Product Demonstration Videos - The Marketing Secret of Successful Marketers

Written By Marie-Claire Ross

Over the years I have seen lots of new products get launched and get amazed at how so few of them use video to promote themselves.

The sad truth is that most companies like to do what everyone else does - write long and complicated marketing materials. Too often, it is assumed consumers or reporters will have time to read all about the new product or service.

Successful companies, however, like Apple and Salesforce, use generous lashings of online demonstration videos to easily explain to customers and journalists how their new products can help people. These videos quickly engage their audience enabling consumers to understand them and reporters to want to write about them.

But they are just not any sort of videos. It's not like they transfer all that boring "look at me" garbage and put it on video.

No sireee!

Instead, a great product video is all about getting across the core benefits of your product in around 2-3 minutes (even quicker if you can). It makes it really easy for the viewer to understand what your product is about, why they will want one and why it's so good. It's not about your credentials, your history or your people.

Example of a Product Demonstration Video

Zappos.com is an interesting case study. For those of you unfamiliar with the amazing Zappos, they predominantly sell shoes online and average around $1.2 billlion in annual sales, despite starting ten years ago.

In 2009, they started producing demonstration videos for products with real Zappos employees (not models or actors). Those videos have had a sales impact of 6 to 30% which has encouraged Zappos to endeavor to produce 50,000 videos in 2010. In 2009, they managed to produce 8,000 product demonstration videos.

If marketing videos for clothes can lift sales (and let's face it, most people should understand how they work by now), imagine how well a demonstration video will go for a product or service that no-one has seen before.

A recent demonstration video we produced was for Simpson Strong-Tie. Another American company, Simpson Strong-Tie, is one of the largest suppliers of structural building products in the world and has been using demonstration videos on their websites for a few years now to great effect.

In October 2009, the Simpson Strong-Tie Quik-Drive was launched in Australia. Given that it was a revolutionary new product, a demonstration video was produced to demonstrate easily to builders about how the new roofing tool would reduce installation time.

Herb Kuhn, the National Sales Manager from Simpson Strong-Tie in Australia says:

"We launched the new Quik-Drive with a series of ads in trade magazines. With the phone enquiries, we directed people onto our website to see the demonstration video. It is particularly helpful for customers if they are remote and our sales people can't visit them. A static magazine photo doesn't do our product a lot of justice. It has to be seen to be believed. We feel strongly about using demonstration videos to launch our new products, as they really make it easier for people to grasp how it works".

So if you have a complicated product or service, or have a new product to launch, seriously consider producing a demonstration video to make it easier for your market to understand how it works and why they need one.

(c) Marie-Claire Ross 2010. All rights reserved.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3908038

Video Type: Product Demonstation Video