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Promotional video production and shooting
Promotional video production and shooting
Brainiac makes the process of promotional video production and shooting very easy
From start to finish, Brainiac guides you through the best practices of Promotional video production and shooting. You need a promotional video and trying to do it yourself simply is not going to create the results of working with those who have 25 years of production experience. We have created thousands of videos for social media and broadcast over the years and can guide you through many of the best practices that are applicable to your promotional video production.
See below for a detailed roadmap or simply book an appointment with us at the bottom of page and we’ll get you straight into motion.
The steps behind promotional video production, and shooting
1. Book of script call with your Director
Scroll to the bottom of the page and book a script call with your Director. The director will lay out the client dashboard and gather all of the information needed to develop a compelling script that properly represents product usage and the brand behind it.
Here you will define the objective of the promotional video. If you’re looking to sell products, this is where you will list all of the features that the product has and what problems the product will solve in the potential buyer's life.
Video Marketing from pre-production through post-production takes more than knowing how to make something look high quality. The production company has to keep your target audience in mind at all times of the video production process. At Brainiac we bring your vision to life with a high quality video optimized to reach the right potential customer and in the YouTube search engine.and know where to place a strong call-to-action for your product or service.
2. Define your buyer
You also will help your video producer understand who the audience is, what gender, whether they exist in a certain geographical location, and how much money the product sells for. Knowing this information determines the approach to the script, casting and production as a whole.
When you understand your buyer, you will also understand where to reach your buyer. Is the buyer most likely to be captivated while watching a particular movie on Paramount Plus or Amazon Prime? Is the buyer going to buy your product at a retail location, so enhanced visibility of programmatic streaming on broadcast is key or is your buyer a specific type of audience member more likely to buy your product online.
If your buyer is young, then vertical social media is a fantastic way to reach them, and the remarketing abilities once they become a follower, are amazing. It can take several times of coming across your brand or content before the consumer actually pays attention to what it is that you are selling, and a few times more before they consider buying.
Social media allows people to become followers and when you run your ads, your followers are the first to see them. When you need to stay in their faces, social media is the way to do it.
When your product is sold more via e-commerce than in-store, then using platforms that reach the buyer by age range and location is key, along with clickable options to buy.
3. Casting and choosing the location and visuals
It is important to cast actors that look like the kind of people that you want to sell the product to. You should also shoot the video in locations that the audience can relate to and where the product is most likely to be used in. Shooting products on turntables and in all-white rooms are no longer an effective way of selling the vast majority of products.
Showing how they integrate into everyday, life is typically considered to be more effective. This is why proper attention to casting and choosing the location and props is so important. Brainiac, based near Los Angeles California has access to all the bets casting options in the country, and their eye for finding fantastic talent is remarkable.
4. Know the right approach for each product type
For software products, make sure the host is speaking clearly and directly to the camera in the most simplistic format humanly possible. Avoid cartoons. Just because it is software does not mean that you need to rely on old-school methods like cheap cartoons or whiteboard videos to sell it. Use human beings to sell products to other human beings, and this is where using real actors to communicate software and services comes into play.
For physical products, light storytelling and strong calls to action combined with lifestyle shots and proper usage are crucial to selling your product with promotional videos. If the product is a food product or snack, look at the type of activity that the product goes along with. When healthy, choose healthy lifestyle activities, like working out, jogging,, and playing sports on a beach or at the park.
If the product is a consumer electronics product, how it fits in with their lifestyle is very important. If it is a home improvement product or a tool, showing the product in the real world, not a studio is often more impactful in convincing an audience that the product is of value to them.
At Brainiac, we look at the product and what differs it from the competition. How the product fits into the everyday persons life is also a major factor that determines the concept of your Promotional Video production and Shooting.
5. Filling out the story when the budget is limited
You can also utilize light amounts of stock footage to fill out the story if your budget is limited and you can only afford a one-day shoot in one location.
However, do not rely on stock footage alone. The audience can tell when an advertisement is just cheap stock. Integrating it with somebody physically talking about your product to the camera or to another person and actually holding the product or interacting with the product is very important.
6. Keep the distribution platforms in mind at all times
If the video is meant for YouTube, make sure that the product appears within the first three seconds. That way, if the audience is interested in products of this type, they do not skip the ad and they engage before the “skip ad” button pops up.
You oftentimes only have one to three seconds to get somebody’s attention so if your products solve a certain problem, make sure and call out that problem and show the solution within just a couple of seconds and then get into the details or background story on why that product is so great or necessary.
Promotional Video Production and shooting for social media
When creating promotional videos for social media, know if it will be a paid ad placement or organic. These are two very different types of promotional videos and shooting style is very different as well. When it is an ad (where there is a BUY NOW button on the bottom) you will want the video to be between 15 to 30 seconds long and oftentimes, be shot on the cinema camera. A combination of homegrown shots and cinema shots can also be very helpful, using the homegrown shots to keep the product feeling relatable yet finishing with cinema shots in order for the product to feel like its made by a quality brand.
Production value is often what puts one brand ahead of the other in motion promotional and advertising campaigns yet in social media promotions, using a style known as UGC (User Generated Content) is also important. Viewers often skip past an ad within a second of seeing it when it looks like a commercial, yet when it looks like user-generated content, like something their friends would make, that may give it just long enough to find out what the product or service is.
User-generated content is never shot on professional cameras but often has a professional director behind it. It often looks amateur yet there is nothing amateur going on behind the scenes. Knowing when to pain the camera, what angle to hold the camera (or phone actually) and how much movement the characters need in order to keep the audience watching can feel like a science.
Plus the redundancy of social media content is also a key part of the promotion. If you are relying on social videos to travel organically, it takes more than one. It takes hundreds, releasing every one to three days. Humor and a very human and relatable feel are required for these, and Brainiac has you covered with expertly crafted UGC content made for one affordable bulk rate monthly package.
Filling your feeds with things like comedy, life hacks, special FX-driven videos, unboxing, reviews and other types of fun relatable social media can be an integral part of watching your brand grow via social media marketing.
If it is a paid ad, it can be up to 30 seconds but remember if you are expecting the video to travel organically without advertising dollars behind it, you will need to keep the video extremely entertaining and between 6 to 13 seconds on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube Shorts..
The time of day and location where the video is released are also a big deal when it comes to building a successful promotional video campaign on social media. Keeping track of more than just "active viewer times" that the app tells you but also, times that people who buy brands like yours are most likely to be lounging. is extremely helpful.
Brainiac helps you create a video campaign and posting schedule with target keywords, hashtags and release times that your audience is more likely to be grabbed by. It's much more complex than just shooting content around the house and hoping people find it. It takes strategy, creativity, and an understanding of best practices for each platform.
Book an appointment with Brainiac below and let us help you quickly define the best type of promotional videos to promote your product today.