How to create a promo video or ad for your business on a low budget

Troy Logan • July 2, 2021

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How to create a promo video or ad for your business on a low budget.


Let's face it, as a business owner one of your biggest challenges is to get your offer in front of enough

people and let the world know you exist.  I'm sure you have a great product or service. Just think for

a minute. If you could get your offer in front of 10,000 prospects, 100,000 prospects or even a million,

what type of outcomes that would produce. Unfortunately, not getting in front of enough people can be

a hurdle that many businesses don't get over and can be a dream killer.

 

Creating a powerful brand awareness video is an important weapon to have in your arsenal on the road to

becoming a household name and if deployed correctly can be a game changer.


The Shaver Club created a promo video that blasted their brand into the stratosphere getting them

12,000 new customers. The ad was credited for taking them from zero dollars in sales to 4 years later

selling the company for a billion dollars.


Ideally, we want to get the video ad in front of people who are looking for your product or service and influence their decision when it comes time to buy. What is good about this type of video ad is we just want to let people know about you; we are not trying to get them to drop everything and sign up, buy something on the spot. Rather we just want to let them know that we exist and have something for them.


Usually, these videos are short and sweet. Anywhere from 5 seconds to 30 seconds. They can be longer,

but I recommend keeping it short, as the method for using it best suits a short form video. A longer video

will take more production, cost more and be harder to get people to watch unless, for example,

it's highly entertaining. Ultimately, it comes down to your objectives, but for this article we are going to

concentrate on a short inexpensive video ad.


Imagine for a second you are a golf lover and you are watching a YouTube video on how to improve

your swing. Then an video ad comes on for a new driver that allows the average person to hit the ball

straighter and longer. That is more likely to convert into a sale as opposed to a cold audience

with less intent. 


Remember the golf enthusiast is there to watch a video on their swing, so technically we are

interrupting them quickly, letting them know about your offer and what you've got. Unlike

other video ads or promos, we may have a stronger call to action. Again this is just about quickly

making an impression and letting them know about you and your offer.


Recently at Smoochit, we created a brand awareness video with the purpose of running video ads

on YouTube to an audience that is interested in, you guessed it, promo videos. Being a startup,

we didn't have a massive budget, so were looking to target an audience with this topic in mind.

Of course, if you have a massive budget, then you can play your video ad at the next Super Bowl

and blast it out to a world-wide audience. If you're like most businesses, that's not going to

be an option right now, and you'll need to focus your efforts on finding a smaller more targeted

audience. You'll be looking to generate a high ROI and get as much out of your ad budget as

possible, and look to scale up your efforts based on traction.


I'd like to share with you the process we used to make our brand awareness video for Smoochit.

We launched a Project on Smoochit to make the video ad. The first thing we did was figure out where we wanted to show the video ad and who we wanted to target. We felt it was important to reverse engineer the video ad like this, as then you have a better idea how to position the ad.


For example, as just mentioned, we wanted to target people who were looking at video marketing and how to make promo videos. We figured if someone was learning or interested in this, that would indicate some

intent to have a video like this. Another example of this would be if you sell, let's say, a golf driver,

target people who are watching videos about how to improve their swing.


There are many ways to target audiences these days. Do a Google search and find one or two target audiences you like and use that as a starting point to create your video ad.


We decided to make a 15 second video that was designed to create some awareness about our service.

The reasoning behind this was we just wanted to very quickly let people know if they wanted a promo

video to promote their business online, they should go to Smoochit and easily access top video

creators to make it. We are not trying to take their attention, and keep it, and get them to do something,

like join our mailing list or take advantage of a special offer. Just a quick interruption, if you will, and

let them know quickly who we are and what we do.   


We decided to write the copy ourselves. Being a 15 second video, aim for about 30-35 words.

We wanted to have a professional voiceover guy narrate, to give it that professional feel.

We paid a voiceover Freelancer $75 dollars, and he returned the recording back in a one day.


If you don't fancy writing your own script, you can look for a writer on Smoochit to

write the script for you.  Being a short video ad, you'll need to communicate your offer clearly and succinctly.


Smoochit - Awareness video ad script / 35 words


Need a promo video to boost online sales?


 Just Smoochit!


Go to Smoochit and find a video creator to make a sales driving video for your business today!


Smoochit; Video creator services at your fingertips.


Once we got the voiceover back, we launched our project and ended up working with four editors, as we wanted a few promo videos using the same brief to showcase what our Freelancers could do on a low budget.


The main thing you have to do is write a great brief to arm the video creators with as much information as possible. Having the voiceover track ensures the production doesn't stray too much from your concept. But as you will see in the videos below the right mix of editing, music and stock footage does make a big difference to the end result.


Below are the four videos the editors made


The total cost of each video was around $200. When you are ready to make

your own promo or ad, go to www.smoochit.net and sign up for a free account.


Smoochit Blog

Tips for creating a video marketing strategy

By Troy Logan • June 22, 2021
Tips for creating a video marketing strategy It's not easy figuring out how to create the perfect promo video or ad for your business and getting it in front of an audience that needs or wants it. Perhaps not knowing exactly what to do is even stopping you from making a promo video or ad and running paid social media ads to grow your business. Let's face it, social media is "pay-to-play" these days. Which means unless you are boosting posts or running ads, there is no guarantee your content is getting out to much more than a handful of your friends. If you're not running paid ads, you are missing the real opportunity that is available via social media. I know it’s unfair when algorithms change and we have to pay for something that was free. If we are going to be boosting posts, and paying to run social campaigns, the quality of the advertising needs to be professional in order to maximise results and not waste money. Once you get your video ad in front of the right audience, and it works on a small scale, it’s time to increase the ad spend and turn on a flow of customers. At Smoochit you can find all the Freelancer talent to make video ads or promos for your business. You can also find ad managers that can se tup and manage campaigns on all the major platforms. www.smoochit.net There are so many great platforms that can offer excellent targeting these days, such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, YouTube, to name a few. What are you waiting for? It can be as simple as making the right promo video and getting it in front of the right people at the right time with the right offer. A critical part of the equation is the structure of the ad you are going to make. Here are a few ad types and tips to get started. Info ad: talk about your product from the customer's perspective in a way that will interest them. If you sell a golf product, talk about something that will appeal to a passionate golfer. Then introduce your product in a relevant way. In some cases your audience needs a little education to learn about your product and how it can help them. Good marketing should be 80% about your audiences wants and needs and 20% about selling. Offer ad: This is best used if people are familiar with your product and they already know the features and benefits. You just have to target the people who already use the product. Problem solution ad: As the name suggests, tell people what problem in their life your product solves. For example, target parents with pain relief specifically for their children, explaining how children need pain relief designed for their age, special conditions and dosage size. 15 or 30 second spot ad: This is more like a traditional TV ad, where you need to draw in and keep the attention of your audience, as you don’t have much time. Decide on your message and make it memorable. Is it about bringing people together, making something easy or stating that you are the market leader? As a rule of thumb stick to about 30-40 words for a 15 second ad. Head on over to www.smoochit.net and create a free account and make your first promo video today! About the author: Troy Logan is the founder and CEO of Smoochit. Troy lives on the Gold Coast, Australia and is a father of two boys and has been a professional magician for over 20 years.Troy created Smoochit to help people find online success by connecting them to talented freelancers that make sales driving promo videos and ads. www.smoochit.io You can contact Troy at troy@smoochit.net for any general enquiries or getting a promo video on Smoochit.