You may be like many companies or individuals who decided to make some videos for your website because an expert said so or now just about every website contains some sort of video media. Statistics from the likes of Hubspot only add to the growing urgency:
A third of all the time people spend online is dedicated to watching videos
and
90% of customers report that product videos help them make purchasing decisions
The expectation for video content is real but making videos without a real purpose or goal can be just as bad or worse than having no video at all. And the truth is making these videos interactive doesn’t solve the problem either.
Let’s explore determining the purpose of your videos. But first, an example:
Imagine I’m browsing the website of a product I’m considering purchasing. With my credit card number ready, I visit the product webpage only to find a brief description and a series of long, how-to-setup tutorial videos. It really doesn’t inspire me to purchase. In fact, I leave the website searching elsewhere to spend my money.
This happens all the time. How much more effective would it be to have the first thing I see, when loading the product page, be a 1-2 minute video illustrating the most compelling benefits of current product users. I tell you it would have made it 10 times easier for me to decide to buy it right there.
Now I am not saying the tutorial videos were poorly written or produced. I am suggesting the purpose of my visiting that particular webpage was to consider buying the product right at that moment! Not learn how to set it up for the 10+ minutes. You need to know why people are coming to your website or viewing your video.
So, that leads us to the 3 steps to more purposeful videos.
The 3 Steps
First, determine who your intended audience is and what you want your video(s) to do for them. What is the end goal? Are there various steps to reaching that goal? Are they going to purchase something right out of the gates? Or will they more likely be willing to do something else first like signing up for a newsletter? Well-positioned videos can guide your viewers to act in the order that best reaches your end goal.
If you want to introduce people to your brand or product, consider an explainer or introduction video. If you want to educate them about a problem you help solve consider an instructional video or tutorial. Once you determine the purpose of your video you can start to guide their experience the next two steps flow much easier.
Second, decide what action(s) the viewer will want to take during or after your video(s). Once you have determined the video’s purpose this is pretty easy. Make these desired actions into what are known as Call-to-Actions. If you have an explainer video that introduces your product or brand, invite the viewer to test and/or purchase the product. If it is an educational video provide the viewer materials to download or invite them to view related videos.
Third, develop and experiment positioning your calls-to-action at various times in your videos. This is the fun part and easy to do using InteractiVid which allows you to overlay interactive objects on top of your existing video. These are customizable with its interactive element positioning slider. Wherever you position the slider all your embedded versions of the video are automatically updated. No republishing necessary! Some elements allow you to choose the duration or length that the element will appear onscreen. Play with different combinations of positioning and length to get the results you want. And finally, use the built-in analytics to see historical data and compare results over time.
Conclusion
In conclusion, videos don’t need to cost tens of thousands of dollars to be effective. And not every video you make needs to rake in millions of views or become “viral” to reach your goals. Just take some time to plan your end goals and start drafting some videos with that purpose in mind. With some simple calls-to-action and a little help from an interactive video service, your video can be just as effective as your favorite multi-million dollar brands!
