Ten Video Production Tips for Demo Videos
More and more web videos have become a cornerstone in recent years to any fully developed web marketing program. However, given this growth, it is no longer enough that companies be able to produce and distribute web videos. Where high quality, well developed video content may be able to do immeasurable good for a company’s marketing campaign, conversely, poorly made videos have the potential to do irreparable harm. This can be even truer when talking about demo videos whose quality, if poor, may then reflect equally as unsatisfactorily upon the product of service being demonstrated. Therefore, in order to help companies avoid any unnecessary setbacks as a result of subpar demo videos, here is a list of ten brief tips outlined that organizations may effectively guide their video efforts.
1. Keep things simple and straightforward. Trying to mimic some TV infomercial will only come off as gimmicky and over produced. Instead, stick to real life situations, settings, and people, to let the audience see how this product or service works in an everyday situation.
2. Take a step by step approach. If there are various stages of setup, use, and break down required, illustrate each stage in an orderly fashion one after the other so as to avoid confusion.
3. Keep things as simple as possible. Overloading the audience with too much complex information will only muddle the message and damage the goal of the video.
4. The whole point of demo videos is to allow viewers to see the product. So show it to them rather than telling them about it. While using a narrator or spokesperson to demonstrate the product’s function and highlight certain features is acceptable, these individuals should not be relied upon to carry the video. Keep the focus on the product itself.
5. While brief, concise message can be displayed throughout the video to highlight or stress certain points, audiences don’t want to spend an entire video reading text. One of the biggest advantages of video is its ability to share information more quickly and effectively than text, therefore overloading a video with text that the viewer must then read defeats the point.
6. Perhaps one of the most effective tools that companies can use in their videos is people. More specifically, those individuals who really understand the product. Having someone in the video to physically demonstrate a product, even if it is just someone’s hands, can help to create a human connection between the video and the viewer to help hold their attention.
7. Timing is everything in web video production. As important as it is not to drag the message out and bore the audience, it is just as important that the message not be rushed, wherein the viewer may not be able to keep track of information and may become irritated or annoyed and equally loose interest. Finding and maintaining an efficient pace is key.
8. Having the proper tools to get the job done, and create a quality finished product is also important, so that viewers may see a professionalism in the video and come to trust the company to be equally so.
9. Creating a video is only part of the battle. Next comes placement. For this, companies will want to employ SEO strategies in the placement and tagging of their videos to ensure that search engines will better be able to locate these videos and allow a greater audience to see them.
10. Finally, it is important for companies developing demo videos to remember that these are not meant to be promotional or branding tools, but rather are intended to more easily convert interested parties from leads into customers.