Steps to Create Effective Video Ads for Social Media Channels

Step 1: Establish one objective. 

Do not attempt to build brand awareness, educate customers, provide sales information and collect leads with a single advertisement. You must choose only one goal that your video ad will achieve: to stop the scrolling of the social networking users, to generate clicks to your website for product promotion, to generate leads for future sale(s), or to drive directly to the sale of your product.

With an established objective, all other aspects of the video, such as script, visuals, length and call to action, will be determined based on the objective. Without a clear objective, your advertising dollars will be wasted.

Step 2: Capture attention in the first 2 seconds. 

You do not “introduce” your advertisement; you must “interrupt” the viewer. 

The first two seconds will determine whether your advertisement will continue running or die.

Fun and/or effective hooks include: 

Address the viewer’s pain points, i.e. “Are you still spending money on advertisement?”

Use pattern breaks, i.e. surprise visuals or movements, and

Show the desired outcome rather than the product at the start of the video. 

Do not include logos, greetings or brand stories at the beginning of the advertisements and keep it short.

Step 3: Create Videos for Sound Off Viewing

The majority of audiences view video content without sound.

If your commercial is entirely reliant on voice, then it’s not going to be successful.

Ways to fix this include:

• Captioning or adding text on-screen
• Using a combination of visuals to convey the message
• Ensuring text is brief and able to be read on mobile devices.
• Audio should be used to enhance your message; audio is not a requirement for your audience to understand your message.

Step 4: Present The Problem First

Don’t rush into promoting the features of your product.

People look for the symptoms of a problem that they identify with, and this will help to increase their attention span.

The recommendation for structuring your presentation is:

• Clearly present the problem
• Give them a sense of urgency regarding the problem
• Present your solution

If they don’t identify with the problem, they won’t want the solution, no matter how good the solution is.

Step 5: Keep It Short & To The Point

A longer video does not equal a better explanation; a longer video means less retention.

Length Recommendation:

• Instagram and Facebook = 6-15 seconds
• TikTok= 7-20 seconds
• YouTube Shorts = Less than 30 seconds

Eliminate aggressively. Eliminate anything that doesn’t forward the message. If you don’t need a sentence, it will hurt your performance.

Step 6: Create Brand Awareness

At this point in your video, you want people to start noticing your brand, but not in a spammy way.

A very good practice is to have your branding come after the hook, while keeping any logos low-key, so the viewer is focused on the message, rather than on your brand’s ego.

And if the viewer skips out on your logo because they don’t get to see it, that’s OK – Consider it a good thing that they were reached first before you even considered getting them to remember your brand.

Step 7: Only Have One Call to Action

When your video ad contains multiple calls to action, this will lead to confusion for the viewers and lower conversion rates.

Instead, at the end of every video ad, you should clearly state only one thing for the viewers to do:

• Shop now
• Learn more
• Sign up
• Download the app
• Don’t just suggest that the viewer do something next, but tell the viewer exactly what that next step is for them.

Step 8: Be Creative as Well as Test Audiences

Most advertisers only test audiences and then stick with that data, and ignore testing their creative elements. That is backwards thinking.

For most social networks, the creative part of your video ad is by far the most important variable that you need to test.

So you should test:

• The hook
• Opening image
• The review’s call to action
• Then remember that small creative changes often result in better success for your ad than the cost of targeting your audience.

Last Thoughts:

People have to get hooked, be shown the message, and have their attention guided very quickly in your video to be successful. It does not matter how good the product is if the hook doesn’t work or the message is not clearly communicated.

So the first step to success for video ads is to hook people’s attention; the next step is to convert them into paying customers.