Published: January 31, 2025
Updated: September 17, 2026
Reading time: 7 min
What Is a Promotional Video?
A promotional video is a marketing video designed to showcase a business, product, service, event or campaign and encourage the viewer to take action.
That action could be visiting your website, enquiring about a service, buying a product, registering for an event, or simply learning more about your brand.
Promotional videos can take many forms. They might feature real people and locations, product demonstrations, animation, interviews or a combination of different styles.
The important thing is that the video has a clear purpose and speaks to the audience you want to reach.
From a company introduction on your website to a short campaign video for social media, promotional video content can support your marketing at different stages of the customer journey.
In this guide, we’ll look at the main types of promotional videos, where you can use them, and what makes them effective.
What Are Promotional Videos Used For?
Promotional videos are useful whenever you need to communicate something visually and make an impression quickly.
A business might use a promotional video to:
- Introduce its brand to potential customers
- Launch a new product or service
- Demonstrate how a product works
- Promote an event or campaign
- Explain a complex service
- Showcase its people, facilities or expertise
- Support a sales or marketing campaign
- Create engaging content for social media
- Encourage customers to visit a website or landing page
The right approach depends on what you want the video to achieve.
For example, a product launch video might focus on features and benefits, while a company promotional video could concentrate more on your people, values and what makes your business different.
Types of Promotional Videos
There isn’t one format that works for every business. The most effective promotional video is usually the one that suits your message, audience and marketing objective.
1. Product Promotional Videos
Product videos show potential customers what a product does and why it is worth considering.
You can demonstrate features, show the product in use or focus on the problem it solves. This can be particularly useful for ecommerce brands and manufacturers where customers cannot physically see or handle the product before buying.
A well-produced product video can also be adapted for websites, marketplaces, social media and paid campaigns.
2. Company and Brand Videos
A company promotional video gives people a better understanding of who you are and what your business stands for.
Rather than simply listing your services, it can introduce your team, show your workplace and communicate the personality behind your brand.
This can be particularly valuable when trust and reputation influence a purchasing decision.
3. Service Promotional Videos
Some services are difficult to explain with a few sentences of website copy.
A promotional video can show how your service works, what makes your approach different and, most importantly, how you help your customers.
Instead of concentrating solely on what you do, focus on the outcome you provide. Your audience wants to know how your service can make their life easier, solve a problem or help them achieve a goal.
4. Event Promotional Videos
Promotional videos can help create interest before an event takes place.
You could introduce speakers, highlight previous events, reveal what attendees can expect or create a short teaser campaign designed to encourage registrations.
The same footage can also be repurposed after the event to promote future events and demonstrate what attendees gained from taking part.
5. Explainer Promotional Videos
An explainer video can simplify a product, service or idea that might otherwise take several paragraphs to describe.
Animation can work particularly well here, especially when you need to visualise something abstract, technical or difficult to film.
However, explainer content does not have to be animated. Live action, interviews, demonstrations and a mixture of animation and live footage can all be effective.
6. Social Media Promotional Videos
Promotional content for social media needs to compete for attention quickly.
Shorter videos, strong openings, captions and platform-specific edits can help your content work more effectively on channels such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
Rather than simply uploading the same video everywhere, consider creating different versions for each platform and audience.
What Makes a Promotional Video Effective?
A professional-looking video is important, but production quality alone does not make a promotional video successful.
The strongest videos usually have a clear purpose from the beginning.
Start with a clear objective. Decide what you want the viewer to think, feel or do after watching.
Know your audience. Your message should reflect the questions, problems and motivations of the people you want to reach.
Keep the message focused. Trying to explain everything about your business in one video can leave viewers remembering very little.
Give viewers a reason to keep watching. A strong opening can establish the subject and create curiosity before attention starts to drop.
Show rather than simply tell. Demonstrating a product, service, workplace or customer experience can make your message easier to understand.
Finish with a clear call to action. If you want viewers to visit your website, enquire, buy or register, make the next step obvious.
There is much more to creating an effective promotional video, from developing the concept and script to choosing the right visual style. The key is to make every creative decision support the purpose of the video.
Why Use Promotional Videos for Your Business?
Video gives businesses a way to communicate information while also showing personality, emotion and visual detail.
By investing in a promotional video, it can help you:
Capture attention. Moving images, sound and storytelling can make your message more engaging than relying on text alone.
Build trust. Introducing real people, locations and processes can give potential customers a better sense of the organisation behind the brand.
Explain products and services. Demonstrations and visual storytelling can make complicated information easier to understand.
Support sales and marketing. A well-planned video can be used across websites, presentations, social media, campaigns and other marketing channels.
Strengthen your brand. Consistent visual storytelling can reinforce your brand’s personality and help you stand out from competitors.
The important thing is not simply to make a video because your competitors are using one. Start with the business objective and work backwards to the content you need.
How Is a Promotional Video Made?
Creating a promotional video involves more than turning up with a camera and filming.
The process normally starts with discovery and planning, where the objectives, audience, key message and creative direction are established.
Next comes scripting and preparation. This might involve writing a voiceover, developing interview questions, planning scenes or creating a storyboard.
Then comes production, where the planned footage is captured. Depending on the project, this could involve filming people, products, locations, interviews or demonstrations.
After filming, post-production brings everything together through editing, music, sound design, graphics, colour grading and any necessary animation.
Finally, the completed video is prepared for its intended platforms and marketing channels.
The exact process will vary depending on the scale and type of production, but good planning remains important at every level.
Where Can You Use a Promotional Video?
One of the biggest advantages of creating promotional video content is its versatility.
A single production can potentially be used across multiple channels, provided it is planned with those uses in mind.
You could use your video on:
- Your website or landing pages
- YouTube
- Instagram and Facebook
- Email marketing campaigns
- Sales presentations
- Trade shows and exhibitions
- Paid digital campaigns
- Internal presentations
You can also create shorter edits, different aspect ratios and social media cut-downs from the same production.
This means a promotional video does not necessarily have to be a one-off piece of content. With the right planning, one production can become part of a much wider content strategy.
Ready to Create a Promotional Video for Your Business?
A great promotional video should do more than look good. It should communicate your message, connect with the right audience and give people a reason to take the next step.
At Impress Video, we create professional promotional videos for businesses across the UK, from the initial concept and scripting through to filming, editing and delivery. Whether you’re launching a product, promoting a service, building brand awareness or creating content for multiple marketing channels, we can help bring your idea to life.
Ready to turn your message into a video that gets noticed? Get in touch with Impress Video to discuss your next promotional video project.