When you’ve made the decision that you’re ready to make a video for your business, it’s exciting! We love kickoff calls with clients because their energy is contagious. It’s also fun to explore their business and discuss the content they want to cover in their video.
However, those calls routinely last an hour or longer, and we need to find a way to distill all that information down into a realistic video length.
So, the big question is…what’s the perfect length for your explainer video?
30 seconds? 60 seconds? 2 minutes? The exact answer is 75.3 seconds…ok not really.
The truth is that it all depends…I know I know…not another wishy-washy answer. But that’s because the ideal explainer video length is determined by a variety of factors, with the primary one being the amount of content you need to cover.
Business video scripts tend to follow the same pattern: problem, solution, benefits, and call-to-action. However, there are a lot of problems you could discuss during the intro of your video. Your product has countless benefits that could be touched upon. And of course, let’s not forget about leaving some time to punch up the flavor of the script.
However, here are three quick tips to help you avoid saying too much or saying too little in your explainer video.
1. Write a Video Mission Statement
First off, realize that all videos should help you accomplish one goal, not several. We know that an explainer video cost a fair amount of dough, but don’t spread your message too thin so that no one is engaged by it.
When we provide clients with a brief we advise them to distill the mission of their video into one, short sentence. Having that single sentence top of mind when crafting the script helps make sure everything in the narration is moving you closer to accomplishing that goal – and it’s easier to identify and do away with the extra fluff.
This explainer video mission statement also assists in making sure you’re covering enough content to complete that mission. If you’re worried about being to light with the content your including, see if a third party can read your script and understand the end goal you’re striving for.
2. Identify Your Audience
Next, identify a target audience…a very specific target audience. Similar to our first tip, you shouldn’t try to appeal to everyone. Even though your product can be used at an enterprise company and a university, try to avoid bouncing in-between who you’re addressing.
Also, don’t just appeal to “business people”, use as many adjectives and descriptors as you can to define them, like a job title, age range, or maybe even give them a name.
Our explainer video for Bionic, is a good example of choosing one audience, in this case media planners, and aiming your content directly at them even though the product is beneficial for quite a few people in the ad industry.
Once you know who your audience is, consider how much knowledge they have on your content already. For example, an IT Director (hopefully) knows what FTP stands for while a college admissions representative may not, so your script may need to reflect their respective levels of expertise.
This will help you determine how little, or much, educating or explaining you’ll need to do.
3. Determine The Primary Video Location
Lastly, consider where this video is going to be seen. We’ve discussed ways to share your business video in a prior post, so w’re aware that one video can be seen in multiple pockets of the web, but there will still most likely be a most popular channel where viewer’s watch it.
The biggest location factor to consider is whether this video is being pushed out to consumers or whether they are choosing to come across it. If the views will be coming mainly through inbound traffic, rather than outbound marketing efforts, you can be a bit more long winded.
Producing a homepage video? Keep it short but you have some space to breath.
Sending the video in email? The shorter the better.
Answering questions with video on your FAQ page? Feel free to add more detail in.
Recap
Hopefully these three pre-production tips can help you find your content sweet spot. By writing out a mission statement, identifying a specific audience and determining the video’s primary location you’ll be well on your way to creating a video for your business that’s the perfect length.
We’d like to thank our pals over at HapYak for introducing us to their super cool interactive video platform that we used in the above video.
Do you have any tips or tricks you use to outline content for your videos? Let us know in the comments below!