotional video and that’s actually creating the video.

As mentioned before, you will need a video making software solution for this. While most video editing software solutions would require that you have a certain degree of expertise, Boosted can make the job easier for you.

This powerful video maker lets you make stunning videos without the need to have any expertise in video making. It was designed specifically to help people create promo videos.

To get started, all you have to do is choose from the wide variety of storyboard templates that it offers. You can select them based on the preferences that you’ve decided on earlier and start making a professional video.

Image via Boosted

After that, you can seamlessly use a storyboard to drag and drop elements into the video. This includes media, music, colors, and even fonts.

As mentioned above, it’s also possible to extend or reduce the length of the video with ease.

Image via Boosted

You also need to adapt your video for the platform that you’re going to upload your video to. For instance, you’d be better off with a portrait video on Instagram, or TikTok. However, when it comes to YouTube or Twitter, a landscape version might be better.

With Boosted, you can seamlessly change the dimensions of your video with ease too. All you have to do is choose between square, landscape, and portrait. The tool will automatically resize the video for you.

This makes it easy to create social media videos and post them on the platform of your choice.

Now that you know how to make a promotional video, let’s take a quick look at some of the elements of videos you should be taking care of.

Important Elements of Promo Videos

Here are the main elements of a promo video that you should consider when creating it.

1. Visuals

The visuals that you use for creating your promo video content are extremely important. It’s essential that you use the best quality photos and video clips to make your promotional videos.

These are the elements that’ll play a major role in catching the attention of your audience and engaging them throughout the video.

Avoid using poorly shot media as this can harm your brand’s reputation.

2. Audio

Your promo video’s audio is equally important. While many of your viewers might watch your videos on mute, those who are interested will definitely turn the sound on.

And when that happens, you need to ensure that the audio quality is top-notch. Be it the music or the voiceover, make sure that you do it well. Clear audio will help deliver the message to your audience with ease.

3. Text

Text plays a major role in promo videos, especially when it comes to social media. This is because an overwhelming 69% of people watch videos without sound in public.

And that’s not all…

80% of consumers are likely to watch the entire video when captions are available. This means that the text you use in your video is critically important for its success.

Try to transcribe all the things that are spoken in the video and ensure that the transcription is grammatically correct.

Also, select a font that will be clearly visible to your viewers.

Final Thoughts

Promo videos are a great way to grow a brand and most brands are leveraging them. To make a promo video, you can follow the step-by-step process above.

You should start by identifying your goals. Based on those goals, you should decide on the type of video that you want to create. Make sure each video works towards one particular goal.

What’s more?

You should also decide on the tone of the video and ensure that it’s aligned with the brand voice. Also, before you start creating a video, make sure you decide on the duration as it’s important to know that to create a script for the video.

Finally, decide on the format of the video and create the video using a video making tool.

Do you have any questions about the steps to make a promotional video mentioned above? Let me know in the comments and I’ll answer them.