W hen creating a promotional video, the goal is usually to get a response of some kind from the viewer, such as to buy a product or use a service. This week we are looking at a question from a student about how to generate action from your audience.
STUDENT QUESTION: How do you create an effective call to action at the end of a promotional video?
JOHN-CLAY: You want easy visual identification of the brand. If they don’t have a logo, you can use clean simple text of the name of their business, and then a way to contact them or where to go from here. I think it’s pretty rare that you’d ever need more than that. I really would put the emphasis on moving people to action during the rest of the promo.
You need to move the audience emotionally so that by the end, they want something to click on. Then all you have to do is put a really simple link. You shouldn’t have to convince them when they get to the end of your project.
You need to move the audience emotionally so that by the end, they want something to click on. Click To TweetANDREW: We almost did this on the Foltz promo. They wanted to use the video for more than just hiring, so they wanted an all around commercial, but what we did have originally was, “Apply now. Call in” and then the link. That’s a simple call to action that connects to people. It needs to be something you can say mentally in one swoop. You don’t want to have a full paragraph. You need it to be one short sentence.
It’s like when you’re writing a headline for something. It needs to grab their attention somehow. It can be super straight to the point, “Sign up today.” Then they know what the link is for. I think like John-Clay said, in most cases, if it’s an “About” video or something like that, you don’t really have to have a call to action. If it’s a commercial for an event, we want to get people to sign up for the event. You can do something like “Register today” then the link, so they know what it is that you’re trying to get them to do. It doesn’t have to be super long or complicated.
JOHN-CLAY: On missions testimony videos that I worked on recently, some of those had longer calls to action. It depends on what you’re doing. In this case, I had a story of a pastor in India who is being supported and it’s just his conversion story, what he’s doing, and how the ministry has helped him. At the end, it could be confusing – is this just a nice story? Do you want me to support the ministry? Do you want me to support the pastor? Am I supposed to support the people he’s working with? It’s just a story and so it’s not real clear what your action is going to do.
The ministry might want to say, “You can help pastors like Raj reach India with the Gospel,” and you know that all it needs to say is “Help this pastor reach India” and a link. It may not work to have just a logo and a link in that situation, but just keep it as short and concise as possible, then the link so they understand what their click does, and what you want them to do. Keep it simple.
