Video is dominating social on every platform. It’s performing so well that Instagram rolled out IGTV, which allows users to post extended-length videos.
You need video in your social media marketing right now, preferably on all platforms.
This opens the door for product videos, which feature what you’re selling and encourage customers to buy them.
There is, of course, a catch.
Some outright product videos will be fine, but you need to be careful that they aren’t coming across as aggressively sales-pitchy on a regular basis. Your followers, after all, aren’t there to be sold to outright, and if your feed is nothing but a string of overly promotional videos, you’ll stop getting views.
In this post, we’re going to take a look at some product video tips that will help you create video content that sells without the sales pitch. Instead, you’ll garner customer interest by engaging them with valuable, creative videos they’re excited to watch and get more views and clicks as a result.
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Utilize Creativity
The more creative your video is (to a limit) the better the response you’re going to get. Instead of just zooming in and showing your new product, it’s better to add more creative elements.
Use text to add context, graphics to add personality, and music to set the stage. Focus on making the video fun and engaging, because very few people will keep watching if it isn’t.
This is a simple, relatively generic tip, but we’re going to look at how you can do this in several concrete ways throughout this post.
Show the Product In Use
This product video tip will make your video more interesting for users to watch. It also makes the video valuable, because it shows us how the product works and what we can expect in real life. This can be convincing from a sales perspective, but it doesn’t read quite like a sales pitch the same way a video from QVC does.
Another great way to demonstrate the value of the product while making the video valuable to your audience is to use tutorials.
You can show how to use your product, or even how to care for or maintain it.
People love tutorials on all social media platforms. If it’s a fast but simple process (like a recipe) you can speed up the video’s motion in order to keep it at a reasonable time. Because the focus isn’t necessarily on the product in these videos but the results you can get with them, it isn’t coming across as too sales-pitchy, and you’ll see better results because of it.
Tell a Story In the Video
Storytelling is a huge asset that more writers and marketers should be using to their advantage. It’s the difference between “we use this coffee to make our gelato” and the video that you see below.
Storytelling doesn’t have to be complex, or overly dramatic. Instead, it just needs to use storytelling elements like having a beginning, middle, and end, and discussing a little bit more backstory than just the basic facts. The video above does this by talking about the background of the coffee vendor and what makes them so great.
Product videos that demonstrate how something is made typically offer great opportunities for storytelling because it has a natural beginning, middle, and end. It also gives you a lot of room to talk about why you make your products the way you do (organic? old-fashioned? high tech?), which lets you feature your brand story.
Get Quirky with Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories are a great place to showcase your products in a fun, unique way. Stories themselves are kind of quirky and give you plenty of room to show off your brand’s personality.
There’s a lot you can do now to make your product videos more engaging in Stories. You can attach poll stickers to get customer feedback or add emojis or graphics to convey meaning without any text. There’s even the option to draw onto the video directly in the app, and now there are music gifs you can add, too. Some brands are seeing a rollout of shoppable tags, which can be a subtle way to drive more conversions.
And, of course, once your Story’s 24 hours have passed, don’t forget to add it to a special highlight focused on product videos, giving it longevity for maximum impact.
Feature Customer Testimonials
Do you have raving fans who are always singing your praises, or even other industry experts who would be happy to give you a testimonial? See if they’d be willing to sing those praises in a video that you can use on social media and your website.
This doesn’t have to be anything too fancy; even shooting a video with your customers in-store and asking them their favorite products or opinions, and mashing up the results into one video can work great for this purpose. It shows proof of demand, which is a valuable type of social proof showing others that you have happy, satisfied customers.
Remember That Shorter is Better
Shorter is better when it comes to most things on social media, and that’s true for most video as well. It’s particularly true for product videos, because how much time do users really want to spend watching someone talk about how you make your bath bombs? (Spoiler alert: it’s not a lot).
Depending on what the video is, you’ll have different maximum time lengths you can get away with. A purely promotional product video? Twenty seconds or less is best. If you’re creating a video tutorial, a minute is a good point, but if it’s really appropriate you can go up to around a minute and thirty seconds. Videos that show how to maintain a product can go a little longer still if absolutely needed, because it’s something that is immediately valuable to your audience and customers, and it’s a great re-engagement technique.
No matter what type of video you’re creating though, remember to cut the fluff. Only include what’s needed, and nothing else. That will keep your viewer completion rates up, which likely means more clicks and conversions, too.
Conclusion
Video marketing should be a staple part of your social media marketing but overly aggressive sales tactics don’t always work so well. Being able to find a happy medium with strong product videos will be a huge asset to your business and your marketing campaigns. Ideally, cross-promote the videos on as many platforms as possible, and don’t forget that you can use them on your site, too.
What do you think? How do you make great product videos that perform well on social media? Where’s the fine line between useful and promotional?
