Videos for your product are an excellent tool for B2B and B2C companies. Product videos are useful for increasing product sales and educating people about your product. A report by the company, Animoto, found that 75% of those surveyed found the video to be helpful during the research phase of the buying process. 84% of those surveyed said they would like to see more videos on retail sites such as Amazon.
Make sure that you know what stage of the buying journey your video will be seen in and know your target audience. You need to show the right type of video at the right time in order to have the greatest impact.
For example, an animated motion graphic video is best for a cloud product but, for a product such as a coffee maker, you need to show the product and also people interacting with the product to give it scale and show how it fits into real life.
Three Common Types of Product Videos
- Creative – Be brand focused but don’t be afraid to be creative. These are the most expensive, riskiest, and hardest videos to create but if you get it right, they can make your brand a household name.
- Informational – Make sure this video has the information that they are looking for. Focus on the benefits of the product, not the features. A typical product video outline might look like this:
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- a. The problem
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- The solution
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- How it works
- How To – While you would think of them as product videos, these are the most effective type of video overall, not just in the product video category. People want to know how your product works. Don’t assume just because you feel your product isn’t exciting that your video will be boring. Your video doesn’t need to win any awards but you still need to engage your viewer.
Keep product videos short. They should only be as long as they need to be to get your point across. Many retailers say that around 30 seconds is best but don’t take that as a hard and fast rule. There are many different factors you need to look at when determining how long your product video should be.
Use SEO to Increase Your Video Reach
The nice thing about videos is that they can rank organically boosting your dominance of target organic search engine result pages. Videos have their own section within Organic SERPs. In ecommerce SEO, creating and optimizing videos is important component to invest in:
- Research your keywords: You may already know your keywords if you spent time optimizing your product pages. Your product name and key specs are your top keywords. For how-to videos, you will need some additional keyword ideas. Use Youtube Suggest to identify what kinds of relevant problems people are trying to solve using videos.
- Optimize your video title: When uploading your product video on Youtube, create a compelling and descriptive title for your video that includes your target keywords. Keep it concise and engaging to entice users to click on your video in search results.
- Optimize your video description: Write a detailed and keyword-rich description for your video. Include relevant keywords naturally within the description while providing additional information about your product. You can use ChatGPT to help you with this step.
- Optimize your video thumbnail: Video thumbnails show up in Google’s video packs as well as in Youtube searches and suggestions. Create an eye-catching and relevant thumbnail for your video. Use high-quality images, bold text, and contrasting colors to make it stand out in search results.
- Use video schema: When embedding videos on product pages, implement video schema which helps provide search engines with structured data about your video, improving its chances of appearing in rich snippets or video packs.
Keep an eye on the “Video pages” inside Google’s Search Console to make sure Google is able to index your product videos:
Make Sure Your Product Looks Good
This means that you need to spend some money to make sure your product has proper lighting and camera work. You can’t use your flip camera or your cell phone. Invest in script writing. It is an art and, if you can afford it, not only will your video be better but it will also let you take a step back and look at your script from a different set of eyes.
That being said, it can be hard to invest thousands of dollars into a product video when you will need to sell a lot of products to cover the cost of just one video. If you have more than one product, you can save money by recording many videos at the same time and possibly also creating a template and using the same locations and lighting in all the videos.
A call to action is important. It lets the viewer know the next step toward purchasing your product. For the most part, it will be as simple as “buy our stuff” or “contact us for more information”.
If your video will be on retail partner sites, make sure they allow you to have a call to action. In my experience, most of them don’t. We recommend creating two versions of the video: one for use on your retail partners’ websites and one for use on your company website and social media. The cost of doing this is minimal and it allows you to get more use out of the video.
Market Your Product Video
Your product video probably won’t go viral. It is important to have a plan for how people will find the video. While using the video on your ecommerce site is important, and most likely the reason you are creating this video, you should make a plan for how to maximize the exposure of the video to get the greatest return on your investment.
Some common places to market your video are your ecommerce website, YouTube, or other social media sites. It is very easy to target a specific buyer using video advertising and is also very affordable and measurable. It is now available on many different platforms: YouTube, Facebook ads, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram.
