How to Use Creative Sound Design in Your Marketing Videos
As a marketer, you know that video is a powerful tool to reach your audience. And one of the best ways to make your videos stand out is by incorporating creative sound design. Good sound design adds realism and emotion to your marketing content and can help you tell a more compelling story.
What Is Sound Design?
Sound design includes the use of music and sound effects to enhance a video’s branding, atmosphere, and emotion. It can make your videos more engaging and memorable and is moderately easy to incorporate — though tricky to master.
Creative sound design can make your video come alive and significantly impact results, whether you’re trying to evoke a particular feeling or create a certain atmosphere. But how do you incorporate good sound design? Let’s examine a few ideas.
How to Work with Sound Design in Videos
Here are some ways to exercise good sound design principles in your marketing videos:
Use Professional Sound Libraries
First, you’ll need to acquire the audio assets you’ll use in your project. The easiest way is to purchase access to professional sound libraries, which often come with thousands of sound effects and music files that you can use at your discretion. These can be expensive, but they’re worth it if you’re serious about making high-quality videos.
Look for Free Assets or Use Foley Techniques
If you don’t need enough music or sound effects to justify a sound library membership, many websites offer free audio files that you can download and add to your videos. Just do a quick search online, and you’ll find plenty of options.
Just make sure there aren’t any restrictions on using the sound files before you download them. Some licenses will state that you can only use the audio for non-commercial purposes. Some will require you to give credit to the original creator. A good trick is to browse Creative Commons audio assets for free, high-quality audio.
But remember that low-quality sound effects can ruin a video, so you want to ensure you use high-quality sound effects that are well-recorded and edited, even if they’re free.
Another option is to record the audio yourself in a process known as Foley design: the art of creating sound effects by physically manipulating objects. These effects can be anything from footsteps to doors closing. With a decent microphone, you can easily create your own foley sound effects — just be sure to properly treat and mix them in post.
Use Sound Design to Enhance but not Overpower
It’s easy to get carried away with sound design, adding sound effect upon sound effect and stuffing your video full of attention-grabbing pops and whooshes. However, you want to be conservative in your use of sound effects and music, only adding them where they add something positive to the video. If your content is annoying or overwhelming, your audience will just click away or keep scrolling.
For example, you can use ambient sounds to help set the mood for your video. You can also use sound effects to emphasize logos or other visuals, making them stand out and be more memorable. It’s also acceptable to add subtle sounds to enhance movement and action.
But you don’t want any of these to drown out the music, and you especially don’t want to distract from the voiceover. If your viewer is pulled away from your message every other second with a loud mouse click or footstep, they won’t remember what you’re trying to say.
Likewise, you want to make sure your music choice is appropriate for your content, synergizing with the message harmoniously and not overpowering it or distracting from it.
Layer Sound Effects
Layering your sound assets is a great way to create a more realistic and believable atmosphere. For example, it’s unlikely that you’ll find one file with the perfect balance of crickets, birds, and bubbling water for your forest shot.
But with some time in the studio, tinkering with your mix, you can play with each sound’s volume, panning, and equalization to produce a perfectly balanced soundscape. Keep in mind that you don’t want any one sound to dominate the others; they should all work together to create a cohesive whole.
Hire a Production Company for Sound Design
If you’re not comfortable adding audio yourself, you can always hire a production company to incorporate creative sound design into your marketing videos. This option can be a bit more expensive, but it’s worth it if you want your videos to sound their best.
Enhance Your Marketing Videos with Creative Sound Design
Enhancing audio production can be a fun and easy way to increase traffic and make your videos more engaging for viewers. Not only does good sound design make your videos more enjoyable to watch, but it also helps to reinforce your branding and create a more memorable experience for potential customers.
Contact Foundation Digital Media today to work with an expert team of video production professionals. Serving businesses in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and beyond, Foundation Digital Media produces professional corporate videos that stand out from the crowd.
