If you’re looking to advertise your small business and want to do so cheaply, a video ad could be the perfect solution. Making video ads has become a simple affair today with online ad makers and editing software. A beautifully produced ad can get your message across quickly and creatively to your audience.
People are increasingly turning to YouTube for answers. That’s because YouTube is among the largest search engines globally, second only to Google. In addition, it has more than one billion users who watch over 100 million hours of video each day. As a result, one out of every five minutes, the content watched online is on YouTube—it makes about six billion hours per month!
If you want your small business to succeed in today’s digital market, create video ad campaigns using a promo video maker. Start creating content that will attract your audience and keep them coming back for more.
Ad makers can be easily accessed online. If you run a business, you can keep the ad maker on your website. It will ensure that you have a central location for all your videos, rather than creating videos and then trying to find a home for them on YouTube or another site.
When choosing a video ad maker or a promo video maker, look for one that offers the following:
- Free registration so you don’t have to worry about creating an account before you can use it
- An easy-to-learn ad maker platform that allows even non-technical individuals to create impactful videos
Here are five strategies that you can use to create a video ad and attract prospective customers:
1. Know Your Audience
We’ve all seen ads that seem to be targeted toward everyone. For example, a TV commercial shows someone playing a video game with a small child and an adult in the background with their arms folded who looks bored. Or a commercial with a woman sitting on the couch who seems to be in a real funk and is holding her head in her hands, looking dazed. Such ads speak directly to the consumers by using words that are universal, such as, ‘girl’, ‘summer’, and ‘beach’. However, it doesn’t mean you want to sound like everyone else.
The entire point of creating an ad is to stand out from the crowd. Therefore, instead of creating an ad with generic words and phrases, you should use words and phrases that speak directly to your target audience. For example, if you’re a hair salon located on a college campus, you’ll want to use words like ‘student discount’ and ‘college student’ in your video ad instead of words like ‘beauty’ or ‘women’.
2. Keep It Short
As people rely more and more on mobile technology for information, their attention span keeps getting shorter and shorter. So if you want your ad to be seen, you have to be quick. That’s why it’s important to keep your ad less than two-minutes long. Keep your video focused on the benefits of the product or service you are offering, and don’t let the viewer start thinking about anything else or get bored.
“We are a culture that has been trained to have short attention spans,” says Jon Gross, co-founder of The Outline. “I do not doubt that a significant portion of Generation Z (21 and under) will be more prone to this.”
Gross is right. According to the Global Web Index, people spend more time online than ever before, with the average millennial spending 13 hours per week on social media alone. But even if you aren’t a millennial (like many small business owners who use video ads for marketing), people are still watching fewer videos.
AdWeek recently reported that while people watch more content on social media platforms, they spend less time viewing them. For example, in 2018, people watched 18% less time on Facebook and YouTube. That’s a significant decline in viewership for any video platform!
3. Use Animations
People are interested in stories that include a conflict along with some outcome. If you want people to pay attention to your video, have a storyline that involves hardship and a happy ending. Let them learn how you overcame adversity.
Animations can quickly get your message across and make your video more entertaining. This is why popular apps like Snapchat, Vine and YouTube use animations in their videos. They want to get their message across as quickly and efficiently as possible without losing subscribers. You can use ad makers to create a storyline that involves an unhappy situation and then show how you came out on top. Use animations on your ad maker to simulate this experience.
While you should keep your ad short and focused on the benefits of your business, you must also include some simple animations throughout the video to keep it interesting for your viewers. Suppose you’re selling a product made in America. In that case, you may frame the ad showing only an American flag when talking about how great it is manufactured in America. You can include a couple of brief animations that show people enjoying the product in various ways.
4. Be Expansive
Your ad becomes effective when you talk about who you are. To sell more products, more and more small businesses are advertising themselves by using ‘you’ instead of ‘we’. For example, instead of saying ‘we provide exceptional service’, say ‘you deserve to be treated like royalty’. It is a clear and powerful way to get your message across quickly. When you say things like this, people will remember what your business does right away, and they might recollect it when they have time to think about it again.
5. Get Creative
Creating an ad helps send your message across as quickly and efficiently as possible. However, to do this, you have to have something interesting to offer in the first place. It can mean including a video or animation that serves as your introduction. It can also mean creating a visual image or illustration of what you are offering so that it will jump off the page. For example, a simple drawing of a hand holding a product up in the air may be all it takes to grab attention.
Another way to get people to pay attention to your video ad is to be creative with the background music. You can add suitable music to your video using an ad maker.
Conclusion
Whether you’re a major movie studio or small business, sometimes it will happen that people decide they don’t have time to watch your video ad. That is why you have to use some creativity. Instead of letting people’s minds wander during the ad, present content that immediately grabs their attention, and they do not get tempted to click away.
