“What is commercial video production?”. The short and straightforward answer is it’s the making of a video that summarizes your product, service, or brand. What do commercial videos do? Well, that’s actually more of a loaded question…
The goal of a commercial video? To build brand awareness and motivate your target audience to act. These promotional videos can increase sales, boost your ROI, and – more importantly – help create customer loyalty and optimize your search engine results.
Commercial video production can benefit both your brand and your customers. Whether you are a large B2B or a small B2C, this article will dig into:
- Why commercial video production is important.
- What these types of videos should include.
- Why you should consider using commercial video production in your digital marketing efforts.
Why Is Commercial Video Production Important?
Commercial video production goes beyond producing 2-3 minute marketing videos. For example, if you produce a 10-minute training video for your company, then that’s considered commercial video production. Even creating a 1-hour infomercial would be considered commercial video production. Professional videography for an hour-long wedding video is not. The difference isn’t in the length of the commercial video, it lies in the objective.
Typically, the purpose is to increase sales for a business, and that intent is what qualifies it as a commercial video. Commercial and corporate videos can be used in a number of ways, for TV, video ads campaigns, social media videos, employee recruitment videos, and more. That said, whatever you use them for, the end goal should be the same: to make a deeper connection with your potential customers.
Remember, words are powerful. But you don’t want to just tell your viewers why your product or service is important. You want to show them. Take the time to use a brand video to introduce your brand, and explain why you do what you do.
- Why are you in business?
- What makes you care about it?
- More importantly, should they care about it?
What Should My Commercial Production Video Include?
In order to produce a top-notch, high-quality video, you need to answer a few questions. Here’s what you need to know before you begin the film production process:
- Understand who you’re trying to reach – Know exactly who your audience is and where they’re hanging out. Are they active on social media? If so, what platforms are they on? Which type of video content resonates with them?
- Refine your message and call to action (CTA) – Skip the corporate jargon and use language your audience understands. Also, make sure your CTA is crystal clear so that they know what you want them to do next and is measurable too. (i.e. learn more, schedule a call, add an item to the cart).
- Know what type of video you’ll be creating – What type of video is true to your brand and will resonate with your audience? (i.e. live-action tv commercials, talking head web commercials, animated explainer videos).
- Do location scouting – If you’re doing motion graphics, this won’t be necessary. But if you’re doing a live-action video, the location is crucial.
Key Elements That Make a Great Commercial Video
Authenticity is key to establishing trust with your audience and using stories is a great way to do this. Using testimonials or storytelling in commercial video production all starts with the storyboarding process.
Storyboarding starts in pre-production. This is where you’ll be able to weave storytelling into your video project, creating a deeper emotional connection with your viewers. You and the production team will determine:
- Your primary focus.
- What happens in your video.
- The number of shots and the order they’ll appear.
Storyboarding is one of the important parts of the creative process since, well, storytelling sells. That said…
Yes, sales are great, but what’s even more important is building relationships customer loyalty. What you’re doing is creating lasting relationships with customers who will follow your brand, like and share your posts, refer you to their friends, and feel like they are part of your family.
Get Your Viewers’ Attention, Fast!
Remember, the attention span of your viewers is short. You only have about 5-8 seconds to grab your audience’s attention before shiny-object syndrome kicks in. This is exactly why you need to encourage them to stick around right off the bat with an engaging hook. However, no matter how engaging your video is, there’s always a chance someone will click off at the early stages. Our recommendation?
Represent your brand and incorporate your key points as best you can at the beginning. That way, if a user does skip ahead early on in your video, they’ll still get to the key points and remember you. This might take a bit of creative thinking on how to do so, but it’s something to consider.
Should My Business Use a Commercial Video?
According to 93% of marketers, video is an invaluable component of their marketing strategy. If you can believe it, that’s the highest percentage of any year since 2015, up from 92% from just a year ago (2020!).
In a video-centric world, 87% of video marketers claim that video has a positive ROI, so in our humble opinion, incorporating video is a no-brainer.
How Much Does Commercial Video Production Cost?
If you go through a corporate video production company (aka a business) with a team that provides full services from pre-production to post-production services and video editing) this question is probably at the forefront of your mind: Is this a high-end video production service cost-effective?
The answer depends on factors like video style, the number of videos, video length, and production method. At Levitate, the averages for one-minute animated videos are generally in the $5,000 to $10,000 range as standalone productions.
Key Points to Remember
Before we sign off, there are a few main takeaways we want you to keep in mind.
- Create an emotional connection with your viewers through storytelling.
- Just in case your viewers click off early, make sure you get all your main points in the first half of the video.
- Whether written or a spoken voiceover, include a CLEAR call to action.
- Make sure you take full advantage of your platform (e.g. if you’re posting on YouTube, use overlays to optimize your video).
If you are looking for a video production agency, like Levitate Media, we’ve produced over 10,000 live and animated videos for clients in a wide variety of industries. Already have a production department within your organization? No problem! With our nationwide network, we have the ability to execute live video shoots that would otherwise be costly or time-consuming for in-house employees. Some of our largest accounts are with Enterprise organizations where we directly support in-house video / creative teams.
Want to learn more about using a commercial video production company? Contact our video production team today!
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