How To Make A Commercial In 10 Simple Steps
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Creating a commercial can feel overwhelming. You might start with a brilliant idea but struggle to find the next steps to bring it to life. Learning how to make a commercial video can help you generate buzz around a new product, get customers excited about an upcoming event, or even share your business’s story. In this article, we'll explain how to make a commercial in simple steps to help you create an engaging, compelling video.
Moonb's educational video production services can help you achieve your goals faster so you can get back to what you do best, and that’s running your business.
How To Make A Commercial In 10 Simple Steps
1. Define Your Objective
Before starting the video-making process, you must have a clear goal. What do you want to achieve with this commercial? This answer may change over time, but starting with a clear target is best.
You might be trying to:
- Increase brand awareness
- Generate more leads
- Promote a new product
Clarifying your objective makes the subsequent steps easier because you now have a target to hit.
2. Know Your Audience
Now that you know your commercial video's goal, it’s time to focus on who. Who is the target audience of your video?
- Gather information on your audience.
- Be as detailed as possible.
- If you can’t pinpoint your audience, try making a persona of the ideal audience using brand archetypes.
Once you understand your audience, tailor your video to their specific needs and preferences. Center your video on their pain points, the solutions you provide, and how your product or service fits into this context.
3. Write a Script for Your Commercial Video
Behind every impactful commercial video is an equally impactful video script. It’s the roadmap you need to follow to boost the delivery of your brand message. During the scripting process, focus on these two important aspects of your script:
- Language & Tone
- Flow & Cohesiveness
You need to deliver your commercial video’s message quickly but effectively. Focusing on these two things will make the process somewhat smooth sailing. Once a rough draft of your script is ready, read it aloud or give it to others for feedback. Observe scopes for improvement and make changes as necessary.
4. Create a Storyboard for Your Commercial Video
A video script tells you what your commercial video will cover. But a storyboard helps you visualize the video even before its reality. Using your video script as a reference, make detailed visuals on each frame of your commercial video. Carefully mark the sequence in which each frame will appear in your video.
This step is crucial for planning each scene’s composition and ensuring you don’t miss anything in the video.
5. Choose the Right Equipment
Choosing the equipment for your commercial video production can go one of two ways. If you’re making a live-action commercial, you would need:
- A professional recording studio
- Lighting equipment
- Audio recording apparatus
If you’re making an animated commercial, all you need is:
- A microphone for your voiceover
- Good quality graphics creation software
- Video animation software, and you’re all set
Pro Equipment
Regardless of your budget and the complexity of the video, always rely on professional equipment for high-quality output. But if you think this isn’t your cup of tea, you can always seek the help of a video production company to get the job done for you.
6. Shoot Your Commercial Video
It’s time to use your video script and storyboard. Shoot your commercial video, referring to your script and sequences throughout. Shoot and reshoot scenes if need be, but leave nothing to chance. Keep your objectives and audience in mind while shooting. Make sure each shot is purposeful and contributes to the overall message you’re trying to convey.
Animated commercial videos are relatively leaner in terms of production but not devoid of specific steps:
- Create or gather the graphics and visual assets you will use during animation.
- Start with your animation on the software of your choice.
- Record a voiceover using your script as a reference.
- Record multiple takes and choose the version that sounds clear and crisp.
Once you have all your assets (live-action and animated) in place, we can swiftly move to the next phase.
7. Edit Your Commercial Video
Now comes the fun part:
- Import all video and audio files into your favorite video editing app.
- Make a rough outline with all your footage and visual assets, referring to your video’s storyboard.
- Make cuts and transitions wherever necessary to make the overall video more refined.
- Pay extra attention to your commercial's flow and ensure things pan out coherently.
- Ensure all keyframes and motion graphics are added correctly and at the correct intervals for animated commercials.
- Refer to your storyboard when adding graphic elements in their respective scenes so they appear at the right place and time during your video.
- Add finishing touches like sound effects and royalty-free music to enhance the appeal of your commercial video.
- To maintain an optimal video length, keep overall editing tight and lean.
This applies to both live-action and animated commercial videos.
8. Incorporate Branding
Add elements to your commercial video that promote your brand. Make them subtle so as not to distract viewers from the main message. These elements make your video an extension of your B2B business instead of just another commercial ad. Your branding should reflect your brand identity at appropriate places.
Using your company logo or your brand colors is one of the many examples of commercial video branding.
9. Feedback and Revisions
Scrub through your video and make final edits wherever necessary. Before launching it into the world, show it to people in your business, such as:
- Stakeholders
- Senior executives
Gather feedback from them, identify areas for improvement, and make necessary revisions.
10. Export Your Finished Commercial Video
Your commercial video is ready! Once finalized, export in the highest quality, 1080p (Full HD) minimum. To increase reach, export it in various aspect ratios that utilize multiple viewing channels, like:
- Desktop
- Mobile phones
The most popular video aspect ratios include:
- 1920 x 1080 (landscape, best for desktop viewing)
- 1080 x 1920 (portrait, best for mobile viewing)
- 1080 x 1080 (square, best for social media advertising)
Frame Size
Make sure you choose a dimension that doesn’t cut out the important bits of your commercial video.
Related Reading
- How Much is a 30-second Commercial
- How Long is the Average Commercial
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- How to Make an Advertising Video
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- Car Commercial
- Commercial Production Company
- Commercial Video Production Services
- How to Make a Commercial
- Animated Commercial
How Moonb Helps In Making Video Commercials
When making commercial video ads, Moonb doesn’t just film and edit. The team partners with you from start to finish to make sure the final product works for your brand. Moonb is all about turning your ideas into polished, high-converting video content, whether it’s:
- A product launch
- Brand story
- Educational content
Crafting Concepts for Commercials That Work
When crafting concepts for your commercial, Moonb goes beyond the brief. The team immerses itself in your:
- Product
- Market
- Audience
Why? Because the best ideas come from really understanding what makes your offer valuable. Then, they blend creative storytelling with data-informed strategy to build a commercial that’s not only engaging but gets results.
Seamless Collaboration for Efficient Production
Moonb plugs right into your workflow through:
- Slack
- Trello
- MS Teams
With weekly strategy calls and no long-term contracts, you get a full-service video team without the overhead of hiring in-house or managing freelancers. Their flexible, subscription-based model makes it easy to scale your content needs.
Try Before You Buy
The best part? You can test them out with a 3-day free trial and see what it’s like to have a dedicated video team on demand. Moonb is here to help you turn your content into a real growth engine.
What Makes Video Commercials Effective?
Grab Attention Fast: Show Your Product Within The First Three Seconds
The first three seconds of a video ad are crucial for grabbing your viewers' attention. Research shows that this is how long your audience will decide whether they’ll:
- Continue watching
- Scroll past your video
Show your brand’s product or service immediately, or you risk losing interested prospects before seeing your video.
Keep Your Audience Engaged: Highlight What Makes Your Brand Great
Knowing that the first three seconds count the most when creating your video is half the battle. Keeping your viewers stimulated is the second most crucial aspect. Aside from showing your brand’s product or service, sharing what makes your brand unique or what problem your brand solves should be succinctly depicted with great storytelling and visuals.
Videos on social platforms are often muted, so:
- Related imagery should be obvious.
- Captions should be available.
When advertising on CTV, viewers are presented with unskippable video content. Take advantage of the full power of television to demonstrate your brand’s product or service range. Other ways to help build credibility and make your video effective include:
- Sharing achievements
- A successful track record
- Customer testimonials
Short and Sweet: Keep It Short and Simple
Regardless of your advertising platform, cutting unnecessary content and spreading your brand’s message concisely should be a priority. Video ads usually last 30 seconds or less, but the ideal length varies depending on the platform.
A YouTube video ad’s recommended length is two minutes, while an Instagram Story video ad can be at most 15 seconds. OTT ads are most effective between 15 and 30 seconds. A best practice is strategizing which platform makes the most sense for your brand to advertise and adjusting video length based on that strategy.
Target a Relevant Audience: The Importance of Relevance
One of the most significant drawbacks of advertising is relevance. No one wants to encounter an ad irrelevant to their lifestyle or daily habits. This is where digital advertising trumps traditional advertising. With digital advertising, marketers can serve their video ads to their ideal audience using forms of targeting, such as:
- Behavioral
- Contextual
- Interest-based
This creates a personalized experience for the viewer and optimizes the dollars the advertiser spends.
Not Too Much Text & No Small Text: Make Your Video Ad Easy to Understand
It’s common for viewers to watch videos on social platforms with no sound. As an advertiser, you must make it as easy and obvious as possible to understand your message without sound. The following provide your viewers with the information they need to connect the video content they’re seeing to your brand:
- Text
- Captions
- Subtitles
Too much text can clutter the message and result in a skip. Sound is intrinsic to TV advertising if you're creating a CTV ad. Ensure that standout keywords are used in your script, and the last three seconds of the ad, clearly state your:
- Brand name
- Website URL
- Brand tagline
Minimal Text
As a best practice, ads with less text overlay perform significantly better than ads packed with text. And smaller font sizes make it difficult for viewers to read and could result in a skip or mute. The goal is to seamlessly blend the video ad content into your chosen platform’s native ecosystem and provide the viewer with a more personalized and engaging experience.
Quality Matters: Invest in High-Quality Video Production
High-quality video content is vital to capturing and holding your viewers’ attention. It also makes enough of a difference to viewers that they’ll follow your brand for more quality content or block you from showing content irrelevant to their viewing standards. Dimly lit or grainy video footage is not acceptable in today’s world.
Full HD 1080px (1920 x 1080 pixels) has become the industry standard for a crisp horizontal HD video that doesn’t compromise storage space.
Tell a Story: Make Your Video Ad Entertaining
Brands are focusing on storytelling to keep their campaigns engaging and captivating. To make a video ad more persuasive and relatable, include:
- A clear hook
- A central theme
- A resolution
Other ways to make your video stand out include striking visual cues or trending visual elements like:
- Bold colors
- Recognizable influencers
- Celebrities
Engaging Story
With an entertaining short story and striking visuals, your chances of obtaining a high video completion rate (video-through rate, VTR) increase. This metric will help you learn how well your digital video ad performs on a channel.
Clear Call To Action: Motivate Your Viewers to Take Action
The goal of every ad is to motivate viewers to take action. The call to action (CTA) can be included in the film or through graphics and text. It is best practice to include the CTA at the end of the video. It will indicate to viewers that they can:
- View your website
- Receive a discount
- Buy a product or service
Moonb Solution
Moonb is a video marketing agency that offers corporate video services. We offer seamless project management integration via:
- Trello
- Slack
- MS Teams
- Weekly strategy calls
- Contract-free, full-service production approach
Moonb is a superior alternative to:
- Traditional video agencies
- Freelancers
- In-house production teams
Moonb Advantage
Our flexible, subscription-based model combined with our expertise in creating compelling video content positions us as the ideal partner for companies looking to elevate their marketing and educational initiatives through the power of video. Start a 3-day free trial with our corporate video services to take your content to the next level.
Related Reading
- How Long Can Youtube Ads Be
- Health Product Advertisements
- Automotive Video Advertising
- eCommerce Video Ads
- Contextual Video Advertising
- Storytelling Ads
- Digital Marketing Video Ads Examples
- Linkedin Video Ad Examples
- Commercial Advertisement Examples
- Creative Video Ads
- TV and YouTube Ads
- Best Video Ads
Why Make Video Commercials?
Making video part of your strategy allows you to engage with audiences that ignore text and banner ads. Marketers are constantly increasing their allotted resources for video ads, not necessarily budget, but manpower and time. If you overlook this trend, you’ll face a competitive disadvantage.
Getting someone to click on a static display ad means impressing them enough with a single appealing:
- Image
- Headline
Engaging Ads
Video advertising includes more elements that users may find relevant or engaging. To get viewers hooked and urge them to watch the entire ad, you could use:
- A catchy song
- A funny opening line
- An emotional message
- A relatable situation
Marketing with video gives you more flexibility to position your product or service as:
- Addressing users’ pain points
- Offering something exciting
- Helping them live more fulfilling lives
Automatic Exposure
Since many video ads start playing automatically within the primary content, you don’t need to hope people will click on the content. They get exposed to it during a process that occurs within an activity they choose, such as:
- Watching a YouTube star’s latest episode
- Playing a mobile game
Then, provided your ad resonates with them, you’ll be able to keep them interested enough to drive conversions.
User Choice
When users click to watch a video, they must actively opt in rather than drop out of an annoying pre-roll ad, so engagement rates have been shown to soar. By giving viewers control of the ads they want to see and when they want to watch them, you are providing an opportunity for brand engagement on their terms, which is a far preferable way to work towards your KPIs.
More Tips For Creating Engaging Commercials
Create an Ad That Tells a Story
Your video ad should tell an engaging and relevant story to your target audience. This story should also be:
- Clear
- Concise
- Authentic
The best way to do this is to understand the story behind your brand:
- What makes your company unique?
- Why does it matter?
- What makes you different from the competition?
Unique Story
Once you’ve answered these questions, you can use that information to craft a compelling video ad.
Another important aspect of creating a compelling ad is to tell the story uniquely. A good video ad should be different from other ads, so don’t just copy what others are doing. Think about how you can stand out from the crowd by using new:
- Techniques
- Solutions
Make It Short and Sweet
Your video ad must be long enough for people to catch and remember the message, but not so long that viewers will get bored or frustrated. A good rule of thumb is to make your video ad between 30 seconds and two minutes in length. Keep in mind that the shorter your video ad is, the more likely it is that people will watch it to completion.
Keep the Focus on the Product or Service Being Advertised
When creating your video ad, ask yourself:
- What are you selling?
- How does it help people?
- Why should they buy from you, and not someone else?
It's important not to get sidetracked by irrelevant details or topics, since viewers are likely looking for an answer to one of those questions. If you can't answer them all within a few seconds, consider trimming down the length of the video clip or cutting it into separate ads that each focus on one particular aspect of what you're selling.
Remove any fluff, filler words, or unnecessary visuals that don't contribute to the message of your video ad. Focus on a clear message that tells people what you do and why they should care.
Start a 3-day Free Trial to Take Your Content to the Next Level with Our Educational Video Production Service
Moonb is a video marketing agency that offers corporate video services. We offer seamless project management integration via:
- Trello
- Slack
- MS Teams
- Weekly strategy calls
- Contract-free, full-service production approach
Moonb is a superior alternative to:
- Traditional video agencies
- Freelancers
- In-house production teams
Trial Offer
Our flexible, subscription-based model combined with our expertise in creating compelling video content positions us as the ideal partner for companies looking to elevate their marketing and educational initiatives through the power of video. Start a 3-day free trial to take your content to the next level with our corporate video services.
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