What Makes a Good Video Advertisement? – 5 Essential Tips

Video is now the number 1 source of information for 66% of people. Furthermore, 500,000 people watch at least 1 Facebook video every single day. This means when it comes to advertising, video should be at the top of your agenda.

Whilst this may seem like a daunting task exposing the insides of your business to the world, its now more affordable than ever to shoot a very high quality video at home with your mobile phone.

But what makes a video advertisement good? What turns views into sales? What makes a video viral?

These questions have likely crossed your mind, so we are here as your loyal digital marketing consultants to give you everything you need to know.

There are 5 essential elements to making a good video advertisement:

1. Highlight a problem
2. Focus on the first 5 seconds
3. Tailor specifically to your audience
4. Include a clear call-to-action
5. Get the music right

1. Highlight a problem

Every idea begins with a challenge, and every great product or service solves a problem for your target consumer. For example:

• Eating heathy food can be boring and time consuming – HelloFresh solved that.
• Finding great days out in new places is time consuming – Trip Advisor solved that.
• Gyms are closed and I am lacking motivation to workout at home – Peloton solved that.

So think about what your product or service solves for your target audience and place that at the heart of your video, preferably earlier in the video rather than later.

Remember, sometimes its not always about solving a physical problem, sometimes its about solving a psychological problem – making your customer feel better, more confident or not fearful of something: watch any insurance advert and you will see what I mean.

Take this advert by Always, it solves a confidence problem and offers empowerment:

Focus on the first 5 seconds

Thanks to video-based social media like TikTok and Instagram, attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter especially for young people. Before you can even convert, you need to earn the attention of your audience.

Considering the average person is seeing up to 10,000 adverts every day, you’ve got some competition so make those first 5 seconds as attention grabbing as possible.

Here are some tips for what you can include in those valuable first moments:

• Eye contact with the viewer
• Personal pronouns (you, you’re, you are)
• Mention the problem you’re trying to solve

My favourite example, is this advert from Dollar Shave Club. Notice how their founder Michael Dubin is constantly moving towards you, constantly keeping eye contact and explains the product all in less than 10 seconds:

3. Tailor specifically to your audience

And don’t try and be all things to all people. It’s very easy to try and satisfy everyone’s taste in the hope of making yourself accessible but you will end up with a low conversion rate as a result.

You want to create what is known as a ‘Buyer Persona’. This involves creating a character for your market, understanding their needs, their dislikes, their attention span and most importantly their problem you can solve.

Once you have developed your buyer persona, use it to tailor these 3 elements of your video:

1. The pace of the video
2. Actors or models used
3. Length of video

Take that Dollar Shave Club example, they are clearly targeting a young male market with a low to medium income. The video is fast-paced, includes majority male characters and delivers its solution in under 10 seconds.

4. Include a clear-call-action

And preferably only ever use one. A call-to-action is a way for your customer to act on what they’ve seen – they’re convinced by what you offer and they want to purchase, sign-up or simply learn more.

It’s worth going further than just offering the purchase, why not try including an incentive such as:

1. Sign up with this link and receive your first month free
2. Purchase now to save 25%
3. Get exclusive early access by signing up before Friday

As standard practice we A/B split test different call-to-actions for our clients, this way we can see which option generates the most conversions and use that call-to-action going forward.

For example, Hootsuite offer a 30 day free trial with their software to get you hooked and relying on it. Shaw Academy offer free content if you sign up to an online course that very same day – a great way to create urgency.

5. Get the music right

TikTok has been one of the biggest benefactors from the pandemic, with Q2 of 2021 offering their best growth yet surging by over 16% to 205 million users. That’s an incredible amount of growth.

For video advertising this means music plays a bigger part than ever in your video, especially if you are looking to target a younger audience.

Who better to provide an example than the advertising masters Apple themselves. This TikTok advert for the Apple Watch syncs the music with the use of features on the watch providing a visual display that is hard to swipe past:

Music has a profound impact on how our brain consumes information. By synching the music to the movement of your video, you can actually increase the speed at which your viewers read the text in your advert, fitting more information into even less time.

In Conclusion…

Getting your audience right is your first step, from there its all about the ‘A’ game: attention.

Combine and consider all 5 steps above and you’ll soon by on your way to creating not just good, not great, but infectious video advertisements which generate sales for your business.

If you are interested in getting your video advertising off the ground, visit our video advertising page here.

For more great digital marketing tips, visit our digital marketing blog.

Written by Aled Nelmes for ThisIsUs.Digital.