It’s imperative for businesses to harness the power of video to sell their products. The adaptability and accessibility of video means it has outclassed other content types in the last few years, leading to more and more creative methods and styles.
We’ve all seen product videos and found many engaging, but as marketers and videographers how do we make the products within them more enticing? What is the difference between a product video that makes us smile and one that entices us to shop right then and there?
Keep things short
Short, simple and to the point have always been the rules great video content creators live by. Introduce too many elements and you can muddle the campaign video and confuse the viewer about what they’re supposed to do next. Instead, you should look to harness the power of simplicity and subtlety to guide your campaign.
Producing short-form video content creates a sense of mystery and intrigue around your product that will act as a call to action for your viewers. Little hints will make people want to learn more, which is when you can direct them to your website and product page. It also helps you to appeal to the short attention span of the younger online users, who are more familiar with short term video content such as Instagram Stories than long-form, detailed video essays or high concept advertisement. This audience wants to be enticed through little flashes of interesting content, and then seek out the product to learn more rather than have too much shoved down their throat.
Shorter content is more shareable, helping to create a community and culture around it. This offers the potential to develop a unique style or video series around the initial product video.
Feature your team
People like to see other people in their advertising. From brand advertising to the Instagram accounts of everyday users, higher engagement generally goes to content that features people heavily. Your product videos should look to feature people as much as possible, potentially those on your team.
The team behind your business is an asset in waiting. You should use their personality and knowledge to give people an idea not just of your products, but what it’s like to work there. Audiences want to know there’s a face behind the product. Having your staff use the products is a fun and unique way to tear back the curtain on your business and inject a bit of personality into your product videos.
Integrate demonstrations and Q&A’s featuring your staff into your product videos. This could turn into a series that doesn’t just sell more products but helps to develop a brand identity and lead to an interest in recurring characters and in-jokes. Your product videos can be used to tell your founding story, give backgrounds on who they are and act as profiles of the team. This won’t push the product into the background, it’ll just make the content more lighthearted and personable.
Tell a story
Some of the most enduring advertising of all time has had a story behind it. Even today we see big advertisers using narrative to tug at our heartstrings and lead us towards a product. Your product video content doesn’t need to go all out and produce a compelling narrative that rivals a TV show, you can just tell the story of your product or business.
Explain the background of the product you’re trying to sell, from inception to completion. You can get creative as you want in how you tell the story, from using graphics with a voice-over to archived company footage. You need to guide people through how your company works and give them as clear an idea as possible as to why they should be invested. This is a great opportunity to show how far you’ve come, and what part the product has played in your development.
Show don’t tell
A classic writing rule, ‘show don’t tell’ is just as applicable to creating video content. In video content, there’s a lot more showing happening than telling anyway, but it’s a good mantra to dictate how you go about explaining a product.
People generally learn from seeing something in action, as opposed to hearing about how it works. Content with a lot of explanatory elements can usually be a bit dry, so instead try to create video content that gives audiences a detailed idea of how something works through practice.
Think back to show and tell in school. You didn’t just tell your classmates what something did, you showed it in action. People are more enticed to buy a product they know works and can imagine themselves using in their day to day lives. Think about how you can do this and make your content more interesting.
Use your audience
Like I said earlier, people like to see other people in their content. They don’t just want to see the people who made the product though, they want to see real people making use of it.
Integrate customers and brand advocates into your content. They can be one of the best and most genuine assets you have for convincing potential customers that your product is worth investing in. You can base your video around how they use the product and the impact it’s had on their work and personal lives. This can make for charming, interesting and engaging content that feels more genuine than an advertisement featuring actors paid to tell a story.
This type of content works because it allows your viewers to put themselves in the shoes of the characters in the video, making it easier to imagine the product in their lives.
Making good video content isn’t just about being creatively ambitious, it’s about appealing to the modern user and integrating new techniques to stay current. Following new trends and using these methods to make your videos more enticing will help you to retain and grow your audience.
