Now that you’re ready to make you promo video, one of the first things you need to do is prepare the concept. While you can get help from your production company, it is essential to have a strong idea about the message you want to convey. You can’t simply say, hey I want a video promoting cleaning supplies; you need a solid concept from which to build a spectacularly convincing pitch for these life-changing cleaning supplies. A bit like laying the foundations for building a house. So we’ve compiled a simple 6 step guide to show you exactly how to produce a killer concept.
Six Simple Steps to Creating a Thrilling Concept
1. Examine the current situation or problem: Take a look at the current landscape, find and address the problem. Do you find it hard to do your taxes? (I mean, who doesn’t?!) Do you find you spend too much time cleaning your ceiling fan?
2. How could you address this problem/Assess options: Next, outline the potential ways you ‘could’ solve the problem and subtly poke fun at competitors as they cannot fully address this stark issue. They never get those hard to reach places on that ceiling fan, am I right or am I right?
3. Give the ‘perfect’ solution: That’s you! Tell why your product or service or website can help with this pressing issue. With your product, you don’t have to stand on a chair to clean that ceiling fan! Also give a brief description of your product. In short, what exactly is it?
4. Explain the benefits of your product or service: Outline the benefits of your product and give the USP (that’s ‘unique selling points’). Talk about how your product is easy to understand and use, your product costs less, your product is higher value…you see where I’m going with this.
5. Outline the features of the product or service: We need to know how it works, so let us know the technology behind it; make it simplified for the average Joe. If you want, you can also add special features here (though you don’t have to).
6. Call us to action: Great, so what next? Don’t forget to tell the viewer how they should act on your very convincing pitch. Tell them how to sign up for the product. Get a coupon online? Get the free test trial and these stores? We are sheep, lead us to you.
Once you have the framework ready then you can get your creative juices flowing and create a ‘story’ around the frame work. You could use characters, first person, third person whatever. We get into that in more detail in a later blog post (so watch this space!)
There are so many educational videos online, it’s absolutely essential to make yours stick out. And timing matters! I don’t have time to watch your five minute video, I am busy and important. So keep the video between 60-90 seconds. Design is critical as well, so use lots of bright colors and simple shapes to promote a positive emotional tone. *Look for our visual design post next week to learn more about this.*
Hey, we all like simple things in the end, it helps us to understand. And since more and more companies are making a online videos, it is important to make yours easy to understand and stand out.
Now it’s quiz time. What, you thought school was over? Think again. After all, we need to make sure you were paying attention! I’m posting this video…can you name each step in the video concept used to produce this?
