Six steps to figure out the best length for your promotional video

Viewers are seeing video content in more places by more brands than ever before. Their attention is constantly being pulled in different directions and attention spans are getting shorter. Not only this but expectations are becoming greater. It is crucial to get your content right and key factor in whether your content will be viewed, shared, and liked is length.

 

Vidyard’s research shows that the average retention rate for videos across the board is 52%, but the amount of time people will spend watching your videos simply depends on how long they are.

 About 68% of people will watch a business video all the way through if it’s under 1 minute. Over 20 minutes? You’re going to reach only 25% of people.

 Furthermore, Hubspot has revealed that videos under 5 minutes are widely chosen on smartphones than anywhere else.

 

How do you know what length of video to make to deliver the most impact for your brand?

thumbs.jpeg

1. Know what you want out of it.

  • Brand awareness

  • Sales

  • Web traffic

  • Increased customer engagement

  • Customer education

2. What does the customer get out of it?

  • Entertaining content they might share

  • Information that makes them act and click on a call to action

  • An education into a brand, event or movement

3. What type of video do you want to make?

  • Fun and entertaining = short

  • Branded content or documentary style = longer (2mins+)

  • Specialist content i.e. TED talks = longer (8min+)

  • If you have something longer than this then consider serialising it into smaller segments

 

4. What are you trying to say?

  • Have one goal per video and make it clear

  • If there is more than one goal make more than one video but ensure they all follow the same brand style and concept

5. What platform are you going on?

  • Different lengths of video perform better on certain platforms

  • Facebook currently suggests videos of 15 seconds will be watched to the end but videos of 2-5minutes create better engagement.

  • Vine/Instagram: According to Hubspot 26 seconds is optimal

  • YouTube/Vimeo: They favour longer, more stylised videos with YouTube recommending a duration of 10 minutes

  • Twitter: The maximum length is 140 seconds but Twitter recommends 15 seconds or less

  • Linkedin: 10 minutes is the maximum but the brand suggests videos under 3 minutes get a 200% lift in completion rates

  • Snapchat: Recommends 3 to 5 seconds with the call to action in the first 3 seconds.

  • Pintrest: A new offering with a maximum of 15mins in length and a recommended length of 4 to 15secs for pins and 15s for ads

 

6. It’s hip to be square

  • Square videos actually take up 78% more screen space than landscape videos.

  • Yep, you read that right. 78% more space on mobile News Feed—and over 95% of Facebook users now access the network on their mobile devices.