Create a video advertisement using PowerPoint 2013
Video is an extremely powerful tool to advertise a product to a large audience online. Video platforms like YouTube have made it really easy for companies to upload videos and spread them free of charge. If you go to an ad agency and ask them to produce a video ad for you it will be quite costly, but if you’re just a little bit creative and if you have the time, you can create a video almost free of charge, with very simple tools – like Microsoft PowerPoint! In this week’s blog post I’ll share with you how you can create a video ad using Microsoft PowerPoint 2013 like the one we have made here:
1. Outline your messaging
Before you start creating your slides in PowerPoint you need to think about the message in the ad. What is it you want to communicate? What are the key points you want the viewer to walk away with? Include a call to action as well as your company’s contact details so that the viewer can get in touch with you after watching the video.
2. Create your slides
Just like when you are creating a presentation you should keep your slides clutter-free. This is even more important when you are creating a video ad. Insert pictures and perhaps also a video to the slides so that it’s not just text. Add animations and slide transitions to your presentation to add movement to your video. The “Wipe” animation with “Effect Options/ Direction” set “From Left” is quite effective to show text being written on the slide.
3. Add music
In order to capture the viewers’ attention, it helps to add music to your video. You can purchase royalty-free music on the Internet for about $10 that you can use in your video ad. Insert the audio file to the first slide of the presentation. Mark the option, “Play across slides” to play the music throughout the duration of the video. Depending on the music you’ve selected, you might have to make it shorter using the “Trim audio” tool or choose to fade out the music when the video ends.
If you have animated objects on your first slide you should check to make sure that the music audio file is the first animated object on the slide. If you set it to Start “With Previous”, the music will start playing as soon as you start the presentation.
4. Record the slideshow
When you are done with your slides, walk through the presentation in slideshow mode. Test to see that the animations work with the background music. Here you will probably have to play around with the timing of your slides and objects to make sure that it all works together with the music. When you have the timings right it’s time to record the slideshow. Go to “Slide Show”, and then “Record Slide Show”. Chose to start from the beginning and deselect the option to record narrations and laser pointer.
Walk through the presentation to the music just like you want the final video to appear. When you are done save the timings.
5. Save as video
The final step is to save your presentation as a video file. In PowerPoint 2013 go to the “File” tab, “Export” and then “Create a Video”. You can choose different levels of quality for your video. I recommend you use the best, High-Definition video quality so that you can play your video ad with good quality on large TV displays. The video will be created in an MPEG-4 format. Look through the final video to make sure that all the animations are shown as intended. Sometimes you need to go back and fine-tune the timings.
Get feedback before you publish the final version
Ask your colleagues and friends for feedback on the video before you publish it to the rest of the world via YouTube. Ideally, show it to someone who doesn’t know about your product but that is part of your target market. Perhaps you’re missing something in your messaging that is obvious to you, but not to someone else? When you’re happy with the result, upload the video to YouTube and share it with the rest of the world! Good luck with your ad!
(If you have difficulties reading this article, you can access the full article in pdf here)