Videos are a powerful tool for connecting with potential and existing customers. The most effective ones embrace the myriad advantages of the medium, incorporating a narrative, visuals, and audio that together create a lasting impression of a brand’s personality, mission, and value.
But before you get into video clips, camera angles, and product shots, you need a message that will resonate, inform, and entertain. To help you craft the best possible advertisements and mission videos for your businesses, we’re deconstructing real-life examples made with Adobe Spark, the easiest way to edit video, images, text, and sound into impactful animated videos. Here are 6 video tactics we found effective in real small business examples to help you jump-start your thinking on how to most effectively tell your brand’s story.
Connect your product to emotion
The most effective advertisers and storytellers know that people want to be moved. Buying decisions are often made from an emotional place so you need to present your brand as more than the product or service you’re pedaling. The smart video above from Persnickety Prints goes broad to tug at heartstrings, and it works. The focus on preserving memories and the importance of family (instead of, say, frame options and paper varieties) establishes an emotional connection with viewers, which is way more memorable. Identify the ways in which the service or product you provide resonates emotionally in the context of your customers’ lives and build your ad around that.
Show your team
In the same video, there are nice shots of the people who work on the products, lending a human face and suggesting great customer service without overtly touting it. It also kind of looks like a title sequence of a ’90s sitcom that presents teammates as a cast of characters, which works with the brand’s personality and tugs at people’s love of nostalgia. It’s fun to watch because the people seem authentic and sweet. The video clips used are composed nicely as well. Notice how the camera gets close to subjects and always presents something in the foreground to lend depth to the shot.
Related: 4 shots to master with your phone
Tell viewers what makes your business different
There are a lot of things working for this video: it’s energetic, it’s visually compelling, and it gets to the point quickly. The fact that it’s under 30 seconds and uses sparkling copy on screen means this video can work with or without sound across all social platforms to boot. But perhaps the best thing it does is answer one question for the viewer: why is this photo booth company better than all others? By focusing on their customizable backdrops, Oh So Vivant has provided viewers with a takeaway that is sure to last. Don’t overwhelm your audience with everything your company does right. Pick one thing you want to tout and then find visual ways to communicate it.
Leverage your brand messaging and imagery
Another area where this video thrives is in smart use of brand messaging, weaving the Oh So Vivant slogan into the narrative seamlessly as a CTA and integrating copy from the company’s website and social channels. The lesson here: don’t reinvent the wheel. If you have a great slogan that bolsters your brand’s voice and personality, insert it strategically in your video along with your logo and relevant hashtags.
Simply introduce yourself
The light-hearted, inviting tone of this charming video from NerdyCute makes it virtually impossible to not fall for this brand—regardless of your stance on stickers! The copy is conversational and accessible, and the choice of the Watercolor theme feels like a natural extension of the brand’s color palette and sensibility. Product display is minimal here, but viewers know the brand’s personality and oftentimes that’s what sticks.
Lead with problem then present solution
This video does a great job of outlining the company’s services, which it jumps into almost immediately using on-screen text. However, the ad is almost entirely focused on a solution with very little space given to exploring the problem. The first step to convincing people that they need your service is raise awareness for the problem that you’re solving. With a little reorganization (which happens to be as easy as rearranging slides in Spark Video), this video could more effectively set up the problem (cue heartbreaking imagery of lonely, neglected animals), thereby giving more value to the solution (Fetch! Pet Care).
And as a general rule, if you have an opportunity to use dogs and cats in videos, milk that! You are sitting on a goldmine!! You should be pumping your social feeds with cute, close shots turning your furry friends into virtual mascots for your brand. Even if your business is not pet-related, it’s worth seeing if you can find a way to communicate your brand message with funny or sweet animal videos. You can do this by thinking through the emotions you want to illicit in the first tip. The universal human experience is often best communicated through animals. #fact
Make yourself the hero of a story
If the business or product you want to promote is a labor of love or if it’s the result of a big life change, then tell that story! Everyone loves to hear about people who quit their desk jobs and pursued their passion. It’s also a great way to increase your personal brand and present yourself as an expert or thought leader.
Tactical Tips to Remember
- Instagram has a one-minute limit and oftentimes short content thrives on social.
- You must capture attention within the first 3 seconds. Leading with strong visuals help.
- Make sure the video works with the sound off. Text on screen can help you communicate with people who are consuming content without the sound.
Related: 16 tactical video creating tips that’ll save you time
Use a small business video to explain your company’s value to investors, place it on your website to convert users at higher rates, or create ads for social media. Try it for your small business with Spark Video today!