In 12 seconds: In this article, I will walk you through each of the best practices below to ensure you know how to produce the best marketing videos for your company. (Spoiler alert: It has nothing to do with buying thousands of dollars of equipment no one knows how to use.)
- Understand your customers
- Be interesting
- Get to your point quickly
- Include captions so viewers can absorb your content without the need for sound
- Optimize for search engines
- Don’t forget that call to action
- Pace yourself
Keep reading for the bonus best practice on video marketing…
If you’re a manufacturer, you already know there is no better way to showcase your products and brand than through video.
Are you?
If not, here’s the good news: Videos are easier to produce than many marketers think.
If you believe otherwise, you’re overthinking it.
Whether you are creating videos for product demonstrations, tutorials, answers to FAQs, or sales, dial up your video marketing strategy with the following best practices.
Best practice #1: Understand your customers.
There’s a BIG difference between knowing who your customers are and truly understanding them. For example, if you were to describe your customers, you would likely think of their job titles, the types of companies they work for, their gender and age range. You may even go so far as to define their buying criteria, such as reliability and cost.
Such basic information is simply not enough to build a strong video marketing strategy.
As a marketer, you’ll need to go much deeper by creating buyer personas that include:
- Job titles
- Job responsibilities
- How their job performance is measured
- What causes stress in their job
- Common misperceptions and misconceptions
- Income bracket
- Age
- Gender
- Education
- How they learn about information
- How they make decisions
- Buying criteria
- How they use and interact with your products and services
- Pain points that push them toward investigating solutions
- Associations and groups they belong to
- Industry events they attend
- Publications they read
- Influencers
- And more
Once you create your buyer personas, you’ll likely be inspired with ideas for creating more meaningful and engaging video content.
Best practice #2: Be interesting!
If you’re a manufacturer, you may be in the same boat as many other industrial companies wondering how to make their products seem more appealing, interesting, and exciting. After all, most products companies manufacture can’t compete with the allure of the latest iPhone or a Devel Sixteen. (Yeah, I want one, too.)
Respectfully allow me to change your mind.
You can make your products seem more appealing, interesting, and exciting, and the way to do that is through video.
A well-produced video effectively demonstrates how your products satisfy specific needs and solve specific problems. This type of content is in higher demand than a video on a new tech device or supercar. In some ways, your video could save the day of someone in need, which makes you a hero. (How many times have you searched YouTube for instructions and troubleshooting?)
Also, when I say interesting, I’m not necessarily talking about being entertaining — not everyone is a performer. Instead, I’m referring to the value of your videos’ content. Do your research to ensure you’re covering all territories relevant to the subject matter of your videos.
Best practice #3: Get to your point quickly.
A “best practice” metric has been floating around for quite a few years (especially in the B2B environment) is that videos shouldn’t be longer than 45 seconds. Many claim it’s because “No one will stick around longer than that.”
Why?
The reason is obvious — most people only give videos roughly 45 seconds to determine whether the content is interesting. I believe that number is actually closer to 15 seconds.
Let’s put this into perspective.
Your viewers’ most precious commodity is time. If someone searches for specific content or a solution to a problem and see three different video options — one that is 8 minutes, another that is 6, and a third that is 3 — you know where they’re going.
BUT…if they see that the 8-minute video has more views than the others, it’s a sign that the content of the video is higher quality, and they will likely take the time to watch.
Here are two tips you can use to keep your video on point and short:
- Keep your introduction to one sentence. If the introduction is too long, many viewers will click the bar below the video to skip through it anyway because it’s preventing them from getting to the subject matter.
- Consider using YouTube chapters for longer content videos so viewers can immediately skip to the specific content they wish to see.
Best practice #4: Include captions so viewers can absorb your content without the need for sound.
You see people watching videos on their smartphones all the time — at the airport, in hotel lobbies, at trade shows, at the library, sometimes at church, and during boring family get-togethers. Most people will watch videos at a low volume when ear pods aren’t handy so as not to bother others. The trouble is that they struggle to hear it, which is why captions are so helpful.
My favorite place to get my videos captioned is rev.com.
Best practice #5: Optimize for search engines.
This is the most important part of the video process and also the most overlooked. Much like other content you post online, such as blog articles, your video needs to be search engine optimized so that they will appear when people head to Google searching for solutions to problems you solve.
You’ll do this by:
- Entering the transcript of your video into YouTube or Vimeo
- Optimizing your video file metadata with related and user-intent keywords on the video’s title and description
- Creating a video sitemap and submitting it to Google Search Console
Best practice #6: Don’t forget that call to action.
As with any marketing effort, you need to tell people exactly what you want them to do and why. Don’t be shy. Here are some common examples:
- If you found this video helpful…
- “Smash” that “Like” button so we can help more people
- Please share this video with anyone who you think would find it useful
- Subscribe now to get more of our valuable content
- Leave a comment below to let us know what you think
- Take advantage of our offer by _______!
- Visit our website for ____________!
- Contact us for _____________!
You get the idea.
Best practice #7: Pace yourself.
I know — in #3, I encouraged you to get to your point quickly.
However, when you do get to your point, take your time and talk at an average, relaxed pace so that viewers can easily comprehend and understand your message. Remember — they may be watching your video because they need explanations and instructions. Your content is news to them, and they will become irritated if they need to keep reversing the video to re-listen to or re-watch what you are doing and showing.
Be thorough with your content, covering all details so that what you provide has maximum value.
So that’s the magic 7, and here’s your bonus…
BONUS BEST PRACTICE: Don’t be overly critical of your videos!
It’s a well-known fact that we are much, much more critical of ourselves than other people are of us. This is one of the primary reasons people either don’t produce videos, or have produced some but decided not to go live because something wasn’t perfect.
Yes, some companies spend thousands of dollars hiring professional vodeographers to produce their videos. Granted, they look great, but shooting with an iPhone is perfectly acceptable in select circumstances as long as the lighting and sound is good.
If you do plan to create a lot of videos, you may wish to consider investing in a good video system. It will be worth it.
Below is a list of the equipment I use, which can be purchased for roughly $2,200 (new), or $1,800 (used):
- Fuji X-T4 Mirrorless APS-C Camera ($1,700)
- Fujinon XF16mmF2.8 R WR Lens ($400)
- Lavalier microphone ($29)
We’ve covered a lot of ground, and you may feel overwhelmed. If so, Seroka Industrial Branding can help. Reach out to us, and we’ll make sure producing videos goes smoothly for your company.
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