How long should your video be?
Let’s start with some context. We are talking about the online videos you would use to promote your business or organisation, primarily in a business-to-business context. Although in some cases, these lined are increasingly blurred.
There is no universally correct answer that will apply in all cases, but there are some generally accepted principles you can apply to your own situation. These will help you start planning for your video content on the front foot.
- The key question is this: at which stage on their customer journey will the viewer encounter the video?
- A secondary, closely related consideration will be where will they view it: your website, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn etc?
It is much more likely your audience will be viewing videos on a PC or laptop at work. They will be on a quest, however casual, to find out more about a subject. They may not be specifically looking for a video (though increasingly people are), but they are looking for information, help, advice and guidance.
The underlying principle is to always keep your online video as short as possible. How short will depend on where the viewer is in their customer journey.
The optimal video length and the customer journey
The customer journey describes the stages someone will go through from never knowing about you to potentially buying from you.
There is a case for video production at every stage of the customer journey. In the perfect world, you would pull people through the stages in a scheduled organised manner.
The reality is that people may first encounter your business and your videos at any stage.
If your responsibility is to deliver warm leads to a commission hungry sales force, the bottom of the purchase funnel is the first place to start looking for video opportunities to promote yourself or product. If your job is to build brand awareness and educate the marketplace, you would start building your marketing strategy from the top down. (Read also: Video Marketing Tips: How to Improve Audience Retention)
Top of the Funnel – Short Videos for Gaining Interest
The less someone knows about you, the less time you have to grab their attention, let alone hold their interest and prompt them on to the next stage in the conversion process.
It is for this reason YouTube’s non-skippable video ad options are restricted to just 5, 15 and sometimes up to 30 seconds only.
The first objective any website video has to achieve is to hold attention for eight seconds.
Do this and it is reasonable to think you can go on for 30 seconds or even a minute with a video that is ostensibly presenting your business or your product in an elevator pitch kind of way.
Your video content has to provide enough information clearly and accurately to encourage the viewer to find out more. A strong call to action is always important in any video – people do like to be told what to do next.
The correct video duration will always come down to a combination of how relevant the video is to the viewer, how well it communicates key information pertinent to their situation and finally how honest it is. These are the same elements that apply all the way through the customer journey.
Mid-Funnel – Learning and Evaluation Videos can take longer
The next two stages in the customer journey to online purchase happen when interest becomes engagement. People can move from one to the other quickly. (read also: Top Video Engagement Measures)
The viewer starts investigating the options and choices available to them. They are receptive and open to more detailed descriptions and, if you hold their attention, they will invest the time required. They are likely to be finding out more about you as a business or about your products and services. You still have to get past the first eight seconds by confirming what the video is about.
Don’t forget that for many viewers this will be the first time they have come across your company and videos, so you still have to establish your credentials within the video.
At the learning stage the types of videos that will work best will be explainer videos, interviews, presentations, whitepapers extracts, annual report summaries, product launch’s … where you can have up to three minutes to tell your story. But again we say, brevity counts. If you can say it in 90 seconds then do so.
In the evaluation stage, the viewer’s attention turns to the question of how your product is going to solve their problem. You already know what these questions are if you provide FAQs and blog articles. You can convey a lot of information and show your credentials in three minutes with a well-constructed product demo or educational video, and if you can, do it in less!
Bottom of the Funnel – Justify and Purchase Videos
Your viewers are getting serious. If they have come through the purchase funnel from the top down you will know this and should have a good idea about what they are looking for. However, there will still be some who are encountering you for the first time at this stage. So the rules about brevity still remain.
Keeping it brief has been our theme throughout. When your potential customer reaches this stage they are asking questions of detail: about the product itself, what the risks are, how you will be as a supplier, do they need to buy now.
If you met them face to face you could spend an hour covering all of this. You wouldn’t make an hour long video, but you can make sets of shorter videos that deal with specific points of objections that commonly raised.
Answer their questions and guide them towards your success stories, customer testimonials and case studies. If you have a special offer that is relevant now is the time to let them know.
Where is your video viewed and for how long?
Throughout this article, we have described videos that will most likely sit on your website. Video lends itself to being easily re-purposed for showing on your relevant social media channels such as YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Vine, which are more likely to be b2c videos.
They all have different rules and ways of working and most of them prefer brevity. In the case of Instagram this is just 15 seconds, but what we really mean is that across all channels shorter durations works best for business videos.
Conclusion
Keep it short. Keep it relevant.
hmm yes but – the funnel is overridden by customers who identify strongly with the message or story – never rule out a ‘hook line and sinker’ client opportunity. Its ok to bounce those who will never buy…
Very true Stephen, thanks for the comment! There are always exceptions to the rule but in most cases it’s very difficult to hook a customer straight in, particluarly where there is plenty of competition about to snatch them away!
Is the general attention span for video getting shorter? I for one won’t watch a video going over 3 mins.. can’t justify sitting there watching it unless I’m learning something, unless it’s giving me something..
agree with you there Lucas Metherall. I generally won’t watch a video longer than 3 minutes. 1-2mins in optimal in this day and age – unless it’s an educational video. However, to avoid losing your audience with a long video (20-30mins) you can break your content down to bitesized chunks and then people can watch the bits that interest/apply to them most.
I think it depends on the content. It is best to experiment with differing lengths and see how your audience responds. There is a place for long form video too. If your content is compelling enough to keep your target audience watching, then I say go for it. Just keep an eye on your analytics to see what gives you the best audience retention time. There is no real formula for figuring an exact length.
Some great points here guys!
As for attention spans, I have always thought social media is slowly killing them! People are watching countless 6 second Vines or 15 second Instagram videos, the majority of videos I see floating around on Facebook are no longer than 2 minutes etc. so this has become the norm. This forces marketers to really think about the content they put into their videos and how they get their message across.
I completely agree educational videos are slightly different, but even then you would need a concise introduction to hook in your viewer and breaking it up into bitesized chunks helps people to absorb more.
As a viewer it really depends on the subject matter and whether or not I seek it out vs stumble across it. If the video is one of interest naturally I’d be more patient with the time… the pay off is a learning experience. But depending on the video structure my attention may fall short. We are talking about biz videos but I automatically compared it to news stories. I prefer the longer format of NPR mixed in with it’s short format programming. Though 1010Wins and the major news networks streaming channels on the Roku stick give decent tablet stories, NPR gives more substance. I appreciate that. It is always a question of how much interest exists, what format is best and does style matter. This is all a helpful reminder of getting to the point and tagging the audience. For some the suggestions may be more useful for growing an audience without losing their base. Which leads to having different versions of the message. Any thoughts on that?
Hi Darryl! Very valid points there. Level of interest in the subject beforehand is a major factor in how long you can keep your audiences’ attention for, which is why your video content needs a solid marketing strategy to raise awareness, drum up interest/curiosity & support it.
Here, the article is focussed on online marketing videos which I think are too different to compare with news stories as they will undoubtably be of interest to a much wider and diverse audience. However the concept of initial interest of topic and how it can change the format/structure of content is pretty interesting, perhaps a nice follow up article?
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Hi Leola,
Thanks for commenting, feel free to do so anytime! e like to hear what our audience have to say so we can write more on topics which are helpful
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