What Makes a Good Promotional Video for Your Marketing Campaign?

Promotional videos are effective sales and marketing tools, which educate consumers about certain products and/or services, an organization or cause. It is meant to be precise and direct, lasting for 5 to 15 minutes or even less. With a well-produced corporate video, you can arrest the attention of the viewers to make your point and generate the added interest. Video campaigning is the surest and quickest form of marketing. In result, more and more companies are looking into this implementing video into their marketing strategies. Once produced, marketing videos can be posted on various social networking websites and video sharing websites like YouTube, Metacafe, Vimeo etc. increasing exposure. After all Youtube is the number two search engine in the world.

As more people view the video, the company stands to gain an increasing number of potential clients who are aware of and interested in their products and/or services. A promotional video creates a greater impact on the mind when compared to other mediums of advertising. Video provides emotion which are contagious and the motion of video grabs attention. Even a human voice speaking to us in a video has an amazing way of converting information into meaningful content. A video can also be produced with an interactive strategy in mind, thereby creating a sense of involvement with the campaign. Video marketing creates a window of opportunity for a business and is a strategy every business should look into. It blends text, images, animation and audio that compliment and express  the brand in a visually engaging manner. Video campaigning is one of the best online marketing techniques because it creates a connection between the business and its target audience.

Video Marketing – How to make it count

Today, making a promotional video for your business can be easy and cost-effective. There are literally hundreds of providers for multimedia content marketing and video production who can produce a video for you at an affordable cost. The question is – How can you make it count?

In general, there are two popular kinds of promotional or corporate videos that businesses commonly use. One type is the infomercial based video, which combines a variety of elements to directly promote your brand. This usually involves a detailed script, actors/talent, writer, director, video production, video editing, sound tracks, and other elements.  In turn the video production value along with cleaver and concise script writing will engage the attention of the target audience. In fact, this is not very different from the usual advertising campaigns broadcasted on TV.

The other type of video is the testimonial, documentary based video. This is styled for a casual ambiance with an engaging interview in order to convey the story.

Both styles have their applications. Generally an infomercial type video works best for selling and promoting products. The documentary versions make great corporate videos because they bring more of a human element allowing businesses to promote their brand while showcasing the key people behind it.

When you are selling your services, you need to be comfortable explaining the unique benefits. The onus of a good documentary type video is to promote and make your brand shine. Apart from your services, you are marketing your attitude, your approach to business in general, and how you value your customers. These factors are brought out beautifully through a well directed and shot interview.

When you sell your products, the product is obviously the star attraction. The objective of an infomercial is to catch the attention of the viewer and to leave a memorable impression so long after the ad is viewed, a connection is established with the brand. To achieve this in a 30-60 second video spot, a lot of thought and planning needs to go into what’s needed. There is a certain artistic science behind the creation of a video production which is successful and achieves its objectives. It is an amalgamation of the pre-production, the right images, the right sounds, expressions, emotions and ultimately, the way a brand or product is portrayed.

In a nut shell, any good promotional video needs to convey some or all of the following factors to be effective:

• Your specialty: You need to appear to have authority in your genre.
• What sets the brand apart from the competition?
• How can your product or service make life better for somebody viewing the video?
• Brand power: What does being associated with your brand mean to the viewer?
• Reliability: Why should the viewer place trust in your product
• Parallel recognition: Can the viewer relate to somebody who would actually use this product or service?