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What Should a Marketing Video Include?

$\"Thomas$

27 February 2023 · Updated 2 July 2026 · 7 min read

$\"Marketing$

A marketing film earns attention in its first few seconds or loses the viewer entirely. What follows, message, visuals, storyline, and call to action, determines whether that attention turns into something the brand can measure.

Format has to match the goal before anything else gets decided

Before a single shot gets planned, the format itself needs deciding, and that decision should follow directly from what the film is meant to achieve. A film built for brand awareness works differently to one built to close a sale, and treating every marketing film as the same generic deliverable is where a lot of wasted production effort starts.

A product demo works when the goal is showing exactly how something functions, ideal for a considered purchase where a viewer wants to understand mechanism before buying. An explainer film suits a more abstract product or service, one that needs a concept unpacked before the viewer can even evaluate whether it’s relevant to them.

A testimonial-led film works when trust is the primary barrier, letting a real customer’s experience do work a brand’s own claims cannot. Short-form social content demands an entirely different discipline: a message that lands inside the first two or three seconds, built for a feed where a viewer is one swipe away from moving on.

Length should follow format, not the other way around. A film built for a platform like Reels or TikTok needs to say what it needs to say inside roughly 15 to 90 seconds. A film built to sit on a product page or in an email can run considerably longer, because the viewer has already opted in by choosing to watch it.

First impressions decide whether the rest gets watched

Attention spans online are short and getting shorter. Without a distinctive opening, a film risks losing its audience before the message even lands. The first few seconds need to do real work:

Open with a question or an unexpected fact that makes the viewer curious.
Give a quick preview of what the film covers, the way a book’s opening line sets up what follows.
Assume the viewer has the sound off. Closed captions and clear visual framing carry the message regardless.
Establish the brand’s visual identity immediately: logo, colour, tone.
State the problem the film addresses in terms the viewer immediately recognises as their own.
Answer the one question every viewer is silently asking: what’s in this for me.
Keep the opening under 10 to 15 seconds. Past that, the viewer has already decided whether to stay.

Colour carries meaning before a single word is spoken

Brands are recognised by colour before anything else: blue reads as Facebook, red reads as YouTube, green reads as WhatsApp. Colour works the same way inside a marketing film. A consistent, deliberate colour scheme reinforces brand identity and shapes how a viewer feels about what they’re watching, independent of the script.

If a brand already has an established colour scheme, the film should use it visibly and consistently. If not, colour choice should be led by what the film needs to communicate and who it’s speaking to, since colour does affect audience perception, not by arbitrary preference.

A storyline outperforms a features list

Time spent developing a real storyline pays off more than time spent polishing shots that exist purely to promote the brand directly. A story that reflects a viewer’s actual situation, references they recognise, values they hold, builds a connection a straightforward statement of company goals never will.

Telling the story behind a brand or a product, rather than simply listing what it does, gives a marketing film the human element that keeps a viewer watching to the end. This doesn’t require live-action production: a strong script delivered through animation, voice-over, and considered illustration carries a story just as effectively.

Customer testimonials, product reviews, and interview-style content strengthen this further by putting real voices, not just the brand’s own, at the centre of the story.

Search optimisation determines whether the film gets found

A film’s content and message only matter if the right audience finds it. Search-optimised metadata, title, description, tags, and captions, is what makes a film discoverable inside an enormous volume of daily video content across every platform.

A few specific things make the difference:

Include the film’s core keywords, whatever’s relevant to the brand, product, or service, in the title, script or voice-over, captions, and hashtags.
Write a platform-appropriate description containing the same core keywords, whether that’s a full description field on YouTube or a caption on Instagram.
Name the video file itself using a specific, keyword-relevant phrase rather than a generic filename, since some platforms surface this in search results too.

Verifiable data builds the argument description alone can’t

Data relevant to the product or brand, performance figures, real reviews, honest comparison against alternatives, makes a marketing film’s argument concrete rather than assertive. Research-backed information from credible sources builds trust in a way a straightforward claim cannot, and that trust is what eventually converts a viewer into a customer.

Data on its own, delivered without narrative, loses a viewer’s attention quickly. The strongest marketing films pair a storyline with data, giving the viewer both the emotional reason to care and the factual reason to believe it.

A real customer connection outlasts a single view

A film that builds a connection with its audience does more for a brand than one that simply performs well once.

Trust built through a marketing film compounds: it improves brand perception, encourages repeat engagement, and according to HubSpot’s research, 40% of marketers say film’s biggest advantage is explaining a product clearly, while 36% point to the higher engagement film generates over other formats.

A few approaches build this kind of connection deliberately:

Address the problem directly. Frame the issue in terms the viewer recognises as their own, then show specifically how the product solves it and what makes that solution different.

Show the people behind the brand. Behind-the-scenes and culture-focused content builds trust because it’s honest, not performed, and it requires no actors, props, or elaborate script.

Put customers at the centre. Testimonials, reviews, and live Q&A sessions let the audience hear from people other than the brand itself, which carries more credibility than the brand speaking about its own product.

A specific call to action gives interest somewhere to go

Everything a marketing film builds, attention, story, trust, needs somewhere to go. A call to action tells a viewer exactly what to do once they’ve watched: subscribe, visit the site, follow the brand elsewhere, share the film, sign up for something specific, or make a purchase.

Placement matters. A call to action can appear at the start (pre-roll), partway through (mid-roll), or at the end (post-roll), with the end remaining the strongest option for anyone who’s watched the full film through. What matters most is specificity: a vague or absent call to action leaves interest with nowhere to convert.

Where surprise and collaboration extend a film’s reach

A marketing film doesn’t have to work in isolation. Collaborating with another brand or a relevant voice in the same space can extend a film’s reach further than the brand’s own channels alone would manage, because a viewer who trusts that third party lends some of that trust to the message itself.

This works precisely because it’s not the brand speaking about itself: an outside voice carries a kind of credibility a brand statement structurally cannot replicate on its own.

The same principle applies to unexpected creative choices within a film. A moment that surprises a viewer, a twist in the story, an unexpected format shift, a detail they weren’t anticipating, tends to be the moment they remember and the moment they’re most likely to share.

Predictability rarely gets shared. surprise, used deliberately rather than gratuitously, often does.

Bringing it together

A marketing film that works does all of this deliberately rather than by accident: it earns attention immediately, carries a distinct visual identity, tells a story worth watching, gets found by the audience it’s meant for, backs its claims with real information, builds a connection, and closes with a clear next step.

Each element does a specific job, and none of them substitute for the others.

$\"Thomas$

Written by

Thomas Howcroft

Founder | Director

Engineering-led realism · Campaign-ready visuals · Senior client partner

FAQ

Common questions, answered.

What are the essential elements of a marketing film?

A strong opening, a clear core message, deliberate visuals and colour, genuine storytelling, search-optimised metadata, and a specific call to action.

Why does storytelling matter in a marketing film?

A well-told story creates an emotional connection with the viewer, which makes the content more memorable and more likely to be watched to the end.

Why is a call to action necessary?

It tells a viewer exactly what to do next. Without one, engagement has nowhere to go, and interest never converts into an action.

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