How to Make Web Commercials for Local Businesses

I’m sure you’ve heard it all before…web video is HOT.

Since the inception of YouTube back in 2005, online video has and continues to change the face of the internet.

Local businesses are jumping aboard the bandwagon as well. Hoping to leverage online video to help promote their businesses and brands.

There’s just one problem: Most have absolutely NO CLUE how to make videos, or how to promote them properly so people can find them online.

For us local marketers, this is good news.

We can cash in on this growing trend by offering “Web Commercial” services to local businesses.

If you have even the most basic video editing skills, some basic SEO knowledge and a little creativity, you can easily offer video marketing or “Web Commercials” as a service to local businesses and charge anywhere from $300 – $500 for the most basic of videos.

Step up your game and become a video editing pro who can produce TV quality videos (or have someone do them for you), and start commanding checks in the 4 figures for your services.

In this article, I’m going to walk you through making a simple “TV Commercial” style web commercial for a local business, step by step using a real client of mine and a real video.

Here is what we’ll be creating…

While this video won’t win any Oscars, my client is happy with it.

• Because it is optimized for his local keywords, it will bring him traffic.
• Since it’s hosted on youtube, he can embed it into his website, Facebook fan page or anywhere else he so desires.

This particular client also happens to be a friend of mine, so I didn’t charge him as much as I would a normal client.

But if he was anyone else, I could charge $500 for this all day long…and so could you.

 

How to make a simple web commercial for a business:

 

Step 1: Get a paying client

First of all, you need a client…a business who is willing to pay you for this service.

“Client getting” is a topic in it’s own, and is outside the scope of this article so we won’t be covering it in detail right now.

But with a little hustle and determination, you could easily find one as soon as today. Seriously…look at all the local businesses around you right now.

How many would like more customers and are willing to pay for advertising?

Start with the ones who already know the power of online marketing for their business and work from there. Small businesses with websites or Facebook fan pages fit perfectly into this category.

If you’re just starting out, don’t waste your time with businesses who don’t already have an online presence.

It’s easier to convince a believer to take action, rather than convincing a non-believer to take action.

Got some web design clients already?

You’re ahead of the game already. Web commercials make the perfect add on to any website and if your client is happy with your prior services, it will be an easier sell.

 

Step 2: Get some raw video or photos

You’ll notice the video above includes some footage of my client cleaning carpets, as well as some photos from some projects he’s worked on.

My client already had the video as he created it himself with his iPhone and gave it to me to edit down for the web commercial. Same with the images.

This is the easiest way to go because you don’t need to travel all around town to shoot the raw footage for every client you get.

If they already have some video, get them to send it over to so you can use it.

However, if you like shooting video or your client doesn’t have any…you’ll need to shoot the video for them. (You would charge more for this obviously)

Here are the tools I recommend for shooting awesome quality video on the cheap:

• Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera
• A Tripod Like This
• Audio-Technica ATR-35S Lavalier Microphone

A great way to get some awesome footage to make a web commercial similar to my client’s above, is to just show up to their place of business and record them doing their job for about 10-20 mins.

If you want to take it a step further, you could even sit them down and ask them some questions about their business or grab a few of their loyal customers to say nice things about them for a minute or 2.

Make sure you plan all this out with your client beforehand.

If you want to go the “quick and dirty” route and skip the video altogether, you can get the job done with a dozen or 2 images and make a slideshow style video.

 

Step 3: Write the script

In our video example, you’ll also notice the use of a voice over person which adds to the overall feel of the TV commercial style we are going after.

We’ll talk more about voice overs and who I used later in this article, (it ain’t from Fiverr) but for now let’s just focus on what we are going to have the voice over person say.

Generally, these videos work well around 1 minute in length.

Too much longer, and we risk losing our viewer’s attention since this video is promotional in nature.

Any shorter, and we’ll be fighting to get our message across without stumbling over our own words.

In order to write a script for 1 minute of speaking, it needs to be in the neighborhood of 170 words.

How I structure my scripts:

To make a video similar to mine, you want to hit these 5 key points in your script:

- Who we are (“**BIZNAME** is your number one choice for…”)
- What we do (“our services include…”)
- How we can help  (“Your home or business will be the talk of the town…”)
- Why choose us (“with Over 15 years of experience…”)
- Call to action (“Give us a call…”)

If you have trouble coming up with ideas, get your client to write the script or just copy mine and modify it.

 

Step 4: Find motivation

An easy way to kick start your creative muscle is to look at what others have done and do the same thing.

No, I’m not talking about ripping people off. Fire up the trusty ole YouTube and start searching for other videos or commercials that you like.

A lot of small local businesses won’t have anything like this, so you’ll most likely need to look at actual TV commercials for larger companies.

 

Step 5: Start editing

I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 11 for all of my video editing that doesn’t involve screen capture video.

Of course, I recommend you use the same thing because it’s great software. But I know not everyone reading this will have an extra $100 to spend on software right now.

So, until you get the check from your first client you can get away with using Windows Movie Maker. However, it’s more of a basic video editing program that isn’t nearly as capable as Vegas.

But, it can get the job done…especially for slideshow videos.

However, since I use Vegas I’ll be showing you to make these videos with that. You can download a 30 day free trial to make your first video…so no excuses!

Step 5a: Setup your project within Vegas

Fire up Vegas and create a new project. Here are the settings I usually start with:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next, click on “Import Media” and insert any files you anticipate using in your project. We’ll create more later which will need to be added, but for now just add your raw video plus any images you already know you’ll be using.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 6: Make an introduction (about 0:05 seconds)

A simple introduction can be nothing more than your client’s logo displayed on the screen at the begginning of the video. If you’re out to bore people into misery that is.

We need to add a little excitement into this and the simpliest way to do that is to make the screen zoom into the logo during the last 1-2 seconds of the intro.

Here’s how you do that in Vegas:

Click and drag your client’s logo into the time line

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stretch it to 00:05 seconds in length by clicking on and dragging the right edge of the clip

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click on “Event Pan/Crop”, which is the square looking tiny icon on the top/right corner of the clip

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now you’ll see this screen:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notice the timeline located towards the bottom of this screen. Also notice the giant “F” and Event Pan/Crop “grips” surrounding our image.

We’ll be using these 2 things to animate our logo so that it creates the zooming effect on our logo that we are looking for.

Click towards the last 3/4 of the time line. You’ll notice a the “playhead” will appear where you just clicked.

This means when you move, zoom or rotate the “grips” around your image, your actions will be recorded at this point on the time line.

Go ahead, click on the timeline like I described above, then grab the lower right hand corner grip and shrink it down just a little bit so it looks like this

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, check your time line. You’ll notice a “key frame” has been placed at that point on the time line. That means when the video plays and gets to the point on the time line where that key frame is, the screen will zoom into your logo the amount you zoomed in with the grips.

Repeat this step about 10 times moving down the timeline further each time, while also zooming into your logo a little bit more each time.

The first key frame is where your zooming starts, and the last is where it stops…which should be at the end of the time line.

Here is what all my keyframes look like finished:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…and here you can see 2 of my 9 key frames and the corresponding zoom amount for each.

The result is the final animated portion of my intro screen as seen in the video above.

This is the same process I used to animate the ending of my client’s video, so I won’t waste your time explaining this to you twice.

Once you get the intro done, you can do the same thing for the ending or do it a little differently like I did with the phone number, website url and all.

 

Step 7: Add your video & images (about 00:50 seconds)

With the intro and ending screens out of the way, now we can get started chopping down our video and adding images where necessary.

Just click and drag them all into the timeline like we did for the images in step 5b.

The original iPhone video my client sent me was about 11 minutes in length with about 3 different “scenes”.

Example: He steamed the carpets for 6 mins, vacuumed the steps for 3 mins and vacuumed the edge of the carpets for 2 mins.

Obviously, using all of this footage would not only make the video extremely long, but very boring. So, I took about three 00:10 second parts of the video and got rid of the rest.

To split a clip, just click where you want to “break” it and tap the “S” key on your keyboard. This will “split” the clip, allowing you to delete portions you don’t need.

 

 

 

 

 

Position the clips throughout your time line however you want.  If you’re going to use still images like me, just add those in there as well where you want.

Here’s what my time line looks like completed:

You’ll also notice that I had 2 still clips in my client’s video above (“Got Dirty Carpets or Upholstery?”)

To make these, create a new file in Photoshop and make it the same dimensions of the video (1280x720px for example).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Add your colors and text and then go to File > save for web and devices. Save as the image format you want. (I chose .png)

Then, just insert the image into the time line the same way as we’ve done everything else so far.

At this point you should have the “visual” portion of your video completed. In the next step we’ll start attacking the audio to wrap this up!

 

Step 8: Get a professional voice over

This part is optional but it will increase the overall quality of your video ten-fold and add an extra feeling of professionalism to it.

Not to mention, your clients will absolutely love it when they hear a professional voice over person pitching their business. Trust me on this one!

I’m sure you know you can hire people on Fiverr.com to create 1-2 minute voiceovers for $5. However, I didn’t use anyone on Fiverr.com for my voice over.

The marvelous voice you hear in this video is that of fellow marketer Todd Gross who happens to be a former weatherman for the Boston, Mass area.

I also believe he was the same meteorologist depicted in the movie “The Perfect Storm”.

He has a monthly voice over membership for only $5.95 /mo, which gets you a minute of voice overs from him each month. If you need more than a minute, he only charges an extra $5.95 per minute.

Which is extremely cheap for a professional voice over from someone who has made his living in broadcasting for years.

Todd is a great guy, is super fast at replying to emails and getting your voice overs done. I sent my script for this video over to him and he had the voice over in my inbox as an mp3 file in just a couple hours.

You can check out Todd’s site here:

http://adsensemiracles.com/says/vo2co

That is NOT an affiliate link and I don’t make a dime if you buy a voice over from him. I don’t even think he has an affiliate program for this because his price is already low enough.

Now, why did I decide to use Todd instead of saving $.95 and hiring someone on Fiverr.com?

Well, first of all I like to do business with people I know and trust.

Second, some of the service providers on Fiverr.com can be a bit slow in completing projects. I didn’t feel like waiting around 5 days.

Third, since I’m paying for a minute per month I will be motivated to come up with new projects to use this membership for.

So, pick your voice over person and send them over the script we created in Step 3 of this tutorial.

Once you get the completed audio back from your voice over, simply insert the audio file into your Vegas project timeline in a new audio track.

If you look at the image below, you’ll notice my voice over audio track is inserted on the audio track named “Voice Over”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The name of the audio track doesn’t mean anything…in fact, you can rename each track to what you want like I did. So don’t get confused if yours are named something else by default, as they will be.

Once you insert the voice over audio, just slide it to the beginning of your video and make sure it lines up where you want it in the video.

I actually went through my video after adding the voice over audio and moved some portions of the video and images around, so that when certain words were spoken in the voice over, it was in sync with the video.

You can see clear evidence of this after the 00:35 second mark in my video where words appear on the screen as the voice over is speaking my client’s various services.

This can take some time to get right, but is pretty straight forward.

 

Step 9: Get some background music

Another way to add to the over all perceived quality of your video is to add some background music to it.

Could you imagine how boring my client’s video would be without the music?

Imagine how lame it would be without the voice over as well.

The video (visuals), voice over and background music all work together to create a nice flowing finished product. Without one, the video would seem “not quite complete”.

So, that’s a long winded way of saying…”You need background music!”.

Now, I don’t recommend using copyrighted songs from your favorite artists or bands for this. All that will do is get your video removed from YouTube for a copyright violation at the very least.

You need “Royalty Free Music” which you are free to use in personal or commercial projects as you wish.

There are many sites which sell Royalty Free Music, but I do just fine with the free ones like:

http://incompetech.com/
http://www.danosongs.com/

To my knowledge, all music on these sites are Royalty Free and Free of Charge. Be sure to read their usage policy as they might require you leave a credit back to their site for using the music, or make a donation to use without a credit.

I made a small donation to http://www.danosongs.com/ to use their music for projects as I wish, without the need to leave a credit back to their site.

Once you pick your background music, simply download the mp3 and add it to your Vegas project timeline the same way you did with the voice over in the step above.

Make sure you add the background music directly below (or above) your voice over audio in a new audio track. As seen in the pick above, my background music was added to the audio track entitled “Music”.

Again, the name of the track is irrelevant. (by the way, if you run out of audio or video tracks in Vegas, just right click on one of your existing tracks and click “Insert Audio(or Video) Track”.

 

Step 10: Finalizing your project

By now your video should be near completion.

At this time I usually give the video one last watch before rendering it to a video file. So, review your video and make any last final touches now so we can move onto rendering.

If there is audio in your original video tracks that you need to turn off, simple adjust the decibel slider to “0″ on the audio track that you want to mute.

The video that my client sent over of him cleaning the carpets had the original audio that included the sound of the vacuum running etc. So, I muted the audio portion of that clip.

You might also want to lower the background music volume so that it is about 3/4 the decibals of the voice over.

If your background music is too loud, it will drown out the voice over and make the words difficult to understand.

Again, here is a look at my audio track volume settings for a reference:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 11: Rendering to a web friendly video file

Now it’s time for the fun stuff…turning this into the final product!

Everyone has their own personal preferneces on what settings to use when rendering video within Vegas, but I’ll show you what I do.

First, go to: Project > Render As (NOTE: NOT Project > Make Movie)

I usually start with this output format: “Sony AVC/MVC (*.mp4;*.m2ts;*,avc)”

Click on the tiny black triangle to the left of the output format name, scroll down and select “Internet 1280×720-30p” and click on the “Customize Template” button below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Under “Frame Size”, you’ll want to adjust the frame size of your video if it doesn’t match the 1280×720 aspect ratio or is a smaller video.

For example, my client’s video ended up being an odd size, so I changed 1280×720 to 1174×717.

Now you can click “Render” and sit back and wait for your video to render to an mp4 file.

Once it’s done, locate the file, open it up and give it a watch. Did it turn out OK?

If not, re-read this tutorial if you need to and figure out what went wrong.

If you’re video looks good, it’s now time to upload to YouTube and optimize this puppy for your client’s target keywords.

 

Step 12: Upload to YouTube and SEO

Uploading a video to YouTube is pretty self explanatory so I won’t torture you right now by going through the process.

However, I will show you where to include your keywords in your video so your video actually drives targeted local traffic to your clients website.

The easiest way to do this is to just show you what I do.

Have a look at this image to see how I add my keywords:

 

 

 

Conclusion:

There go you! You are now armed with the basic knowledge to make “Web Commercials” for businesses and of course, charge money for this service.

Like I said above, you can easily charge $300 – $500 or more for basic videos like this as local businesses will recognize the value in it if you show them how it can help get traffic to their site.

They’ll also fall in love with the fact that they now have a “commercial” for their business and tell all their friends about it…meaning referrals for you which equals more business.

While I’ve done my best to outline this entire process in somewhat fine detail, there’s a good chance you’ll still encounter a situation not covered in this tutorial.

That’s the nature of the beast and the life of an internet marketer. The knowledge is out there, you just gotta do some looking.

Of course, I’d be glad to point you in the right direction if you get stuck and I know the answer.

So, please leave your questions and comments below…and let me know what you thought of this tutorial!

Feel free to pass this article on to anyone else who you think might benefit from it.

-Peter