How To Make Your First Marketing Video Today





Here’s how…

1. Create a script or outline with the main points you want to communicate about your business, product or service. Keep it simple. There is no need to list ‘everything under the hood’ in your video as that information can be found later on your website.

Think in terms of the visitor coming to your site for the first time. You need to quickly and in an engaging way communicate your message to your audience. There might be technical features of your service that you are really proud of but the end user really doesn’t care about or need to know.

Some of the best explainer videos tell a story and include the viewer in that story. They present a problem and then offer a solution (your service!). Think about exactly who your audience is and appeal to them on an emotional level. Making notes on the vibe of background music or colors to be used (bright and bold? or subtle and pastel?) can help craft the overall tone of the video.

You want to keep your video short, around 60 seconds to 3 minutes and include your main message within the first 30 seconds. Communicating your message this early will help answer the top question in the minds of new visitors- ‘What am I looking at?’ and keep them from clicking away due to confusion.

2. Consider storyboarding out what you want your explainer video to look like shot by shot. This can be especially helpful if you are working with a team and need to show them what you have in mind. Here’s a short primer on storyboarding over at

3. The idea here is to make this entire process as simple as possible and get your first marketing video ready to post today! Below I have gathered my top five online tools to assist you in the creation of your marketing video.

1. Sparkol’s VideoScribe

This service allows you to easily create whiteboard or scribing style animation videos. They offer a free 7 day trial so you can test it out before you buy and then with the Pro account (about $24 a month) you can export full HD videos.

2. PowToon

PowToon is an online drag and drop animated video creation tool. Using pre made graphics, and animations from different style libraries you can create an animated explainer video in just a few hours. They offer a free version to get started but you will have to upgrade (starting at $19 a month or $5 per export) to lose the watermark. Here is an overview of the service:

3. GoAnimate

Similar to PowToon, GoAnimate is another popular online tool to create animated videos using a variety of premade characters, props and backgrounds. Commercial plans start at $25 a month but they also offer a free option to test the waters.

4. Xtranormal

Another online animation tool, Xtranormal uses virtual actors and cameras to turn your ideas into 3D mini-movies. This offering is less targeted at creating business videos but could definitely be used for that if your audience would respond to the look. They have a variety of collections to pull graphic assets from but most of them tend to suggest a comedic vibe.

5. VideoHive Templates

This a very cost effective do it yourself method where you purchase a template and plug in your text, pictures and videos using Adobe After Effects. This does require some skill at using After Effects and some templates are designed better than others. For example, the whiteboard template I used for creating my explainer video at was fairly easy to customize because I stuck to the exact amount of text and images already included. The hand animation adjusted speed to fit the edited sentences which may have been slightly different in length. Further customization would have been beyond my After Effects skill level and taken a lot more time.

You can also go the 100% DIY route and use Keynote to create your explainer video. Here’s a great article to help you plan out the production and create your video using Keynote.

You can also pay a company like Grumo Media or Video Brewery to create a video for you or a find someone via a crowdsourcing company like Wooshii.

Miguel Hernandez from Grumo Media also has a couple courses on how to create awesome demo videos over at Udemy. One using After Effects and another purely using Keynote.*

*Linked with affiliate links which I will rarely do but I feel confident these are quality products. I have not personally taken these courses but I have previewed the free videos and have seen many good reviews. His company also makes some really engaging demo videos so I can safely say he knows what he is talking about!

Now that you are armed with some very affordable explainer video creation tools don’t delay in taking advantage of them! Dive in today and see what you can create. Don’t worry about your explainer video being perfect (although some planning is a good idea), you can always go back and fine tune it later. Remember to feature it “above the fold”  on your website  for maximum exposure!

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