Video marketing is one of the hottest ways to get the word out on the internet, and if you aren't using videos in your online business, you will be left behind fast. You don't want to make just any video, though. You want to learn how to make videos that get results. There are some important decisions you will need to make for your video marketing campaigns. Here are some questions you must answer in the video production phase - the answers will be different depending upon the purpose of your video, and what your market has learned to expect.
The first consideration when you look at how to make videos that are effective in your niche is the length of the video. You can find videos online that run from just a few seconds to over an hour in length. The average video watched online is under 5 minutes, so if you plan to make a longer video, be certain that it is compelling, gives great information, and that viewers in your market have learned to watch longer videos. A good question to ask yourself is "How long is long enough?" and do your best to get your message across in the shortest time possible.
Another place you can create problems for yourself in your video marketing is around autostarting your video. Sure, using autostart (so the video begins playing automatically as soon as the visitor goes to your page) is one way to be sure that people see it - at least the first few seconds! But if your audience tends to browse the internet in search of information during work hours, you'll want to be careful that they don't go to your page and all of a sudden their workplace is startled by your enthusiastic opening words blasting out of a computer. Your potential customer will likely hit their back button instantly to shut off the disruption, and may even get in trouble for visiting your site during work hours. Use autostart in your video marketing carefully.
Will your videos show information about the video during playback, such as how long the video is, and time elapsed? Will you give your audience controls on the video player that allow them to pause, stop, or even jump to a particular spot in the video? Again, these are strategic questions in your video marketing. For example, if you have a carefully crafted sales message you are presenting in your video, you don't want your audience to skip over the key points and just go to the end to see the price. So in that type of sales video, you will want to limit the controls available on the video player.
However, the answer is different if your video is a content-filled video designed to support a product already purchased, or to give useful information to your prospects in order to build a relationship with them. In these cases, giving your audience more control over the video might be better, so they can go back to re-watch a critical part, pause the video to take notes, or even allow them to use a Table of Contents in the video to go directly to the issue they are trying to solve.
You can also control what happens at the end of a video. For example, you might set it to start over automatically, or to simply stop and leave the viewer on the same page. Another option is to take your viewer to another page automatically at the end of the video. This is used often in sales videos, where the viewer is taken to an order page or 'more information' page after they have watched the video.