Think about how you scroll. Thumb moving, half paying attention, maybe the telly on in the background. Something has to stop you, and it has to do it fast. If it doesn’t, you’re gone before you’ve even registered whose video it was.
That’s the world your promo lives in. It’s up against holiday photos, football clips and a thousand other businesses, all fighting for the same second of attention.
Short video is still one of the best ways for a small business to show what it does. A café can show the steam coming off a fresh bake. A gym can show the energy of a packed class. A joiner can take a kitchen from bare walls to finished in fifteen seconds. Photos can’t do that.
In our experience, whether a promo works comes down to the edit far more often than the footage. Here’s what we look for when we’re cutting one.
Lead with your best bit
The most common mistake we see is a slow start. A logo animation. A drone shot drifting over a car park. Someone standing to camera saying “Hi, I’m Dave, and welcome to…”.
By the time Dave gets to the good bit, most people have scrolled past.
Flip it round. Open on the most interesting moment you’ve got: the finished product, a customer’s reaction, the moment the flame catches or the paint goes on. Give people a reason to stay, then tell them who you are. Your logo can wait until the end, when they actually care whose video it is.
Assume the sound is off
A lot of people watch with their sound muted. They’re on the train, in a waiting room or lying in bed next to someone who’s asleep. If your video only makes sense with the sound up, you’ve lost them.
So plan for silence first. If someone’s talking, add captions. Make them big, high contrast and easy to read on a small screen, and style them in your brand fonts and colours so they feel like part of the video rather than an afterthought.
Cut it shorter than feels comfortable
Your first edit will almost always be too long. That’s normal. When you’ve filmed something yourself, every clip feels important.
Your audience doesn’t share that attachment. They just want to know what’s in it for them. So every shot needs to earn its place. If a clip doesn’t show something new or move the story on, it goes, however nice it looks.
Cut to the beat
When your cuts land on the beat of the music, the whole video feels deliberate and slick. When they don’t, it feels slightly off, even if people can’t put their finger on why. It’s one of the easiest ways to make phone footage feel professional, and it’s why we choose the music early in the edit and shape the cuts around it.
Make it unmistakably yours
Someone should know it’s your video before your name appears. Use your brand colours and fonts on every title, caption and end card. Grade the footage so the colour feels the same from shot to shot. Build a simple intro and outro you can reuse, so every video feels like part of the same family.
Do this across a few videos and people start to recognise your content mid-scroll. That’s when it really starts working for you.
Size it for every screen
A landscape video squeezed into a vertical Reel wastes most of the screen, and it shows. We export every edit in the formats you’ll need, each one reframed properly so the important stuff stays in shot.
End with one clear ask
What do you want someone to do once they’ve watched it? Book a table, get a quote, visit the shop or follow the account. Pick one. Just the one. Put it on screen at the end in plain words. A video that leaves people entertained but unsure what to do next has only done half its job.
Do
- Open on your best moment
- Add big, clear captions
- Cut to the beat of the music
- End with one clear ask
Don't
- Start with a slow logo animation
- Rely on the sound being on
- Keep a clip because it looks nice
- Ask people to do three things
