Video marketing for business can be tricky to master. How long should they be? What messages will resonate well with consumers? Are videos even worth the time and effort? Let’s get you the answers to those questions and more with the help of research from Vidyard.

Why Shorter Formats Rule When Video Marketing for Business

How Long Should Videos Be?

When it comes to video marketing for business, shorter is always better. According to Vidyard:

66% of consumers will finish videos that are less than one minute long
56% will watch a full video that’s between one and two minutes long
50% will completely watch a video between two and 10 minutes long
39% will finish a video that’s between 10 and 20 minutes long
22% will hold out to finish videos that are longer than 20 minutes

Yahoo research, featured in a previous SalesFuel blog post, says that those percentages are optimistic. Consumers are scrolling quicker than ever and are hoping to absorb information just as fast. So, Yahoo says that your client’s videos have just a few seconds to grab and hold consumers’ attention. 15-second ads hold consumer attention for roughly 3.3 seconds, while 30-second ads can only do so for 1.2 seconds.

Combine both companies’ research and you get: Keep your client’s videos short and put the most important information at the very beginning. You only have a few seconds to reel the viewer in. Make them count. And don’t let a long video make their attention dwindle or seem like it’s not worth their time. Even if a long video is full of good content, time is important to everyone. Few would spend more than a few minutes on a video for a product or service.

What Content Resonates Well with Consumers?

The type of messaging that’s best to use in video marketing for business varies by the brand and its target customers. Look at your client’s data to see which types of videos have performed best in the past. If you’re starting from scratch, here’s the types of videos Vidyard says marketers invest in the most:

Product Demos: 47% of marketers invest in these types of videos
Explainers: 35%
Recorded Webinars: 33%
How-To Guides: 31%
Customer Testimonials: 27%

For more information on how your client’s target audience interacts with videos and what kind of content they enjoy, look up their profile on AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel.

Are Videos Even Worth the Time and Effort?

Short answer: yes. According to a previous SalesFuel blog based on data from Advertiser Perceptions, “50% of marketers state that video is better than other formats when it comes to helping them meet key performance objectives.” Video marketing for business helps increase brand engagement and awareness, customer loyalty and sales. Additionally, Vidyard says that 93% of people agree that video “converts the same or better than other forms of content.”

All that is probably the reason video creation increased by 29% compared to last year. Over 1.77 million videos were created in 2022 compared to the 1.38 million of 2021. And that’s just going to keep increasing as more brands realize the power of video.

So, if you want your client’s video efforts to stand out in the ever-increasing crowd, you and they need to follow the advice above. Make their videos short and put the content, or at least a sentence or graphic, that will grab and hold consumer attention within the first few seconds. And pay attention to the video types that your competitors are using and that your client’s target audience has already proven they enjoy and will engage with. Those are your keys to victory in video marketing for business.

Photo by Tim Mossholder