How to Make A Promotional Video

It’s easy to make a commercial video to show your business or whatever it is you’re trying to promote, but there are ways you can make your promo video a LOT better! Today I thought I’d share a magic formula using three powerful ingredients:

✓ The A-roll
✓ The B-roll
✓ Music

Just last year, I put on an event to help my clients create promotional videos, and in the promo video for THAT event, I explained the difference between A-roll and B-roll. In the video above, I also explained how important music is – its effect, how to use it, and where to get just the right music to use to deliver your promo video effectively.

When creating a video, we usually have two or more video tracks. The main track that has the audio is the A-track or the A-roll, and the video track is the B-roll. In the above video, I showed an example that shows the use of two tracks:

The interview is the A-roll.
The footage of the speaker talking onstage is the B-roll.

There you’ll see how it switches back and forth and how that makes the video so much better.

Now that you know the difference between A-roll and B-roll and why they’re both important, let’s talk about what is good to use as A-roll or as that main content for your video. For the A-roll, you can write up a presentation and give that presentation on camera. It’s what’s typically used in promotional videos. But there are other things you can do as well. And that’s INTERVIEWS!

Now, in interviews, you DO NOT look at the camera! When someone is interviewing you, you’re looking off to the side and not directly at the camera. You’re looking in the eyes of your interviewer. Don’t have scripted interviews! If you sound scripted, you just come off the wrong way. It’ll sound too rehearsed; maybe professional yet unnatural. You want your interviews to be conversational.

I recommend filming for 15 minutes of an interview so that you can wiggle that down to a 2 or 3-minute A-roll for your marketing video, your promo video.

I recommend filming for 15 minutes of an interview so that you can wiggle that down to a 2 or 3-minute A-roll for your marketing video, your promo video.

Another thing that works really well for A-rolls is TESTIMONIALS. Testimonials are one of my favorite forms of A-roll. It immediately addresses the audience’s need for variety as you’re able to show different people giving out their testimonials. Visually, it gives your viewers’ eyes a breather.

If you have an event that you’re putting on, and you’ve got a lot of your clients there, get testimonials from them towards the end of that event so that they can talk about the transformation that they experienced. I got a whole other video that I’ve made about how to get good testimonials.

Now let’s talk about B-roll.

What is B-roll and why is it so important to put in your promotional videos?

Well, there’s several wonderful reasons!

• It adds a whole bunch of credibility.
• It keeps people’s attention.
• It can increase the comprehension of all the things you talk about in the video.

B-rolls help build your credibility as a speaker/coach/trainer or whatever your career is. It adds a whole bunch of credibility to your videos. So if you’ve got A-roll testimonials or you’re being interviewed or there’s some type of presentation, having it switched over so they’re still listening to you, but now they’re looking at you speaking on the stage, and they’re SEEING YOU IN ACTION, it simply adds a whole other level of credibility even if you’re not typically giving them keynote speaking presentations.

Let’s say you’re a coach who works one on one with people or over the phone, and they’re watching a video of YOU and they see you SPEAKING ONSTAGE as they’re learning about your coaching business, they’ll think “Wow, this person is an expert!”.

B-roll gets people engaged. It keeps them from straying from your video. Instead of having them watch the same type of shot the whole time, instead of just looking at that person the whole time, a B-roll allows the viewers eyes to look at something else. Our brains have gotten accustomed to that. We need to have things change to keep our attention in these videos. And B-roll footage really does that!

B-rolls also increases the comprehension of the things that you’re saying in the video. With a B-roll, you can talk about something in the promo video and have the audience actually SEE it. That makes the audience fully understand what you’re talking about. People will remember what you say, but when they don’t actually see what you’re talking about, they’ll only undestand it to a certain extent. But with a B-roll, it will make that connection!

Now let’s talk about MUSIC.

Why is music important in a promo video?

When we’re in sales or promotional type situation, we want to connect with people EMOTIONALLY. We want them to not just make decisions logically by giving them the facts, but we want to pull their heartstrings so that they can connect and make that decision emotionally as well. They may need it but they won’t buy it unless they really want it. What can help make their decision lean favorably to ‘wanting’ to buy it is music.

Before you select the music you’re using for your promotional video, have your A-roll and B-roll ready first. This way, you can find the music that will match the tone of the message quicker. You’ll want to hear your music WITH your video tracks to see if they’re a good match.

One other thing to mention though is we’re not talking about SONGS! When I say music, I don’t talk about songs where there’s lyrics that’s going to distract the viewers from the words you’re saying in the video. Do NOT use songs for it will distract your audience from YOUR message. That’s not what we’re going for.

We’re going for subtle background music that’s really going to enhance the message and pull people into help them focus on that message even more.

Okay, now you have the magic formula for making GREAT promo videos. I want to give you one last tip: My favorite resource for royalty-free background music for these videos is Pond5.com. The reason I like Pond5.com is it’s really simple and affordable. It’s got thousands of options and it’s fully functional.

What I usually do is I’ll have the audio playing from my A-roll so I can hear it, and then when I’m on the Pond5 website, it will display all the different options in a grid on the screen and I can just hover over one with my mouse and it instantly plays. So as I’m listening to the A-roll, I’ll get to hear different background music that I hover on, and I just have to choose which one sounds better WITH my A-roll.

You can just go through all of the options there because you want to find the music that matches the tone of the message and the emotion that you want to convey in your video. To start browsing through Pond5’s professional-quality music library, you can go to http://www.gowallaby.com/Pond5.