Videos: How to sell your product to customers and the media in 2 minutes

At one time, TechCrunch author and startup consultant Jason Kincaid wrote : “During my time at TechCrunch, I saw thousands of startups and wrote about hundreds of them. I am absolutely sure that I do not know all the secrets of building a successful company, but there are several things that, according to my observations, almost guarantee a certain chance of success. One of the simplest: create a video demo and advertise it well somewhere where new users will be able to see it. The video should in the best possible way demonstrate the main features of your product, without giving the audience a feeling that they are advertising or trying to sell it. It is important to describe as thoroughly as possible the essence of your product in 2-3 minutes. ”

We at Alconost agree with Jason's recommendation. We are regularly approached by companies wishing to post bright overview videos on their website, Youtube channel, in social networks ... The effectiveness of grocery videos has already been proved - both offline (when placed in sales areas) and in e-commerce (when placed on the product page) . Apparently, the same factors that help these videos sell products also work to promote online services, startups and applications.

With the help of videos, you can achieve quite unobvious, at first glance, but very important goals. We translated an article with TechCrunch about it, and also provided the translation with vivid examples of our clients' videos. Welcome under the cut!

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Why video?

Good videos will allow you to:

• Get published in the media. Jason wrote : “There you have the bitter truth: many journalists are really lazy. Not in the sense that they do not want to find a new interesting company and write about it (in this case, they might need to choose another career path); talking about the fact that they are reluctant to grasp the marketing materials in order to find out what your company actually does. In the end, our mailboxes are filled with selling texts of companies fighting for mentions in the media. If in order to understand what problem you are solving, you need more than one or two minutes, we’ll rather just move on to the next message, rather than begin to understand the opportunities you provide. ”
  
  
• Help your fans preach your product. Video is an additional stand alone tool that is easy to share on Facebook or Twitter. My favorite example is Visual.ly , which received over 80,000 signups thanks to the video on their LaunchRock page ... a few months before the campaign actually started.
  
  
• Improve your website's search engine optimization .
  
  
• Use them again and again for different purposes. Videos can be included in email signatures, start with presentations for investors, they can be actively used by the sales department, etc. In general, there is no need to be limited only to the main page of the site.
  
  
• Win some time. Given that “nothing kills a bad product better than good marketing”, the video gives users an understanding of your product, which allows you to use it more efficiently and to understand your big idea. And even if the product is not yet ready, users know in which direction it is developing, and do not disregard it.

Tips for making videos

If you are going to create a video, remember these basic rules:

• Do not make a "viral" video. Yes, there are extremely successful and truly viral videos, but you can hardly imagine how much time, effort and experience are needed to create something that people really want to share. And even if you imagine, the virality itself is unpredictable. Most companies would be better off concentrating on extracting the benefits of existing organic traffic on their website and turning existing visitors into buyers, rather than wasting resources they may not have on trying to create a video that will force mass audiences to share them on their Facebook- pages. This does not mean that the video should look like selling a PowerPoint presentation, or that it should not be involving. But the main priority remains to clarify how the product fits into the user's life, and not its potential for distribution.
  
  
• Do not just review the product. Product reviews are needed, but effective only when the user already understands the main purpose of the product. Do not create a simple demo, starting from the login screen and sequentially going through all the functions. Answer the question “How can this product come in handy in my life?” Or “Why should I use it?” Before answering “How does it work?”. Allow users to be interested in using the video, then let them find out how everything works, independently - let them register and use. And now…
  
  
• Choose the most important thing you want to tell, and express it briefly. The idea to present each possibility of use, each advantage to the maximum possible number of target audiences — as in a set of slides for a presentation — is very tempting. However, the time of the best perception of such videos is usually 45-90 seconds. Movies shorter than 45 seconds look advertising and incomplete, and on commercials longer than 90 seconds, users do not delay their attention, so trying to squeeze too much information will harm you. This means that you only need to select a few basic messages for one video. Do you appeal to your ideal user or focus on the pioneers who are interested in new products (ie, on “ normal people ” or “Habr's readers”)? Do you want to distinguish your difference from a competitor with a name? Do you solve a problem that no one has yet taken up, or offer a new solution for the old problem? Is there any information about your product that all users should read in advance to use it effectively? Questions of this type help determine what should be included in the final video. Focus on the three most important things and let users move from watching a video to using a product.
  
  Here is an example of such a video made by Alconost :
  
  
  
  
• End with a call to action. Videos work better if the user knows what to do after they finish. And if you are calling the user to download the product, make sure that the visible “Download” button is next to the video ( for example, as our client EasyMail7 did ).
  
  
• Advantageously place the video. The video will not bring you much benefit if it is hidden behind a series of links. The most effective way is to place it on your main page with a large play button on the video screen ( for example, this is how our clients Help + Manual and EssentialPIM implemented this comment ).
  
  
• Quality is important. Now, you may want to grab the first available camera and shoot a video about your product, but the quality of the video still plays a big role. The laconic script, good design, clear images and high-quality audio - all this determines whether your video and the reaction of viewers to it and your product. This is especially true for products related to confidential data or serving the B2B sector: an amateur video can create a sense of a company without reputation, which is managed from a room in a student dormitory.

Remember: you need the user to understand what your product is doing. If you can show your video to a person from your target audience and after watching it can tell you about your product, then you are all right.

And we in Alconost are always ready to help you with such videos;)


About the translator

The article is translated in Alconost.

Alconost is engaged in the localization of applications, games and websites in 60 languages. Language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, 24/7 project managers, any formats of string resources.

We also make advertising and training videos - for websites selling, image, advertising, training, teasers, expliners, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.

Read more: https://alconost.com