Marketing. The hard, necessary part of running a business. I come from a marketing and advertising background. I’ve created hundreds of marketing pieces over the years and I’m going to give you my step-by-step strategy for creating them. I’ve used this strategy for years and it really helps take the guesswork out of the process. I’ll take that any way I can get it…
1. First? Stop… and feel…
I cannot stress how important this is. Before you create anything stop. Stop and get yourself into an emotional state of mind. Creation is vitally connected to emotion. If you can’t feel you are stifling your creativity. Before you create anything, do something that opens up your emotional brain. Create inside of you the emotion you want others to feel. I’ve found if you plan a marketing piece and all you can think about is “I’ve got to sell this.” or “I’ve got to get people to buy this package.”, then whatever emotion you are feeling at the time will come through into the piece. If you are feeling desperate then the piece will translate to others as desperate. If you feel scared or meek? Then scared and meek is what people will read. This step is SO important. Step back and prepare your mind…
2. Write down emotional phrases…
Once you are in an emotional state of mind think about what you want other’s to feel over your product and start writing down phrases that translate that emotion to others. Marketing and advertising is about translating emotions through visual cues. Take note of what statements work for you, because if it makes you emotional, it will make others emotional as well. Don’t worry about how it is worded right now. Just write down how you feel about what you do. If you had to describe to someone how you feel about what you do that is what you need to write down. Get as sappy and raw as you can. This is just for you right now. Answer questions like…
- Do you love what you do? Tell me about that… Scream it on the mountain tops!
- Do you love your product? Tell me about that…
- Do you feel strongly that what you are creating is the very best you could give someone? Tell me about that…
- Do you feel you are providing something of value that will be cherished? Tell me about that…
The phrases you are writing down are marketing gold. They are honest words from the heart. There isn’t any marketing phrases on the planet better than that.
3. Pick a phrase and make it a call to action…
Once you have a list of descriptive emotional phrases pick one and translate it into a call to action. Once you have that phrase, from there orward you are focusing on that call to action and creating that emotional connection you are feeling when you say that phrase.
For example… When I got to this step in my process, I went back and read my emotional descriptive phrases and I noticed a pattern. I noticed I kept ending with one phrase. “Let’s tell your story.” I had written things like … “We can create it together. We can say anything you want to say. How do you want to be remembered? Let’s tell your story together…” So, that became the phrase I chose to build upon. “Let’s tell your story…”
I sat back and closed my eyes and I heard music building up a momentum and at the very end, when the music hits its peak I saw that one powerful phrase come up. The call to action. “Let’s tell your story…”
Once you know the “call to action” phrase the rest of the project becomes fill in the blank. I knew the end goal and I knew in order to get there I needed to translate how this art form gives every one a voice to tell their story. When I thought about that, I felt a sense of empowerment. Empowerment. THAT’s what I want people to feel. That’s the emotion of the piece. So now I have the call to action and the emotion of the piece decided…
4. Choose your music and images
Once you have an emotion you want to convey and a call to action, it’s time to fill in the rest. I started thinking of things I could use to translate that sense of empowerment to others and push them toward that call to action. This is where it gets fun. Everything from here on out is all about adding the fluff to reinforce the message. It’s like being swept into a current. You want to sweep your audience into the current with you. You want to get to your destination via the shortest route. Keep it short. Don’t get off on a wordy tangent. Keep it as visual as possible. All arrows point to that call to action and creating the emotion.
Youtube.com has some amazing free music choices. The music I heard in my head was cinematic and youtube.com makes it easy to narrow down the choices based on category and feel. To get to the music go to your youtube.com channel and click on “Creator Studio” under your channel name..
Once you get to the creator studio on the left hand side click on “Create” and select “Audio Library”
At the top of the list you can sort the music options by category. I chose cinematic…
I didn’t want my promo to be that long so I listened to the options that were under a minute and a half. With every song you audition, see if it gives you the feeling you are wanting to convey. I was looking for empowerment. I wanted it to build up in momentum peak at the end. I ran across “Pucker Up” and I instantly fell in love. It had some great moments that could be used to highlight not just the pieces in my portfolio but also creative process. I wanted to show a little bit of the process in order to get them into the state of mind of creation. Remember, I’m trying to sweep them into the current with me.
6. Create your screen shots
Once you have the music picked out it’s time to start putting this baby together. Now… I’m going to say this with all honesty… I HATE youtube’s video editor.Yes, I used it to create this piece and I’ll never do it again. Find another option if you can. The thing that drove me nuts was how, every single little change you made… even if it was just adding a letter to the text… the project would autosave and JUMP to the beginning of your project and start playing. It happened over and over and over again. I would have to hit pause and go back and find my spot on the timeline again. I would make the change and it would autosave and auto play from the beginning again. I couldn’t get it to stop. I got so frustrated. I wanted to use their editor in order to encourage you guys that you don’t need fancy expensive software to put this together so I did my best to beat it into submission. I sent youtube.com a healthy dose of suggestion to fix that maddening feature. (If you guys know how to turn that feature off I’ll be eternally grateful to know how. I googled everything I could find. Everybody else was complaining about it too.)
When creating your frames keep it as visual as possible. Even your text. Put your phrases on a background that is moving or has some texture. It keeps interest. Don’t let your screen go blank. Combine your phrases with images as much as possible in order to reinforce the emotion you are translating.
7. Time your images to the beat of the music
This part is choreography. Putting images to music is like dance. You want to create movements that go with the music. If the music feels smooth, put in a smooth screen transition…
Screen transitions are things like fades, color fades, swipes etc… you can get to these options under the icon that looks like this.. 
If the music is staccato and quick, then use abrupt traditions and set up each of your frames to pop up on the screen on the beat. You can change the duration of each screen shot (frame) and dictate how long it is up on the screen. Here is a snapshot of the editor layout.
You will notice each frame has a number on it. That number is how long each frame is up on the screen in seconds. To change the time you click on the frame and drag the red handles to increase or decrease the time. By timing the frames with the beats in the music and creates a musical phrasing and adds emphasis to each image or statement. This step of the project took the longest to perfect because of the maddening save and auto play feature. Aside from that, putting the video together was very easy. Each icon at the top right represents things you can drag and drop into your timeline. The camera is for images, the “a” is for text, the music note is music tracks etc…
Once you get everything timed out and in place, you finish the video by clicking on the “Create Video” button on the upper right. The video is processed and published! Here is my finished project!
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Lady Caroline
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