Deciding the Right Length for Online Marketing Videos: A Guide

Nowadays, especially in marketing, time is money. It means if you want to get prospective customers to view your marketing videos, you have to pay attention to their length. Remember, every second counts with visual content, especially due to the rise of viewing videos on smartphones and other mobile devices. If you don’t think about the video length, you can end up wasting money on little-to-no consumer engagement, translating to stagnant growth. To avoid this, refer to the following tips for your guidance: 

1. Study the preferred watch time and completion rates for marketing videos

You may be producing marketing videos that play to your current supporters’ sentiments, like products they seem to love from you or current events you would like to monopolise to get your core message across. 

Whatever your motivation, your efforts will be put to the test once the preferred watch time and completion rates are seen. You can often see this from your social media accounts’ advertisement manager dashboard, primarily for Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. You can also pull this from your website’s analytics dashboard. 

Once you study the average watch time trends, you can use this data towards your next marketing campaigns. You can either produce a video that is already familiar to your customers or something entirely different to take advantage of their excitement over brand-new offers, such as seasonal products and brand collaborations. Thus, don’t forget to compare watch time and other data points to optimise your video production through informed research. 

2. Don’t simply go for shorter content just because it’s trendy

If you have been around marketing trends for a long time, then you may have heard the phrase “Remember to keep it short and sweet,” mainly about video campaigns. After all, these kinds of content almost always perform well on many social media platforms and are reshared. However, these are only sweeping generalisations that can affect your business’s marketing potential. 

According to Social Insider, Facebook does have an average video length of 2-5 minutes for videos. But the study also discovered that pages with less than ten thousand fans often perform better when they release longer videos, like those that last up to 20 minutes. In fact, they are even more effective than short videos. 

Therefore, it’s best to say that your brand should never simply go for trending videos, especially those short ones that you would see in Instagram stories and YouTube. If you can, go for longer videos, primarily because you can also repurpose long-form content to suit your marketing objectives. 

For example, you can grab raw footage from your shot marketing campaigns for your business website’s branding videos. In effect, you can expect higher results for your brand retention and lead generation. 

3. Work with experienced videographers and marketing professionals to get the best advice about video length

You may already have a story, set design, and core message for your next campaign, but once you go through the editing phase, you may be unsure how long the final video should be. This dilemma is common for most marketers due to the often personal sentiments or biases that cloud your judgement. 

For instance, you may want to have more time in the spotlight for your video because you want to better engage with your customers as an authentic brand. Luckily, if you work with the right experts, they can help you think about your target audience. They can precisely tell you through their sound judgement and experience from past shoots what works best for your campaign. As a result, you will end up with well-polished, commercially ready content. 

Conclusion 

Online video marketing is the most preferred across various platforms and customers, but you need to cut your campaigns to the right length to make them work. Fortunately, you now have a better understanding of what you need to do. Thus, start producing and build a solid video production team to meet your business goals.

Are you looking for the best video production services Manchester has to offer? Partner with us at Video Ink. We have worked with various clients to successfully launch their brand on the Internet. With our help, you can gain reliable insights about video length, creative direction, and other crucial aspects of the production procedure to boost your marketing ventures. Work on your next campaigns with us today!