by Phil Chow

Did you know you can easily create good quality marketing videos without having to actually shoot a video?

You can create such a video with Powerpoint or Keynote (for the Mac) and upload it to YouTube, especially with PowerPoint 2010 and above (File > Save & Send or Export) or with the latest versions of Keynote (Share > Send a copy > YouTube).

In this post, I’ll give you a high level overview on how to do this and show you an example video created in Keynote from our friends at GetFiveStars.

So let’s get started. Note this post assumes that you have some familiarity with PowerPoint or Keynote. There are also links to YouTube lessons in this post.
 

Step 1. Create your video script

First create a script of your video.

It’s easy to do this for a marketing video. All marketing materials, including marketing videos, typically follow this standard marketing formula:

1. State your customer’s problem (difficulty in getting new customers, fixing plumbing, etc.).
2. How you solve the problem for them and the benefits they gain from using your product or service (more customers, plumbing fixed, savings in time, etc.).
3. Why go with you to solve their problem (your qualifications, references, experience, proof of your competence, etc.).
4. Address any objections your customers might have about your service or product.
5. Ideally, a guarantee, if you can provide one, to reduce the risk of buying from you.
6. A call to action to contact you for your service or buy your product. Consider sweetening your call to action with a free trial, offer, etc. to maximize the chances they will take action with you.

Step 2. Come up with a concept for the video and gather content for it

Here’s where you come up with a concept for the video, write the text for it, following the above marketing formula, and then gather the visuals for it (I’ll explain later why you don’t necessarily have to get music for your video at this stage).

Text wise, the source of your text can come from your existing marketing materials or from your own creations.

Visual content wise, look at your exiting marketing materials for content, but for new material, I recommend AlltheFreeStock that conveniently lists sources for free stock photo, video, icon and sound effects that you could use in your video.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for free, try Envarto Market, a pay site, to search for photos, graphics or video for your video.

Don’t forget PowerPoint and Keynote comes with stock images as well that you can include in your video.
 

Step 3. Create your slides in PowerPoint or Keynote

In PowerPoint or Keynote, create the slides that will make up your video.

In the slides, write your text and layout your chosen visual content on the slides.

If you want, record your voice to the slides (middle of page) and then apply the desired animation effects to them and transitions between the slides (fades, slide right, left, etc.).

Keep the length of your video as short as possible without sacrificing what you want your video to say. As a rule of thumb, for marketing videos, try to keep your video under 3 minutes. Most people will not watch a long marketing video (instructional videos are a different story but even then keep them short as possible).

Finally, save your video. Next, create your YouTube Channel at YouTube.com if you don’t have a YouTube account and then upload your video to your channel.

If you’re not familiar with the above aspects of creating a slideshow in PowerPoint or Keynote, google whatever aspect + “PowerPoint” or “Keynote” and you should find tutorials that will walk you through.
 

Step 4. Upload and edit your video in YouTube

Uploading video to YouTube can take time. So, while you’re waiting, fill in your video’s YouTube title, description and keywords.

Next, click on your YouTube profile picture and then “Creator Studio” on your upper right.

Creator Studio has a suite of video editing tools. There, you can enhance your video like add music to it. YouTube comes with free stock music and you can also add special effects to your video, like clickable cards and titles.

If you’re done all your video editing back in Step 3 or finished your video edits in Step 4, click on publish and your video will go live on YouTube. You can then share your video with your friends, and embed your video onto your website as I’ve done below.
 
 

As mentioned earlier, here’s a video on YouTube created using Keynote demonstrating the above points:

What are your thoughts on this post? If you have any comments or questions, please write below. We welcome and appreciate your opinion!