5 Tips for Making an Impactful 6-Second Video Ad

Nowadays, customers are interacting with brands primarily through their screens. With digital marketing dominated by visual content and social media, the popularity of platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch are a testament to this video-dominated reality.

As a result, video marketing and short-form videos have become effective sales funnel tools, thanks to their ability to engage an audience and captivate leads’ interest. In an era of video-rich digital marketing, shorter videos can be great impression generators. Many internet users are used to consuming large amounts of audiovisual content, and shorter videos are a refreshing change.

To leverage the power of short video marketing, we’ve comprised an equally short and effective list of five tips to make an impactful 6-second video ad. That said, here’s our first piece of advice:

Be Specific and Straightforward

It should go without saying, but a 6-second video is short. Very short. In fact, just by reading this 3-sentence introduction, you have already spent over 6 seconds of your day!

Although it may seem all too brief, that short window of time does give you enough room to create engaging and informative content. The key is knowing what you want to talk about. The first step towards crafting an impactful 6-second video is choosing what product or specific feature you’d like to promote or highlight.

Let’s use an example to better illustrate this point. If you are trying to promote a business phone app, you can’t create an overly long explanatory video about every single aspect of your product and why it’s the best business phone app.

However, you can pinpoint which specific feature you want to focus on. You can create a short-video marketing campaign where each ad plays to one of your product’s strengths. Once you learn how to crop a video, the rest is easy! You can highlight individual features like call parking, call recording, or app integration, for example.

Leverage the Power of Social Media

As previously mentioned, social media and influencer marketing are slowly but surely taking over the digital marketing ecosystem. Platforms like Instagram, Twitch, and TikTok focus primarily on video content, and your 6-second videos can be used as powerful social media content for these platforms. 

Understanding how to make the most of these platforms can give you new opportunities. For example, you can increase your reach with Instagram Reels, create an eye-catching Facebook ad, or attract a new generation of leads using TikTok by learning how to add audio to video.

Additionally, these platforms can give you an in-depth look at your potential target’s interests, priorities, and preferences. Social media can be an excellent audience segmentation tool.

Don’t Be Overly Sales-Focussed

If you look at most short marketing videos, the main goal is creating branded content that focuses on promoting the brand, connecting with the audience in a meaningful and impactful way. If you want your 6-second videos to be effective, you should do the same.

Instead of simply promoting your products’ many technical upsides, focus on telling your audience why your products are special. You can use storytelling marketing to bring more humanity to your branded content. This way, you can create a deeper connection that is memorable and generates more interest.

Be Creative!

As previously mentioned, your top priority here is to create unforgettable and unique videos that stand out. These 6-second videos are short, and leads can watch hundreds of them in a single sitting. In order to separate yourself from the rest of the 6-second video pack, your video has to be impactful and original.

You can do this in terms of content and story, but the actual form of how that content is visually represented is just as important. The point being is that your short videos should have a specific style or flair to them, wherever possible.

You can create your own visual trademark if you commit to a specific style or visual approach. Here are some effective examples that tend to work:

• As a visual style, stop motion is not particularly groundbreaking – since the first instances of animation used in the film industry relied on this peculiar technique. Although it is not the most advanced way to tell a story visually, it is quite unique and eye-catching.
• Looping your content is an excellent way of making six seconds seem like an eternity. This format is very popular since it can be seen online in GIFs and Instagram Boomerangs.
• Flat design animation style is very popular in digital marketing, thanks to its simplistic and clean look. Since it is not overly complicated, these videos can be made quite fast, especially when compared to more “artisanal” styles of animation, like stop motion.

Interaction Leads to Conversions

As with any other digital marketing strategy, branded video content is crafted with the intention of converting as many leads as possible. The best way to make sure that your videos are engaging – and boost conversion rates – is using them as a CTA (Call to Action).

The idea here is that the video acts as a link between your product and the potential buyer. If you design the video with the idea of leaving leads wanting more, you can create teasers that directly leads to your landing or products page.

A 6-Second Conclusion

If you follow all our tips, you’re sure to create impactful, eye-catching, and engaging short videos without breaking a sweat. So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and start creating some videos!