How to Use Promotional Videos to Reach Your Audience

This post is dedicated to promotional video, and we have decided to open it with three recent statistics selected from many others that we feel are extremely significant, and which all point in the same direction: that, when it comes to digital marketing, video is the most powerful and high-performing tool. 

• 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. 
• 92% of marketers consider video an important part of their strategies. 
• And 87% of them say that video marketing operations have recorded a good ROI. (wyzowl.com) 

We will not dwell on this aspect here, which is simply a fact. In this regard, we refer you to another post where we tell you why video marketing is at the center of digital strategies and increasingly so. That said, let’s get to the heart of the topic of this post. 

First of all, what is a promotional video? Very simple: it’s a video that a company makes for the purpose of promoting products or services to its customer base. 

So, let’s exclude brand videos, which instead focus entirely on a brand, its mission, and the imagery created around it. And also branded video content. 

Beware, however: a promotional video does not have to take the form of an explicit and direct sales pitch. Sometimes, in fact, going straight to the point can prove counterproductive. It’s always important to include the sale in a process, which starts with the ability to tell a story and create a connection with your audience by bringing added value and to establish, therefore, a sense of trust. 

These are all elements at the heart of producing a good promotional video. Now, let’s go straight to a more operational level.  We will divide this post into two parts. 

In the first, we will list 8 interesting types of promotional video. In the second, we will share 5 practical tips for making them effective. We will proceed in a concise manner so as to give you the broadest possible overview. 

A foreword: of course, there are many types of promotional videos and you can go well beyond eight. These, however, are the most interesting ones. Who decides this? The audience itself, who seem to appreciate these types the most. 

Let’s start with the most immediate type: videos that focus directly on telling the story of a product.  How useful are they? How well do they meet the needs of the audience? 

Here, we have a very telling statistic to guide us: when faced with the question “what is your favorite way to find information about a product or service,” 73% of respondents said, “video.” (source: wyzowl.com)  We have focused on product videos and best practices for their conception and production in this post. 

Again, let’s start with another statistic. 

• 96% of people said they viewed an explainer video to get information about a product or service before making a purchase (source: wyzowl.com). 

Explainer videos are a huge hit, especially on YouTube. And they are always at the top of search results on Google. If a company offers products with a high technical level, this type of promotional video is not only useful, but practically essential.  

This is a format that we could call “classic,” and which continues to work perfectly in the digital world. Why? 

Because it demonstrates, in a very practical and intuitive way, the effectiveness and usefulness of certain types of products.  

To put it another way: there is an initial problem, and the product (thus the brand behind it) helps you solve it. 

Another great classic, one that is more effective than ever even in the digital age. Just think about what we normally do before buying a product or service: we look for reviews and opinions from people we trust and who have already had an experience with it. 

Here, video is the form that is as close as we can get to in-person and face-to-face advice. 

• On average, influencer marketing has shown an ROI of $6.50 for every dollar spent (source:adweek.com). 
• About 70% of millennials are in some way directed in their choices by influencers (source: startupsmagazine.com). 

The data is very clear: leaning on influencers for your promotional video is a good idea. 

Yet a problem has become apparent in recent years that undermines the effectiveness of this kind of approach from within. Mega-influencers are now perceived by the public as very distant and unreachable personalities.  What, then, are brands and digital marketers doing? 

They are relying on so-called micro- and nano-influencers, who are perceived as more spontaneous, close, and trustworthy. 

The product is important, but what’s around it, or behind it, is just as important. What are some examples of “behind the scenes” that can be shown in a promotional video? 

The production processes, of course. Even earlier, the ideation stages (great for creating compelling storytelling). It can also be very effective to show a company’s team, thus the people behind the product or service. 

Streaming videos have long been used in digital marketing for the promotion of products or services. Their popularity has seen a huge surge in recent years as a result of the pandemic and the emergency phase it triggered. 

Now that we’re all familiar with it, streaming videos show excellent performance in terms of engagement: they generate an average of 7 times as many reactions as classic videos and as many as 24 times the number of comments (source: business.linkedin.com). 

There is no video that is effective for everyone in the same way. In fact, everything depends on the target audience: their characteristics, their behaviors, their desires. 

This is a basic principle of any form of communication.  And it applies, of course, to video marketing as well. But how can you know your audience when it consists of thousands and thousands of different people? 

You can, thanks to Big Data analysis. The result? 

The ability to make your promotional video adapt, in an automated way, to the characteristics of each individual viewer. This is the breakthrough of personalized videos. 

So, how can you make them? By relying on specialized platforms such as the one offered by Babelee.  

In this second section, here are the most important tips and best practices for promotional video design, production, and distribution. As promised, we have focused them around 5 basic areas. 

Before creating a promotional video, it’s crucial to set some precise goals: sales, loyalty, brand awareness? Each goal requires a different path to achieve it. 

Not only that: the tone and style of one’s video should be carefully set based on the objectives. Of course, they must be consistent with your brand image: it’s also a matter of recognizability. Also important: Also identify your USP (Unique Selling Proposition): this is what sets you apart from your competitors. 

Before shooting a video, you’ll need to draft a script. This is something obvious, of course, but what’s less obvious is that this step is crucial even for very short videos. 

You’ll want to avoid improvisation, even for so-called snackable content. Tips for writing a great script for a video? We have collected the most important tips and tricks in this post. 

Snackable, short form, long form: there are huge differences between different video formats; it all depends on the goals, the channels, and your target audience. When we talk about promotional videos, we might assume that short form is the ideal format. 

Beware, though: long form videos can also be effective and, often, they are the type of video that can trigger the best engagement rate.

To be effective, a video must first be easy to find, both on Google, and on YouTube (with its 2.2 billion monthly active users). 

So: pay the utmost attention to everything related to optimizing your video for SEO.  What are the aspects to watch out for?  We have collected them all in this post, which has a complete checklist for your video SEO strategy. 

A promotional video must always be done in omnichannel mode. It is, first and foremost, about optimizing productions for any type of device, prioritizing the mobile side, because the smartphone is the tool that we use to watch videos most often. 

But it’s not just a question of device. Above all, it’s a matter of optimizing your videos according to the platforms on which they are distributed. It’s one thing to produce a video for the company website; it’s another to produce a video for email marketing campaigns; and it’s yet another to produce a video for YouTube. 

And then there is the fundamental playing field of social networks, each with its own technical rules and best practices. 

As is always the case in video marketing, promotional video production is all about balancing many elements: the goals, channels, and the target audience; creativity and technical limitations; brand identity and what people show they value. 

Finally, a brand’s ability to continuously improve its strategies.