Building Brand Hype: A How-To Guide on Promo Videos...

It’s been proven that video is the way to approach online marketing, with research showing that a staggering 85% of consumers are more willing to buy a product after watching a video about it.

With so many other brands and companies jumping aboard the video marketing train, if you don’t adapt and take advantage of the ever-growing importance of video in your digital marketing campaigns, you run the risk of being left behind and losing out on customers.

Hype videos are a great tool in any marketer’s arsenal to help build up a buzz around your brand, product, or company—and a vital piece of the digital marketing funnel.

At Explainify, videos are our specialty. Let’s explore promotional videos for business and brands: we’ll cover everything from what a promotional video is, to some helpful tips on how to make them, as well as some examples of the best corporate promos video campaigns to help you create the best promotional teaser videos for your brand.

What Are Promo Videos?

Think of promo videos as hype videos—videos that are meant to catch a potential customer’s eyes immediately and keep their attention. Promo videos aren’t exactly meant to seal the deal and immediately convert a potential customer, but rather they’re often used as the first part of a multi-step video marketing funnel.

The perfect kind of promo video is often a brand video, as brand videos serve as a short, punchy introduction to a brand to tease viewers into wanting more, as well as making potential customers more aware of a brand.

Think of it this way: promo videos and teaser trailers are often made for films and video games as part of the overall marketing funnel. They’re used to build hype for more videos and marketing down the road. Deliberately, they might be a bit vague and mysterious to build intrigue, and they often feature a call-to-action to go to a website or engage with the brand and set people up to want more information.

These teaser videos are used to create buzz and anticipation for not only more content, but longer, more in-depth videos and coverage.

You can do the same for products and services. You can build initial hype, and in doing so, create anticipation, allure, and promise of more to come.

Why You Should Use Promo Videos

We’ve talked about what a promotional video is, so now let’s cover the benefits of creating a promotional video for business marketing campaigns.

As we’ve already alluded to, video content is absolutely massive. Don’t just take our word for it. The marketing research backs it up:

Video as a marketing tool has exploded over the last year, skyrocketing from 63% to 81% (Hubspot). This means you could fall behind other brands if you don’t integrate a strong video presence in your marketing campaigns.
People spend more and more time on their phones, and it shows, with mobile video consumption going up by 100% every year (Insivia). This means you have a great opportunity to find new customers on this platform. 75% of all videos watched are also watched on mobile devices (eMarketer), which means you need to embrace short-form video and promo videos are a great way to do it.
It’s predicted that by 2022, online videos will take up 82% of consumer internet traffic, which is 15 times higher than it was five years prior in 2017 (Cisco).
55% of people consume videos every day, whilst 78% consume them weekly (HubSpot).
Users view more than 1 billion hours of video each day on YouTube (YouTube), which makes it the second most popular site on the Internet behind Google (Alexa).
The difference between being able to retain information in text format vs. video format is absolutely mind-blowing, with only 10% of info retained via text, compared to an impressive 95% via video (Insivia).
72% of customers prefer to learn about a service via video (HubSpot).
92% of mobile video watchers end up sharing the video with others (Wordstream), which means the potential for ROI is absolutely massive.

Video content is huge, and it’s been proven that it works. Consumers don’t just want but often expect video content, so it’s best to embrace video in your digital marketing campaigns and do it well, so you don’t get left behind.

How, When, and Where to Use a Promotional Teaser

We’ve covered what a promotional video is and why you should use one to take your digital marketing for your brand to the next level. Now let’s talk about how you can effectively use them, and in turn, when and where to use them.

When talking about the “how”, we’re talking both about the technical qualities of how you should use a promotional video for your digital marketing campaign, as well as how to best use them to build up hype for your brand or product effectively.

We’ll start first with the technical details of how to use your promotional teaser videos, as that ties in with the when.

These promotional videos for business marketing campaigns are hype videos, after all, and they’re best used at the beginning of a video marketing cycle or video marketing funnel. There are different kinds of hype videos which we’ll touch on that you can utilize later in the video marketing funnel cycle, but, in the strictest sense of the term of a “hype video”, often these promotional teaser videos are used at the beginning of a video marketing cycle to build interest and awareness.

Because of the nature of the videos, and because they’re meant to hype customers up, these videos are often short and to the point. You’re not going into great depth about every aspect of your product. You’re just getting the word out there and trying to catch people’s attention so that they’re familiar with your brand/product, and as the video marketing cycle goes on, it becomes easier to hook potential customers.

For example, we’ve talked about brand videos and how they can be great videos to help hype your brand up. Explainer videos are another great kind of hype video that explains to customers what it is your product, service, or brand does and what differentiates it from the competition.

Explainer videos cut out all of the fluff and get down to the nitty-gritty of what’s important about your brand, product, or service, making it a great asset in introducing people to you, and creating hype.

Explainer videos, and brand videos and hype videos in general, are great tools to lead people, to literally funnel them into the next step of a video marketing funnel, like a product video. A product video is a type of explainer video that goes into greater detail about what a product actually does and what sets it apart, in greater detail. It may also even feature a demonstration of that product.

Without a strong foundation of a best-in-class promotional video before a product video, the product video doesn’t work. You can’t simply introduce people to a product and demonstrate it to them without them being aware of your company/brand because they don’t have a built-in sense of loyalty to you. They’ll simply wonder why they should care.

A strong promotional video is the first building block, the glue that holds a successful video marketing funnel campaign together. Every subsequent video after a promotional video flows effortlessly from the promotional teaser and builds off of it.

That brings us to the “when.” Generally, using a promotional video at the beginning of a video marketing funnel cycle is the most effective time: your teaser will hopefully cast as wide a net as possible, then reel people in, and funnel them towards your next video as the focus narrows.

So, where do you use a promotional teaser?

Websites/Landing Pages: Using a promotional video on a website’s landing page is a great way to build hype for your brand or product. It’s a great way to introduce people to you and do it effectively. As we mentioned, it’s been proven that most people prefer video over text, so a striking landing page with a strong promotional video says everything you need to say without cluttering a page and segues well into the rest of your marketing plan.
Email Blasts: Marketing emails are a great way to directly speak to your customers, and it’s been proven through research that people are more willing to open emails with video content in them. Even consider adding something like “[WITH VIDEO]” or “[VIDEO CONTENT]” in the subject line.
Social Media Platforms: Social networks like Instagram or Twitter are great platforms for short-form, viral, and highly-shareable content. Promotional teasers are great for this medium.

The Different Types of Promo Videos

Social Media Ads:

Social media advertising is arguably the biggest type of advertising you can do in your digital marketing campaign, with the best chance of getting as many people to watch your promotional video as possible. When a lot of people watch a promotional video, it also means that there’s potential for a lot of people to share it and for your promotional teaser to go viral.

We’ll break down several of the most popular social media sites and what kind of videos work for them.

Facebook:
There’s a bit more leeway with Facebook ads than other social media platforms when it comes to length, but you still want to keep your videos short and punchy. Facebook has a huge, broad audience, so Facebook can also be a great place to explore slightly longer-form videos and get into hype videos that tell more of a story and explore a bit more about your brand or product. More traditional brand videos are great for Facebook due to its more lax restrictions on video length.

This PUMA ad on Facebook is a great example of building hype for the product. In general, PUMA does an amazing job of hyping itself up as a brand on social media, and its Facebook page has many styles of videos at wildly different lengths. It also knows its strengths and smartly relies on celebrities and athletes to build brand recognition without solely relying on them to build it. This ad in particular marries fast cuts and vibrant animation with Usain Bolt, who is known for being fast, as he’s a world-record-holding runner and all-around pop-culture icon. The ad builds around what people know about Usain Bolt and strongly associates Bolt with PUMA. It says so much through clever animation rather than over-explaining everything.
This PUMA ad on Facebook is another great example of saying a lot without an over-reliance on words. It’s just a fun, cheeky bit of animation highlighting well-known sports stars, then sells the product at the end.

Instagram:
Instagram is a bit more restrictive than Facebook, as they have a limit of two minutes video ads on their platform, meaning you have to get your message out there immediately. Instagram videos also generally focus more on the social community of Instagram, utilizing influencers and interacting with the community, rather than relying on more “traditional” methods that resemble ads you may see on television. Instagram ads are a great way to use influencers to hype products more so than an overall brand. We’ve mentioned traditional product videos, but Instagram is a great way to show off product hype videos, which are very similar but focus less on exact details and more so on simply selling the product. Getting an influencer on your side can be a great way to build brand hype as it allows access to their followers and fans. And you can most certainly infuse a promotional teaser with some great animation and editing to step them up to the next level and set your videos apart. Instagram also allows for still images too, and there’s a lot to explore when it comes to embracing still images. Instagram is also often the perfect way to build hype via still images for your products and embrace product shots as part of a multi-step marketing funnel.

This 13 Reasons Why ad is a great Instagram ad because it utilizes the format perfectly: it gets to the point and intrigues people. It uses simple text and an image in an interesting way. It’s a great, effective way to build hype for the show. Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with making the audience do some work to find out more.

Snapchat/TikTok:
We’re putting Snapchat and TikTok together because they share very similar sensibilities, in the sense that these videos are very, very short, so they’re great to build more hype and appeal to a younger demographic. A good sales video, which can cover a wide range of brand or product videos, goes a long way. Snapchat is unique in that, and if you get lucky and have the budget, you can also collaborate with Snapchat to create special filters. Many companies have done this to great effect in their marketing campaigns.

YouTube:
YouTube is a broader social media platform and one that, like Instagram, can focus more on community rather than strictly selling products. Having a strong YouTube presence is key. Using YouTube to create a series of videos is also a great way to build brand hype.

This YouTube video from Beardbrand is a great video that showcases a different way to build brand hype: educational videos. The video smartly positions Beadrbrand, identifies its niche, then builds a dialogue with its consumer base, so it feels like they’re part of a conversation—and it does it all in a short format. Keeping their videos short also means they can cut them down to different formats like Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, and re-use them all without having to create new videos for each platform. This is a great example of a PR video that builds a campaign of beard care and positions Beardbrand as experts in beard care. There are many other examples of PR campaigns for social justice, too, like this Nike ad with Colin Kaepernick. Associating your brand with social movements not only helps humanize your brand, but also is great to get involved with social movements. Now, more than ever, consumers are smart and demand more of brands and corporations, and it’s vital to not just sell, sell, sell, but be part of ongoing, important conversations.

Tips for Nailing Your Promo Video

We’ve covered the how, why, when, and even the wheres of strong promotional videos for business and hopefully given you the building blocks from which to learn and put all of this advice into practice and go out on your own.

So let’s give you some key tips to remember to create a guaranteed hit of a promotional video.

Keep It Short. Know your audience, and know them well. Know exactly what you need to say, and say it quickly. With so many distractions, you need to get people’s attention quickly and keep it.
Front-Load Your Content. Building off of the last point, frontloading your content is a great way to make sure that people hear all of the most vital information immediately and retain that information before their attention span wanes.
Have Fun! Make your videos interesting, dynamic, and fun. Make them goofy. Embrace fun, and make your videos stand out.
Humanize It. Remember to appeal to people’s emotions.
Build Video That Can Flow. That means making videos that you know can move freely between different social media platforms with little to no work. If you make a two-minute video for Facebook, create it so that you can easily edit it down to 45 seconds for Instagram. Doing this will save you a lot of work in the long run. Create visually striking stills and images you can take from videos and make into Instagram stills, and so on.
Stay on Brand. Know your aesthetic and keep things cohesive. Make sure that all of your content on all of your social media platforms looks like it’s part of the same story.
Nail that CTA. Arguably the CTA is the most important part of the video, so make sure that your CTA is strong, and use a consistent CTA across multiple social media platforms.

Another thing to always keep in mind: in a sea of promotional teaser videos you need to stand out. A great way to stand out is through animation, as it catches the eye and offers people a new, exciting, vibrant way of looking at content. It also can be a great tool in your video marketing campaign to help spice up live-action content and elevate your promotional video to the next level.

Now that we’ve given you a lot of tips on how to create a killer promotional teaser, you’ve still got a lot of work to do.

You need to identify your audience and write and edit a script that you know will speak to them. You need to produce your video and edit it. You may need to record audio voice overs. You may need to learn how to animate. Or possibly pay premium prices to do all of these things. You may need new software and hardware and pile up expenses you hadn’t even considered before! The point is: a lot goes into producing a corporate promo video or promotional teaser.

If that sounds like a lot of work, don’t worry. Explainfy has expert teams that work exclusively on promotional videos for small businesses as well as companies of all sizes. We’re here to help. We can consult at any stage of production, or take all of the responsibility of creating a promotional teaser off of your shoulders and deliver a complete video from start to finish.

Whatever your needs, budget, and timeline, we’ll work with you to create a killer promo video. Get in touch, and we’ll figure out how to make a video you—and your audience—will love!

Building Brand Hype: A How-To Guide on Promo Videos