Advertising Your Business by Acting like, well, an Actor

Share This Article, Choose Your Platform!
A business owner acting in front of a camera.

Video marketing has become the most effective and popular way to reach large audiences across the internet and television. Acting is an important part of video production, and if you want to advertise your business, you’ll need to become an actor, temporarily. You have seen a YouTube video, you have watched a video online, and you have seen a commercial on tv. We all have. It is impossible to live daily life without a video in front of us. Even advertisements that are pop-ups are now short videos in low resolution designed to interrupt your experience, and we have all been there trying to frantically find the “X” to close out the automatic video player before it starts to play. We’re going to show you how to act that part as a business owner.

As overwhelming and inconvenient as it might be video production and advertising is now a huge part of the marketing industry. There are better ways to advertise your brand or business with a video than to bombard them on a Wikipedia-style website about their favorite tv show. One thing the most effective videos share is the ability for the owners to speak to their merits.

Being able to sit and speak to a camera will help your business tremendously. Even if you are not the direct owner of the business, but you have been tasked with working alongside a marketing agency or department to make a video, then this insight is for you. Sometimes owning a business means you have to act like a movie star.

A content creator in front of a ring light promoting their business.

Prepare for your Role

If you have no practice with speaking publicly or on camera the very first thing you want to do is stand in front of a mirror and practice talking. Watch your hands, facial expression, tone, body language, all of it. Think of those movies in the 80’s where a young man or woman is preparing for a date and they keep practicing their pickup lines and flirtatious behavior in the mirror, do that exact thing. This will really give you an idea of who you are and how you sound. This is how you observe the way you act naturally, and learn to adjust it while filming for your advertisement.

Now, we are going to define our audience and their needs, this will help us build an outline for a script. What demographics are you catering towards? What’s the average age, area they live, or interests your customers might share? Build up a “persona” about your audience. Having a customer relationship management (CRM) system can expedite this process as defining factors like these are logged away in a database.

After figuring out who they are and what their niche might be, create an outline that caters your business to that audience. Do you have a large audience of middle-aged fathers looking to buy equipment to help with their lawn? Start with a short story about your own lawn, and maybe the struggles with the edger and how you needed a more reliable machine on that hot July afternoon. See, brainstorming is not the difficult part of acting for your business, it’s the next part.

Now, after you’ve thought about your audience and their needs, get right in front of that mirror again. Practice speaking about those script items you just created. Speak to that middle-aged gardener, speak to your pal who needs a lawyer, speak to the parents who need a babysitter for the weekend. Be clear, be concise, and most importantly, practice pausing between your thoughts. Video editors can make awkward pauses disappear, so do not be afraid to practice taking a large breath in between every thought.

Two people recording a podcast to advertise their business.

Dressing for Your Role

Your wardrobe makes your character. When acting in a produced video it is important to look professional while representing your business. We are not going to suggest you film a mock season of Bridgerton, but we are saying wear a nice button-up shirt with some slacks for the day of filming. In addition to looking professional, you will want your clothes to be comfortable, you might be sitting and speaking on camera for a couple hours. Video editors often use 5-10% of the footage they get. That means an hour of filming might be 3 minutes of usable footage.

Avoid wearing busy logos or distracting patterns, if you are doing a sit-down interview to talk about your business just have a small logo on the breast of the shirt. Make sure you are groomed well, trim your beard, tweeze your nose hairs, wash your face, and style your hair. Pay attention to jewelry as well, unless your business is specifically catered towards that. Huge earrings can be distracting, and large necklaces can touch the lavalier microphone and interrupt your speech.

Sit up straight as you are recording and speak clearly, but more importantly, speak consistently. Microphones tend to pick up on huge dynamic changes in peoples’ voices and can make you sound blown out in the audio recording. Keep relaxed and open body language. All those hours of practice you did in the mirror, try to pretend you see yourself staring back at you and utilize all that practice.

A business owner acts in front of a camera to advertise their business in the woods.

Speaking on Camera

Here is the bread and butter to the video, your words. You’re promoting your business in this video, you got dressed up and you practiced for this moment, you are ready to deliver your Oscar-worthy monologue. Make sure you avoid quivering in your voice and speak with some modulating pitch going up and down slightly, as you would with your friends. Do not be afraid to say a line multiple times and giving ourself enough space in between each take. Your video editor will thank you.

Speaking at a natural and steady place can be difficult with lights in your face and a camera recording you but do your best to speak as naturally as possible. If you mess up, don’t worry everyone messes up, keep going. Any experienced video production team will tell you that very small mistakes are usually kept in as it makes people more approachable and like they have more humanity. There is something off about someone speaking perfectly all the time, it’s call the uncanny valley.

Try to avoid “um” and “uh” as much as possible, but if it is how you speak, just remember to give yourself space between your “ums, uhs, and ahs”. Those can be edited out, but the more space you leave the more an editor can hide them. Now you’re speaking on video and promoting your business, you’re practically Flo from Progressive at this point.

A production team interviews a business owner promoting their business.

Overcoming Nervousness

This is a tough one. There are multiple sites, lists, blogs, and gurus out there telling you to do all sorts of deep-breathing techniques or imagining everyone in the room naked. If those practices help you, go for it, but we here at Acclaim want to share two studies of speaking that often produce great result.

The first is to practice conversation with another person. Create a notecard with questions on them, and have a friend sit with you for an hour and run through the questions top to bottom. They might not be an exact list for the video or production but having this back-and-forth exchange will get you more comfortable speaking to people in general. There will be a director there asking you questions. If it is an interview-style video, there will absolutely be someone there talking to you as they film.

The second is to record yourself with your phone. Set your phone up on a ledge or on a tripod and record yourself speaking for ten minutes. Then, watch the whole thing back. This can be jarring as most people hate the sound of their voice, but it will undoubtedly teach you what can be done better. This is a lot like practicing in the mirror, but now there is an actual video of yourself. It can be intimidating, and if you have never done it before you will hate every second of it when you start. These are important and perfectly natural reactions to recording yourself and watching it back, do not give up. After doing this every day, once a day, for a week, you will undoubtedly be more comfortable speaking in front of a camera because you will have practiced it.

Two people film a podcast discussing their industry.

Aaaaaaaand Cut!

Now you have seen start to finish your entire acting process for your business’ videos. You might be the owner, a manager, an employee, or even a client, but now you have an idea of ho to prepare, what to prepare for, and how to handle the hiccups along the way. Here is a short reminder of the process:

  • Practice speaking in the mirror to yourself
  • Develop some attributes of your audience
  • Develop some topics to present to that audience
  • Practice mock interviews with other people
  • Record yourself with your phone and watch it back
  • Practice speaking on the topics
  • Dress well
  • Groom yourself before filming
  • Give yourself plenty of room while being recorded as it’s easier to edit
  • Accept your Grammy

Remember, if you have any questions on public speaking, speaking on camera, or filming an interview you can always reach out to us here at Acclaim.