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 […]
Using filmable ideas in marketing videos
For me, cinema is essentially emotion. It is pieces of film joined together that create an idea, which in turn creates an emotion in the mind of the audience. Not through spoken words, but through the visuals. It’s a visual medium. And montage is the main thing. All moviemaking is pure montage. — Alfred Hitchcock […]
5 more ways to make better technology videos
Here are 5 more ways to make better technology videos than your competitors. 1. Skip the intro Interactive video expert Randy Tinfow contributed this to our LinkedIn discussion group: “if we break a 3:30 video into chapters, and call one of them INTRO, 47% of viewers skip it entirely, assuming it’s boring and useless.” Start with […]
5 ways to make better technology videos than your competitors
Make better technology videos than your competitors — here are five ways 1. Focus on the action you want the viewer to take Everyone knows a video should have a call-to-action. This is often defined in terms of clicks or conversions. But if you’re marketing a complex technology solution, the action you really want is […]
Directing the viewer’s vision in explainer videos
Catching up with Alec Baldwin’s “Here’s the Thing” podcast from WNYC recently, I was surprised to hear, in a very good interview with the affable Julianne Moore, that some directors (she mentioned David Cronenberg and Woody Allen) rarely say anything to the actors on set. Instead of trying to share a vision with actors, they […]
