You have exactly ten seconds to bait your hook and reel in viewers of your video content. That’s not a whole lot of time to make an impression before viewers decide whether or not to continue watching. Creating video means investing precious time and money, so you want do everything you can to make your content as effective as possible. That’s why it’s important to know how to make a video that will grab viewers’ attention.
Get To the Point – And No, You are Not the Point
One of the biggest mistakes businesses make with online video is talking too much about themselves. Your viewers don’t care about you. They care about their own needs. Their problems. Their questions. Their issues. So when creating video, you’ll want to tell your audience what’s in it for them right off the bat. Any time a viewer clicks on a video, they think to themselves, “Is this worth my time?” You must show them that it is, and you have to do it quickly. If you illustrate that you know what they need and you care about meeting that need, they’ll stick with your content to find out just how you can help.
This means you have to know your audience. Who are you targeting? What are their needs? What are their problems? What must they know? Be specific. Target your ideal customer and tailor your pitch directly to them. You can’t be everything to everybody, so choose a specific type of customer and tailor your message accordingly.
Ask An Important or Intriguing Question
You can’t actually have a conversation with your viewers, but you can ask a question. As the old saying goes, “He who asks the questions controls the conversation.” You can start your video with an intriguing or important question. Questions make us curious for answers and appealing to natural human curiosity is a great way to grab attention.
You have to be able to answer the question in the allotted time for your video, however. Don’t pull a bait and switch and leave your viewers hanging. They won’t take kindly to it and will not follow up on your call to action, and they definitely won’t share your content with others. If you satisfy their curiosity, you not only make viewers happy, but you give them new information that they can like and share among their social network, increasing your potential viewership.
Tell a Story That Matters
Storytelling is a fantastic way to relate to your audience. Stories have a beginning, middle, and end, which helps with scripting, and you can tailor your story to touch on the needs and desires of your viewers. Your story may be a personal story, a completely made up story (as long as you aren’t making up facts or making false claims), or a true story that somehow relates to your products and services. Be creative, but be sure your story has a point that viewers can relate to.
Keep it Simple
You don’t have to know how to make a video with George Lucas-level special effects in order to create great content. Special effects are cool, but they’re expensive, tricky, and largely unnecessary for your purposes. A simple video with a profound message will go a lot farther than a video with a lot of crazy effects.
Length Matters
When making a video for your business, timing is everything. If you’ve developed a script or concept that is ten minutes long, your video is going to flop. Even if your content is informative and entertaining, your viewers don’t have the attention span for long content. Get to the point and then give your call to action. You can break up a lengthy concept into short, two minute videos and create a series out of them. Your audience is far more likely to consume all ten minutes if you give them the option of consuming the information in smaller chunks.
Yes, You Have To Worry About Load Time
Load time is critical. If a potential customer has to wait more than two seconds for content to load, people start clicking away. Every second that your video takes to load after that initial two seconds costs you almost 6% of your viewers. This means that even if you create the most epic video ever produced, nobody’s going to see it if it takes 20 seconds to load. So load time does matter.
Don’t be lazy when testing load time. Just because it loads on your MacBook doesn’t mean that it will load quickly on an iPhone or an Android tablet, or a PC. Test your video on as many devices devices and in as many browsers as you can, and troubleshoot as needed.
You Really Don’t Have to Know How to Make a Video…
…if you hire the right person to do it for you. Creating effective video marketing campaigns is an art. There is no one formula that you can follow in order to guarantee success. You can’t be expected to know how to make a video or video series that will increase your sales or brand your company when your business has nothing to do with video marketing. Instead, once you’ve decided that you need to enter the world of video marketing, hire a professional. Online video production companies can help you hash out your concept and create something that will engage viewers, build an audience, and grow sales.
Video marketing professionals have access to the best equipment, which means your video content will look and sound crystal clear. Video production companies also have the technological know-how to upload your content to the proper video sharing sites and they can conduct testing across multiple platforms. Working with the right company means you can stick to doing what you do best for your customers. It’s worth the up-front investment in order to get real returns from your video marketing campaign.