eLearning insights improve technology marketing videos
We’ve specialized in writing and producing short videos to support technology sales for many years. Now that we’ve entered the “Age of Bite-Size Learning,” we find that we can take advantage of learnings from the eLearning community to help sharpen our focus and develop new approaches. Light bulb moments Bite-size learning is analogous to high-intensity […]
Let’s stop talking about interactive video marketing
In a recent LinkedIn discussion of content marketing, a commenter noted that “there’s not a lot of demand” for interactive video marketing. That’s been my experience, too. Clients for our short videos get interested in call-to-action buttons, chapterizing long videos, even quizzes and branching, but they don’t follow up. Why marketers don’t do interactive video […]
Developing standards for marketing videos
Most companies we do business with publish comprehensive graphics standards manuals setting forth guidelines akin to those in the classic New York Transit Authority manual of 1970. These manuals set rules for trademarks and logos, typography, advertising, and web publishing. Many provide guidelines and PowerPoint templates for presentations. Some attempt to provide a visual language […]
Music in technology marketing videos
When we first started producing 2-Minute Explainer videos for companies in 2004, we resisted the idea of putting music in technology marketing videos under the narration. It seemed sufficient to “bookend” the video with music in the opening (usually a “logo spin”) and closing. It seemed to us that if you’re trying to explain a serious concept […]
Make your explainer video 20% shorter
“…there are very few movies that wouldn’t benefit from losing twenty minutes and the inclusion of an exploding helicopter shot…” — Roger Corman This quote, which I first heard on Mark Kermode’s BBC Film Review podcast, may not appear to have much to do with marketing videos, but I think it reflects an attitude video producers […]
Chapterizing videos? Why aren’t you doing it?
What are your reasons for not chapterizing videos? Consider any of the following situations. #1. You are a new employee. Your Employee Orientation Package contains links to a number of webinar recordings, executive presentations, solution demos, and tutorials — several hours’ worth, say — that you are urged to watch to help you get oriented. […]
Making numbers count in marketing videos
Are you making numbers count in marketing videos? I recently ran across through an oversized marketing infographic containing two dozen statistics intended to make the case that 2015, at last, The Year of Video Marketing. Presumably, sharing this infographic with the powers that be could help to boost video marketing budgets. It is interesting to know that 75% of […]
How to use a user interface in your explainer video
If you’re marketing software, you naturally want to show off your feature-packed and easy-to-use user interface. Determining why users should be interested in your solution is key to deciding what to show them. But keep in mind that you’re marketing, not demo-ing. Here are a few different approaches to conveying business benefits while making your […]
Communicating insight in a technology video
In videos that explain technology solutions, the on-screen action is never action-movie quality. Nevertheless, thinking through the sequence of images that will meet the viewer’s eye is arguably much more important than coming up with the words to accompany them in communicating insight into a technology in a video. When we introduced Flash explainer videos […]
Why you should make interactive marketing videos
Educators and corporate trainers have been using “interactive” video for decades — at least, since the dawn of “Educational TV” — but it’s just now making its way into online sales engagement and content marketing. YouTube, Wistia, Hapyak, and Viewbix are among the services offering annotations and analytics. Learning management systems can be extended to marketing. And there […]
