How video ads can help you promote your business

Commercial videos can be a very cost-effective way to drive traffic to your site as long as you know how to a) target your audience and b) write a compelling script.

What are commercial videos?

These are short 30-60 videos use to advertise your business. Their goal is to introduce clients to your brand and intrigue them. The natural inclination when making a video is to fit the kitchen sink.

You may be thinking: “What if this extra feature is the one that wins over the client?” But it doesn’t work that way.  The audience watching your video is getting interrupted from something else, so they’re not open to the details of your message.

Make your message loud and clear. Which means: make it impactful and simple. Pick the one pain point that’s on your viewers’ mind and demonstrate your core differentiation and value proposition. If your offering has 3 features, consider showcasing only 1.  And the shorter the video the better.

How to structure your video?

The most important part of the video is the script. You’ve probably watched many beautifully made videos but at the end they leave with a feeling “what did I just watch… and why?”.

The most impactful video structure is built around the AIDA acronym: Attention -> Interest -> Desire -> Action. Start with an attention-grabbing pain point or value proposition.  Follow up with a basic explanation of what you do. Make your viewers want your solution by demonstrating the key benefits.  And finally make it urgent or easy for them to take the next step with a convincing call to action.

How to use a commercial video?

Commercials are often used at the top of the funnel to drive awareness and initial engagement. You can drive traffic through SEO, content marketing, SEM, and video ads.  They all cost money and you may have to test them to see what works best for your business.

SEO and content marketing are typically thought of as longer-term tactics. They take time to show any results but they build up and you don’t have to constantly pay for them. SEM and video ads on the other hand are shorter term and yield immediate results.  The challenge is that your competitors want these fast results too.

Many digital marketers now start with SEM and slowly transition to content marketing. SEM is seen as an unsustainable long-term strategy because everyone with a website bids up the same keywords until only a few business models are still profitable. If you’re one of the winners, great!  But do you want to bet the farm on that being the case?

So diversifying with content is a prudent approach. Another way to diversify – and often completely side-step the competition – is video ads. You can still target your audience very well (if you know what you’re doing, of course), and only a fraction of your competitors have video, let alone know how to use it effectively.

Video vs Search ads

The main difference? Lack of intent by the consumer. When someone types what they’re looking for on Google.com they have a much higher purchase intent. Whereas when they’re watching the latest song clip they may not be in the mood to watch a video ad.  Still, you get similar targeting.

The good news? You get that audience MUCH cheaper. With PPC costs sometimes running in the hundreds of dollars (for a single click!), having an alternative – much cheaper – way to drive traffic to your site can be an enormous competitive advantage in terms of lower customer acquisition costs and higher scalability.

Where to go from here?

If PPC is working for your business – even if it’s only somewhat working – but you’re seeing keyword costs climbing or you’d like to explore ways to lower your customer acquisition costs, video ads are a great option.

The first step is to hire a video production company to create the right video for your business, and then hire an agency to promote that video, with the outlook to eventually transition that function internally perhaps.