This article has been contributed by Gaurav Belani.

Content marketing is one of the top tools used by most businesses to promote their products and services.

Most businesses start with blogging, but with today’s level of competition, it’s difficult to get consumers’ attention with just blog content.

This is where videos come in. Videos are highly visually appealing and can stop users in their tracks and hook them into engaging with your brand.

However, for most people, the process of creating a video – especially a video on a budget – can be daunting. Starting with idea conception, to scriptwriting and video production can seem complicated and expensive.

But luckily, creating a super engaging promotional video on a shoestring budget is definitely possible. Better yet, there are tools out there that can make video creation a total breeze for beginners.

Be it for your landing page, YouTube, or any other social media platform, promotional videos can be game-changing for your brand’s visibility.

If you’re wondering how you can create a promotional video on a small budget – and with little or no experience, then this step-by-step guide is for you.

1. Determine Your Goals and Objectives

The first step to creating a promotional video for your business is determining your goals and objectives.

What is it that you want to achieve from this promotional video? Your entire video marketing strategy and script lies in the answer to this question, even when you’re creating a video on a budget.

The goal for creating this promotional video may be any of the following:

• Increase the visibility or authority of your brand
• Introduce your products or services to your target audience
• Urge users to take action (generate more sales)
• Promote a new line of products
• Increase customer engagement

The conception of your promotional video will depend on the goal that you want to achieve. The script of a video to increase sales may be entirely different from the one to raise brand awareness.

If you have more than one goal in mind, consider creating a different promotional video for each goal.

2. Decide the Type of Promotional Video

Based on the goals you want to achieve using your promotional video, you should also decide on the type of video you want to create. This also depends on your offering and your business goals.

Here are some examples of the type of promotional video that you might want to create:

• An introductory video that introduces your brand to your target audience and talks about your brand’s mission
• An informational video that educates your audience on some relevant topic
• An explanatory video that gives a demo of your products or services
• A video that talks about customer success stories and acts as social proof for viewers
• A video that talks about a certain problem and offers a solution for that problem
• Or a video that strongly urges users to take some action in favor of your business.

This step will help you further create a strategy for your promotional video.

Also, now is a good time to decide how you’ll go about making the video. There are a lot of low budget and beginner-friendly tools that can get the job done, like Boosted.

3. Create Your Strategy

Once you’ve decided upon the goal and the type of promotional video you want to create, the next step is to create your video’s strategy.

You should first consider the platforms where you’d want to promote your video. This can be your website homepage or landing page. Adding a promotional video to landing and sales pages has proven to increase conversions.

You can also consider promoting your videos on different social media platforms. You can promote the video organically or using social media ads. Promoting your video through YouTube ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, etc., can prove highly effective for achieving your goals.

Your video’s duration and tone will depend on the platform you want to use for promotions. You should also keep in mind the budget that you can allocate for the production of the video.

4. Decide on the Video’s Hook and Tone

If you closely observe promotional videos on social media platforms, you’d notice that most have a definite tone and a hook to them. These elements are also an important part of any promotional video and may determine the viewers’ overall response.

Though the tone of a video may not seem important, it plays a significant role in the way your audience perceives your brand and takes action. The tone of your promotional video can be humorous, formal, conversational, urgent, inspirational, entertaining, fun, emotional, etc.

While picking a tone for your video, ensure that it aligns with your brand’s overall tone. If your brand’s tone is usually more informal and humorous, then creating a video with a serious tone may not work out well for you.

For example, BuzzFeed, the well-known news and entertainment brand, does a great job writing a script that takes all the classic living-with-a-puppy stories and turns them into a delightful (promotional) video of a man and his dog living together.

It’s entertaining in nature (like BuzzFeed) and strikes the right chord without looking like a product placement ad for Purina (which it is).

Having a definite hook for your promotional video will also help you create a video that is unique and resonates well with your audience. A hook is a direction to your video that makes it unique and different from your competitors.

For example, if you’re an environmentally friendly brand, then you may use this as a hook to stand out amongst other brands. Having a quirky element or highlighting a value proposition may also act as the hook to your video.

5. Decide on the Format of the Video

Before creating the script for your promotional video, you must also decide on the style of video you’d want to go for. The format of your promotional video can be stock video, video with real people who enact a script, animated video, screencast video, etc.

The format of the video that you’d like to use will also depend on other factors such as your budget. For example, if you’ve allocated a higher budget for the promotional video, you can consider hiring actors who enact your video script.

If you are on a smaller budget, then you may want to go for a stock video format that can be used as a video for your voice-over script.

6. Create the Outline for Your Promotional Video

By now, you’d have a fair idea about how your promotional video will look like. Next, you can start creating a rough outline for your promotional video. You can start by creating a rough draft of your video script.

While creating your promotional video outline, you can start brainstorming about the following elements that would be an essential part of the final video:

• Characters: Depending on the type, tone, and format of your promotional video, you must start creating a rough sketch of the different characters that would be a part of it.
• Storyline: If your video has a storyline to it, you should create a rough outline of the story. Think about the beginning, the middle, and the end of the story.
• Scenes: Based on the storyline and the characters, you’d want to create a rough sketch of the different scenes that would be a part of your promotional video. Creative visualization and taking inspiration from other videos may be of great help here.
• Products/services: If your promotional video involves the direct promotion of your products and services, you must determine how they fit your scenes and storyline.
• Voice over: The audio, background music, or the voice-over are other important things that you must determine before beginning with the final video script.
• Call-to-action: Having a CTA for your promotional video is very important. A CTA doesn’t always have to be about urging your audience to purchase your products and services. It can also be a message or food for thought. Think about how you want the viewers to feel after they watch your promotional video. What do you want them to do after they finish watching? Think about answers to these questions and add a CTA at the end.

Image source – Wave Video

Based on the above-mentioned elements, you can create a rough outline of how you want your promotional video to look.

7. Gather Feedback

Once you have your outline ready, it’s a good idea to gather feedback on it. Having fresh sets of eyes look at your outline may help to make the script even better. You can gather feedback from your peers and superiors.

Ensure that you ask at least a few people for their feedback. Also, make sure that the feedback that you receive is specific enough for you to make changes to the script. It is good to keep an open mind so that the final promotional video turns out to be great.

You can also go through multiple iterations of the outline and gather feedback for each one so that you’re very sure about the script for your final video.

8. Create the Script for the Video

After your outline for the promotional video is ready, you can go ahead with the final video script creation process. Your video script can be as simple as a final and more detailed version of the outline. Or, you can also hire a professional to create a video script.

Here are some elements that you must consider including in your video script:

• The scenes that would be a part of the video
• A detailed description of the scenes along with other important details such as props used, text overlay, location of the scene, characters involved, etc.
• Timestamps of the scenes in the video script
• Audio or voice-over script for every scene

9. Create the Promotional Video

Finally, you can start creating a promotional video for your brand. This step is where you bring your script to life. For this step, a video-making software solution would be extremely helpful and make everything much simpler for you.

For this step, consider going for a budget-friendly video-making solution, as mentioned in Step 2. You can find tools that are specially designed for people who have little experience and expertise in this area.

Here’s how you can use one to create a promotional video for your business using an online tool.

a. Pick a Template of Your Choice

Once you’ve signed up for an account, start by choosing a template for your promotional video. Boosted, for example, offers various genres to pick from, making things easy and professional.

b. Select the Size for Your Video

Once you’ve picked a template, decide on the size of the video. For example, the size of an Instagram story video is different to a YouTube ad.

c. Make Edits to Your Template

If you want to add your own video footage or any stills, upload your video or choose from a variety of stock videos available in the tool’s image library. You can make edits to various sections of the video template by adding or removing these video clips.

d. Choose the Right Background Music

Next, add the background score for the video. Upload your own music or voice-over or, you select music of your choice from the available library.

e. Add Custom Branding to Your Promotional Video

Once your promotional video is ready, customize it to fit your branding. You can do this by choosing your brand’s color palette, making changes to the font and uploading your logo.

Finally, your promotional video is ready! Export the video and publish it on any social media platform of your choice.

Get Ready to Make a Video on a Budget for Your Brand

Now you know how simple it is to create a promotional video on a budget for your business. With the right strategy and tools, you can create super engaging videos and promote them on all possible platforms. This will help you improve brand awareness, increase sales, and generate more revenue for your business.

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About the author: Gaurav Belani is a senior SEO and content marketing analyst at Growfusely, a content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO. He likes sharing his knowledge in a wide range of domains ranging from eCommerce web design, startups, social media marketing to human capital management and much more.