Product videos, or videos that showcase the features and specifics of your product or service, are essential for a successful video marketing strategy. This video style can help differentiate your company and your products or services from your competition. In fact, 73% more website visitors make a purchase after watching a product video and 71% of consumers prefer video over other marketing content. This means that if you aren’t featuring product videos already, you’re probably losing business to your competition.
The reason video marketing is so successful is that it’s both a visual and audio medium, making it useful to a wide range of consumers in terms of memorability. Additionally, there’s a wide variety of options when it comes to video content for marketing purposes. You can utilize it for getting your products in front of a wider audience on social media, outlining the perks of your product on your website, and even explaining how to use the product on YouTube. Regardless of the distribution platform or intention of the content, video can make the benefits and function of your products easy to understand and use.
You can’t just throw some video footage together, though. To see a high return on investment, your product videos need to be quality products of their own in order for them to be useful to your marketing.
It’s important to understand what product videos are before you start considering whether or not they work for your needs. Product videos are a type of marketing video that focus on sharing the products and/or services your organization or business offers. This can range from explaining new features on the latest smartwatch to testimonials about the quality service you provide to showcasing how donations can help the cause of a nonprofit.
Whether you’re selling products or providing services — or you’re a nonprofit soliciting donations — you can find a way to make product videos work for your digital marketing strategy. Product video production is useful for businesses and organizations of all shapes and sizes. Essentially, if your business or organization needs to convince prospects to become a customer, member, donor, etc., then product video marketing is for you.
Note that there isn’t any one way to create a product video – the term “product video” includes a group of video types, such as how-tos, explainers, testimonials, and marketing/advertising videos. While these video styles aren’t always product-focused, any of these can be product videos when they focus primarily on your offerings. Consider which type will most efficiently feature your products or services to convey why you customers should pick your business/organization.
When done properly, product videos are beneficial for all businesses and nonprofit organizations. They can increase your reach, educate your current and prospective customers about your offerings, and help you build long-lasting relationships with your target demographic. However, to achieve this, it’s essential that you prioritize quality over quantity. An abundance of low-quality videos will not be nearly as effective as a few, high-quality ones. If you plan to begin creating your own product video marketing content, follow these tips to maximize the quality of your final product.
You can spend hours talking up your product or service to a prospective customer, and it may still not have the same impact as a short five-minute video. This is because video features imagery just as heavily as it does auditory messaging – giving the viewer a better understanding of the functionality or benefits of spending money on you and your products.
If you’re struggling to come up with ways to show your product and its features, think of common pain points faced by your consumers and how your product or service solves them. Once you begin producing your video content, make sure your videos show your product or service solving customer pain points.
It’s easy to get bogged down describing all the features of your product, but you need to make sure your primary message doesn’t get lost amongst other aspects of the video. Keep the focus on the product or service, and don’t distract with too many motion graphics or effects. Similarly, you also don’t want to make videos too long; aim for punchiness for maximum impact. Remember that a picture is worth a million words and maximize this concept without overwhelming the viewer.
Giving the viewer a behind-the-scenes look at your company can make your videos more compelling and improve your relationship with your current and future customer base. Sharing behind-the-scenes clips can portray your brand in a more human light, making your video and your brand more relatable to your audience.
To work this tip into your corporate video production strategy, consider featuring the following:
Videos that offer insight into a company beyond traditional marketing videos tend to feel more relatable to viewers. In turn, they’re likely to be more memorable and may foster better engagement. Additionally, behind-the-scenes looks can help build trust with your audience as they’ll feel like they’ve been included in your production process.
Customer testimonials or reviews in your product videos can be very insightful to prospective buyers. Your existing customers’ passion for your products or services can be worth much more than the cleverest advertising, because it gives them the ability to put a face and story to the product, and ultimately put themselves in the shoes of that individual.
To do this, it’s important that you, once again, aim to use testimonial footage that speaks to your product or service solving pain points. Focus on how your offerings have improved the lives of your existing customers, and how new clients may see the same benefits.
When creating this type of video, “real-world” on-screen footage is best, but you can also incorporate text reviews with motion graphics. To get this kind of footage, you need to have a process for knowing who your most passionate fans are and asking them for video reviews. Use your social media networks to not only find these individuals, but to share these videos as well. Allowing people to stumble across your videos in an organic way will also make these videos feel more authentic as opposed to a scripted commercial. While there’s a time and place for that style of video, sometimes a more subtle approach is the better option.
While it can be easy to skip ahead to production when you’re excited about your video marketing strategy, it’s important that you take your time with pre-production. Pre-production includes any aspects of video production that must be done prior to shooting the footage, such as brainstorming, concepting, script writing, storyboarding, organizing locations, and finding talent.
By taking your time in pre-production, you can save a lot of delay and frustration later, as it gives you the opportunity to identify problems or difficulties before you start shooting video. By thoroughly planning out your production, you’ll become comfortable with the goal for the video and the best way to achieve it with video and audio recording before you start filming.
When done properly, pre-production work can make the production and post-production processes easier and more efficient. To adequately prepare, identify your marketing goals (target demographic, brand identity, distribution platform, etc.), as well as any equipment, talent, or anything else needed to capture the video you need. Finally, ensure everyone involved is feeling comfortable and confident.
High-quality and successful video marketing videos can make all the difference when it comes to your business goals. However, not every video is going to give you the results you desire. To see the best ROI in your video content, prioritize quality during production. Quality video production can consume a lot of time and resources, which not every company has at their disposal. If you want to be creating and sharing quality marketing videos, but don’t have the time, talent, or resources to do so, consider hiring an external video marketing agency to help you out.
If you’d like to learn more about outsourcing your corporate video production, Charter & Co is here to help. With a history of successful brand partnerships, we have the expertise and experience to help you achieve results through effective video marketing that you may not see otherwise.