Commercial Video Production–A Complete Guide
Engaging and memorable marketing communication is a critical success factor for businesses of all sizes. For your prospects to turn into customers, you need to communicate in a way that ensures your message is noticed, understood, and remembered. This is where commercial video comes in. Video can help you do all these things – and more.
In this article, we’ll look at commercial video production – what it is, how to do it well, and what to keep in mind in 2022 and beyond.
What Is A Commercial Video Production?
Commercial video is an umbrella term that includes any video content made for a business or organization with the intention to sell something. Nowadays, most commercial videos are hosted online. They can, for example, be published on company websites or social media platforms like Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, and TikTok. Commercial videos can also be published on TV or distributed via emails.
Benefits of Commercial Videos
- Video is the most efficient way to build rapport and communicate with your audience
- People prefer video over other media like text or audio
- Video creates emotional connections and engagement
- Video is the most shared content format on social media
- Video feels authentic and helps you build trust
- Video is great for explaining complex concepts and products
Best Practices For Commercial Video Production
There’s no silver bullet or blueprint for commercial video production. But while there’s no one-size-fits-all, there are some traits that many successful commercial videos have in common. Let’s look at some of the things that will help you create an engaging video.
Leverage Storytelling
A strong storyline is an essential component of a successful commercial video. With a good story, you can win the hearts and minds of millions. Commercial videos that leverage the power of great storytelling are the ones that manage to capture their target audience’s attention and connect with them on an emotional level.
Related reading: Creating a Story Arch For Corporate Storytelling
Use the Right Tone-of-Voice
Successful commercial video production is all about crafting messages in a way that will resonate with your target audience. To achieve this, it’s essential to adhere to your brand’s general tone of voice. Are you edgy, corporate, loving, or quirky? Then you want to use that same tone and turn it up even more in your videos.
Build on recurring themes
Never think in terms of just one video. Try to always think about themes and how to turn one video into a series or part of a more extensive campaign. As any marketer knows, repetition is the mother of marketing success. And the best commercial videos are rarely standalone.
The campaign 5 we created for Dollar Bank is an example of this. It was important to us to create something authentic that would resonate with the millennial target audience, so we pushed for using real individuals that fit with the demographic and are from the regions Dollar Bank is targeting. This campaign has been widely seen and well received in the three regions it has aired on TV and different social channels.
– Dollar Bank: Dollar Bank – The Road of Life – Brand Video – Covalent
– Dollar Bank: Dollar Bank – DO Mortgage – Brand Video – Covalent
– Dollar Bank: Dollar Bank – DO Small Business – Brand Video – Covalent
Use a clear call-to-action
Always start with the end in mind. Before planning your video production, you need to know your goal. What do you want to achieve with your video? What do you want people to feel and do when they’ve seen it?
Related reading: 5 Calls-To-Action You Should Be Using In Your Marketing Videos
Invest in a Creative Concept
If you want to maximize the impact of your commercial video production, it’s not just the format that will decide the success of your video. The most crucial success factor is the creative concept—the idea. Investing in innovative and creative video production is the most efficient way to maximize your ROI.
Related reading: Invest In Creative To Optimize Your Video Production Budget
The campaign we produced for Rosetta Stone is an example of how creative you can get with a topic, and how great the results can be when you give your agency the freedom to think big and outside the box.
Rosetta Stone: Promotional Video Production for Rosetta Stone
Rosetta Stone: A Robust & Authentic B2C Video Campaign for Rosetta Stone
Rosetta Stone: A Robust & Authentic B2C Video Campaign for Rosetta Stone
Booksync: Elegant B2B Video Marketing tool for the Startup BookSync
How To Write a Winning Creative Brief for Video Production
Defining your strategy and using it as a basis for your projects will help you create the right content and move you closer to your marketing goal. A detailed plan will help you move in the right direction, and a detailed creative video brief will help your video production agency shoot the videos you need.
Here we’ve listed eleven bullet points that will help you write an effective creative brief for your video production agency:
- Introduction
- Project Overview
- Project Objectives
- Target Audience
- Channels and Distribution
- Competitive Overview
- Message and Style
- Brand Guidelines
- Tone of Voice
- Budget
- Timeline and Deadlines
However, there may be other relevant information for your specific project. It’s always a good idea to ask your agency what they need from the brief before writing it.
What Does a Commercial Video Production Look Like?
Commercial videos come in all shapes and sizes, and the type of video you need will depend on your goals and objectives.
Product videos
Marketers increasingly rely on video to communicate with prospects, and product videos are great for this. A great product video will bring your products and brand to life and is one of the most impactful marketing investments you can make. There’s a variety of styles to choose from when creating your product video.
In our blog post, 11 Great Styles of Product Video, we’ve compiled 11 types of product videos for your inspiration.
Review videos
Another popular type of commercial video is the review video. Did you know that review videos are actually among the most popular types of videos on Youtube? If you’re not leveraging review videos for your brand, you’re missing out.
Examples of review videos for marketing include:
- Product review videos
- Testimonial videos
- Reactions videos
- How-to videos
In our blog post 4 Top Types of Review Videos To Boost Your Marketing, we’re sharing more details on how to succeed with review video production and why this format is so powerful.
Promotional videos
92% of marketers consider promotional videos an essential part of their marketing strategy. And with 88% of marketers stating that video marketing provides them with positive ROI, you understand why video is the most powerful medium for promoting your brand and product.
But with 720,000 new hours of video content being uploaded on Youtube every day, competition for attention is fierce. This means it’s essential to get creative with your video production.
There are many ways to do that, and in this blog post, 7 Styles Of Promotional Videos, we share 7 powerful examples to help your brand stand out.
When and How Should I Use Video Advertising?
Commercial videos add value at every stage of the marketing and sales funnel. They’re beneficial at the top of the funnel for generating awareness and creating excitement about a product or service. In the middle of the funnel, they’re an excellent vehicle for showcasing engaging customer case studies and testimonials to help build trust in your offer. And for the bottom of the funnel, video is great for product demos, tutorials, and detailed feature videos.
And it doesn’t stop there! After converting your visitors to leads, and your leads to paying customers, videos are also great tools for increasing customer retention and satisfaction. Product tours and videos that your customer success and support teams can send to your customers will create a better customer experience and reduce churn.
How Do You Measure Success for a Commercial Video Production?
There are many different ways to measure success for your video production. What suits your project depends on your business objectives and where you will be using the video in the marketing and sales funnel.
Is the purpose of your video to build brand awareness and brand affinity? In that case, metrics for reach and engagement are relevant. How many people saw your video (views), and how many commented, liked, and shared (engagement). But if you’re video is further down the funnel, you may want to track conversion rates. That could be clicks, app downloads, demo bookings, or actual sales.
In other words, there’s no one way to measure success for your videos – the metrics you should track depend on your goals and on what channels you’re using for distribution.
How Much Does a Commercial Video Production Cost?
How much does a video cost to produce? This is a question video production agencies get on a daily basis. But of course, there’s no easy answer. The cost will depend on what type of video you need and what you are looking to achieve with your investment.
There’s a wide range of video styles, from scripted productions and docu-style videos to corporate videos, live-action videos, and animated explainer videos. Some may involve a rented location; others are filmed at your worksite, some may require hired actors, and others involve a lot of post-production work.
Live-action videos can require anywhere from one single-camera operator to a 20-person production team. Live-action videos also need talented post-production professionals to make your vision come to life and turn all the captured footage into engaging video.
One way to maximize the effectiveness and value of your investment in video is to strategize for multiple deliverables from each shoot. An effective strategy is pulling sixty-second, thirty-second, fifteen-second, and even shorter form videos from shoots built to capture full-length videos (Ninety seconds or more).
These efforts would help you maximize efficiencies, reduce the number of shoot days, and better manage costs.
Related reading: The Definitive Video Production Pricing Sheet for 2022
Below is a very rough estimate of the price range for some of these video types:
- Scripted Narrative video: $50k-$100k
- Docu-style video: $15k-$45k
- Corporate Video: $5k-$35k
To plan your commercial video production, it’s essential to have a production budget. Feel free to use this Budget Template for Video Production to support your planning process.
How Long Does a Commercial Video Take to Produce?
Different videos require different amounts of time for production. The more complex your concepts and setup are, the longer the production will take. And vice versa, a simple concept can be done quicker. But usually, you should expect commercial video production to take between 6-12 weeks.
Partner With An Award-Winning Video Production Agency
Covalent is a creative video production company based in Pittsburgh. We produce commercial videos for B2B, B2C, and D2C companies of all sizes and industries. We’re known for combining experience and creativity with a strong marketing mindset. We can help you plan and produce everything from brand videos and TV commercials to explainer videos and docu-style shoots.
We produce commercial videos at various price points, always focusing on creating the content you need to reach your business goals. And we’re with you from ideation through every step of execution. Combining years of experience with cutting-edge creativity, our productions have received numerous awards and accolades over the years.
Get in touch to discuss how we can help your brand get started with video marketing production and build a more exciting and engaging corporate communication!