Making an impactful TV commercial is all about crafting an effective and convincing message that speaks directly to the needs, desires and behaviours of the audience, ultimately encouraging them to take a specific action. This is a hard enough task on its own without adding budget, time and talent constraints into the mix.
Before you begin: Consider the following:
Before you start making your commercial, you’ll need to address a few key questions that are common—and essential—to creating any effective promotional material.
What’s the message?
Define the topic of your advertisement in detail. Is your commercial promoting your company as a whole? Is it centred on a specific product or event?
Because ads must be brief, concentrate on one theme per ad rather than trying to provide too much information at once. Create a series of advertisements that are made in the same way but each showcase a single subject if you want to market multiple items or services.
Who is your target audience?
Know your target market’s age, viewing habits, purchasing preferences, and anything else you can learn about them through thorough research. Even the best-produced ad will fail if potential buyers do not notice it, or if those who do view it are unlikely to use the service or product. Failure at this point could result in a waste of time and money.
What’s the backstory?
This is the fun part of your project: coming up with a business concept. If you’re making a TV commercial, you usually only have 15-30 seconds. It might be difficult to convey your message in a concise and compelling manner in a short amount of time.
Humour, surprise, drama, and emotion are just a few of the things you might use to entice your audience in this situation. Above all, you must maintain a laser-like focus on your message, target audience, and end goal. Maintain as much clarity as possible in your commercial.
Use stock video, images, simple graphics, and voice-over for a low-budget commercial. Many television commercials are no more complicated than this. You might utilise a live spokesperson or actors and shoot B-roll and action shots if you have good video skills.
Watching other advertisements is the best approach to come up with storey ideas. Consider how TV commercials were created and how effective they are. Do you remember the company, service, or product that was marketed after some time has passed or only some random element?
What is your Call to Action (CTA)?
Decide on a call to action before you start filming. The point of your storey when you tell your audience what you want them to do is called the call to action. Do you want them to contact you, send you an email, go to your website, or be aware of a problem? Everything else in your commercial should be geared toward getting the viewer to do something, or at the very least remember something.
Make a script
If your commercial is going to be on television, your script needs to be precise in terms of time so that nothing gets chopped off, which means that every word counts.
Use a page with four columns: one for the time, one for audio, one for video, and one for graphics. Include a call to action at the end of your script for a few seconds.
For at least a few seconds, display your logo and contact information on the screen.
Start filming
You’re ready to shoot your advertisement when you finish your script. The visual aspect is vital, but so are decent audio and lighting. Make your environment appealing and professional-looking, and clear the background of clutter and non-essential visual distractions. Every visual and audio element must work together to express your overall message, just as every word in your script must carry its own weight.
Employee some experts
Undertaking a project like this, on your own, or with limited experience, can be daunting, time-consuming and costly. You might think that you’ll save money by doing everything yourself but with all the time and resources you pour into it, you’ll find that time and effort adds up pretty quickly. Hiring a professional who provides video production services will mean that you still enjoy creative input, but the burden of production won’t fall on you. You’ll be supported by a team of experts who can shoot your commercial quickly and to a high standard.
If you are looking for a professional and highly effective piece of visual marketing collateral, we highly recommend that you take this approach.