Essential Tips for Crafting a Killer Business Video

The global digital advertising market has been demonstrating notable growth in the recent years. For example, videos are among the most important drivers of the growth; in fact, even mobile video advertising market was estimated at a whopping $6.72 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach $9.90 billion this year. Another great advantage of making videos is their ability to produce a high ROI. In fact, a content marketing report from CopyPress described that more than 50 percent of marketers said videos were the type of content with the best ROI.

Source: CopyPress

For you as a business owner, this means that you might be missing out a fast-growing segment of digital advertising.

To help you take advantage of this powerful promotional tool, we’re going to give you five useful tips that you should follow to make your business videos a big hit.

Let’s begin.

 

1. Tell an Interesting Story and Include a CTA

To engage your target audience and convince them to spread the word by sharing the video, it needs to be both clever and informative. For example, a business owner trying to increase awareness of their brand may film a typical day at the office and show what makes their company and who works there.

Other suitable elements to include in the video include:

• The history of the brand (how, when, and where it all began)
• Biographies of employees
• Testimonials of happy clients

Simply put, the video should make it easy for viewers to relate to the business. Remember: people tend to connect and trust other people, not companies. A perfect example of such video has been created by FreshBooks, an online accounting software company designing solutions for small businesses. They shot a video with Sarah, an interior designer who started to use the solutions from FreshBooks. According to Sarah, it saved her a lot of time and helped her to run the business a lot easier. 

Sarah is very relaxed and her tone easily draws in. Her story is genuine and she tells how FreshBooks helped her to solve the problems she faced. For example, she didn’t have sufficient time to run her business because she had kids and needed a flexible schedule. And don’t forget the last very important thing: a call to action at the end of the video. For example, it may be a call to visit your website, send you a message, or visit an event. In the video from FreshBooks, for example, the call to action is to sign up for their services by visiting their website.

 

1. Have a Solid Script

Regardless of the goal of the business video, having a great script is essential to produce an influential product. Here are the most important things to keep in mind when creating the script for your video:

• Be clear about takeaways and benefits for the target audience. This means making sure that the viewers can easily understand what they should learn from the video and what it wants them to do after they’ve watched it.
• Use simple, conversational language. Writing a script for a business video is completely different from writing academic papers or marketing surveys. For example, an academic work involves using the academic style of writing and language, but with the video, you want to be natural, casual, and simple. That’s why you need to keep sentences crisp, short, and conversational. Try to infuse humor and tone accordingly.
• Know who your target audience is. Is it made of startup owners, young bloggers, healthcare professionals, or students looking for assignment help? Will your video be uploaded to Facebook, YouTube, or just your website? These are the questions that you might want to answer before writing the script. For example, if the goal of your business video is to raise awareness, the audience will be much wider, than, say, people who have already registered on your website.
• When it comes to business videos, longer ones don’t have the same effect as short ones. In fact, research by Wistia suggested that 2 minutes is the best length for a video looking to engage the viewers.

 

1. Aim for Professional Quality

Of course, having a Hollywood-level equipment would be awesome, but the truth is that you don’t really need it to create a great quality video. For example, the typical budget for a two-minute professional-quality video ranges between $7,000 and $10,000 even if it takes a full day of shooting. Of course, you need a producer to manage the process, so try to get one as well.

If you’re on a limited budget, you can do it everything yourself. In this case, however, you need to be mindful of the equipment you’ll be using for shooting. For example, you must have an amateur-friendly digital camera, lights (preferably LED), microphone (including wireless ones if necessary), and quality video editing software (here’s the list of the best free video editing tools for you).

 

1. Add Music

Music is a vitally important element of video that enhances the viewing experience and creates emotions. Whether it’s a beat synchronized to the movement of the video or a gentle piano melody playing in the background, it can really improve the overall experience of the viewers. Finding an appropriate music for your business video can be easy and cheap. For example, there are many online resources offering royalty-free music for free, including Free Music Archive and TakeTones.

 

1. Optimize for SEO

All great business videos are optimized for SEO. For example, this is done by:

• Adding keywords in the title, tags, script, and description. As the result, it will be easier for search engines to find the video.
• Making it “shareable” and “linkable” by providing informative and relevant content
• Optimizing it for mobile viewing
• Making thumbnails eye-catching and predictive of the content in the video

And One More Thing

Even though we promised five tips, we want to give you one more, and it’s a big one as well. In your video, you should always promise only what you can deliver. Never promise something you cannot deliver because there are many other businesses that stay true to their promises. Better stick to the tips we’ve described above and make sure that your next business video is a big hit!

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Lucy Benton is a specialist in digital marketing and content writing who currently works at A-writer.com. She focuses mostly on the worlds of technology, gadgets, and the Internet. If you’re interested in working with Lucy, you can find her on Twitter.