Fuel Your Funnel and Increase Revenue with Demo Videos

You can use many types of videos throughout the various stages of your marketing campaign. Different videos can get a lot of attention, but your strategy needs to go beyond merely getting eyes on your product or service. Engagement and word-of-mouth can’t sell a product alone.

Hype videos and brand awareness campaigns are a crucial part of your marketing strategy, but they can only take your product or service so far. Video marketing for business is essential if you want to take things to the next level. That means creating multiple types of videos to showcase your product or service and get your prospective customers into your sales funnel.

You need a well-produced product demo video or a demos video suite to help seal the deal. There is a strong appeal and reliability to demo videos—they help customers see something in action, imagine how it solves their problem, and convince them that they need it in their life.

Marketing campaign funnels are a complex, multi-step process with a lot of moving parts. If you’re starting from scratch or you need a refresher creating a marketing funnel that will boost your numbers and create return customers, check out our comprehensive guide to marketing funnels that improve conversions.

As we’ve explored before, brand videos are a great way to introduce potential customers to your brand and possibly even your product to get them interested, build up anticipation, and start the ball rolling on your marketing sales cycle. Consider a brand video as phase one of the marketing video funnel. From there, you might move onto a PR video that highlights what your brand stands for and relates your brand to customers through societal issues. After that, it’s time to showcase the product/service itself—and that is where well-produced animated product demo videos and demo videos come into play. They’re the next logical step in your video marketing funnel to showcase your product and persuade potential customers to take the plunge, click buy, and eventually become repeat customers and even brand ambassadors.

At Explainify, we know video, and we’re here to help guide you through the process of making a demo video. We’ll also share some exclusive tips to ensure that you cut through all the noise and distractions online when you start to create a demo video for your product. They’ll also help you make sure the demo video does your product or service the justice it deserves, strengthens your funnel pipeline, and leads to sales.

Before we get into all of the tips and tricks, first we need to cover some basics. Let’s review just what a demo video is, how it can benefit your overall marketing plan, and the different types of demo videos you can make.

What is a Product Demo Video?

A demo video, also known as a product demo or a product demo video, is a short video that demonstrates how a product or service works. It also sometimes includes the benefits of a product compared to its competitors. It’s educational in purpose just as much as it is entertaining and promotional.

A great example would be a video demonstrating how to set up a new phone: first unboxing it, turning it on, where to find key features, how to import contacts, and so on. Or you could use a product video to showcase how your dating app works or how your laundry detergent gets your clothes cleaner than any other detergent on the market.

The best method to producing a compelling demo video is to keep it short, simple, straightforward, and focus on the product. There’s no need to spend a lot of time leading up to it or have any extraneous information, especially if your product demo video is part of a more extensive marketing funnel campaign. People will already be familiar with your product or service at this point in the funnel. Now, they simply need to see the product in action and know what sets it apart and how it can solve their problems. Let your product or service be the star of this show.

The Benefits Of a Product Video Demo

There are lots of benefits to demo videos—first and foremost being the medium.

Video works: 85% of consumers purchase products after watching videos on them, and people just generally prefer video to any other kind of content, with 78% of consumers watching video content weekly and 55% watching it every day.

Video content also saves you from worrying about trying to write copy and keeps readers from bothering to read. Think about it: a video is much more accessible, as you simply have to click once and sit back, instead of having to scroll through a massive wall of text, often full of fluff and irrelevant content, sifting through unnecessary information that most people often end up forgetting.

Video content gets right to the point and sticks with viewers. Not only that, video content has a much higher ROI as it has a much better chance of being shared and possibly even going viral. When people think about virality, trends, and things being in the public consciousness, especially online, seldom do they think about text-heavy content. Video content is the way to go.

The medium of video, especially marketing videos, also means that you need to get right to the point and highlight the best features of your product/service. With product demo videos, you don’t need to linger. You just solve a consumer’s problem with your fantastic product, sell them on it, and hook them with a powerful CTA.

To sum up what makes demo videos great and why are they the best option for showcasing your product/service:

• They’re accessible,
• They have viral potential,
• They entertain and educate,
• They’re short, snappy, and to the point,
• And they highlight all the best things about your product/service.

Video content can hook people quickly so that it also leads to better leads. That, in turn, means more customers, stronger loyalty, and more sales for you. Video is the way to go, so now it’s time to explore the different types of video demonstrations you can create to put your best foot forward.

Different Styles of Demo Videos

Though demo videos generally aim for the same purpose of selling customers on the benefits of your product/service, there is no one catch-all style of video that works for each and every product. Let’s explore the different kinds of demo videos that might work for you.

Explainer Videos

Explainer videos are short videos that do just what they sound like they ought to: they condense everything about your product or service into a short, digestible video with punchy words and punchy animation/editing to help hook viewers within the first few seconds.

Often, explainer videos are a great lead-up to a more in-depth video or serve as a great first video of a multi-part approach to demo videos. Explainer videos are also a good choice if you have a more abstract or hard-to-showcase product or service.

Product Videos

Product videos are the main style of video demonstrations you’ll come across when watching product demo videos.

Product videos are similar to explainer videos because they aim to explain and clarify what your product or service does. They often get into the details of a product’s usability, features, and what sets it apart from its competition. With these types of product demo videos, you as the content creator can have a bit more leeway to run longer than most types of explainer videos and marketing videos in general, as it might be essential to showcase your product or service on a more in-depth level than other types of marketing videos generally tend to allow.

That said, you should still keep your product videos punchy, as short as possible, and focus on the essential things that differentiate your product or service. When you’re creating a product video, focus on what you, as a consumer, would like to know about your product or service. If you start with the problem that your product or service aims to solve and get right to it, tackling the issue head-on, you can cut down on the fluff and get straight to the point. Also, consider what it is about your product that an explainer video, PR video, or sales video can’t explain, and highlight that. Focus on the tangibility and physicality of the product or the user experience of an app or service.

Also, you don’t need to get every single detail about your product forced into one video. You can make an entire suite of product videos that build on each other as part of your ongoing marketing funnel strategy. This can not only be a great way to ensure repeat, loyal viewers but also give each unique aspect of your product or service the attention and time it deserves.

When you’re making a product video, consider these things:

• Identify the problem your product can solve and address it immediately. This is a great way to start off the video and help you in the creative process focus on the fundamental things your product demonstration videos absolutely need while getting rid of any extraneous information.
• Product videos can be a little bit longer if the demonstration process itself is involved, but they still need to be entertaining, to-the-point, and, importantly, have shareability. Generally, shorter videos are more likely to go viral, and people are more willing to share them than long-form content.
• You don’t need to create one single video for every aspect of your product or service all at once. That’s probably a bad idea if your story isn’t put together as it will just create information overload for viewers, causing them to bounce.
• You can also build brand loyalty with repeat videos, especially if you have a distinct style all your own that can set you apart from your competitors. Having multiple types of product videos is not only good to give each aspect of your product/service the time it deserves, but it also gives you more chances to hook people and persuade them to become loyal to your brand/product/service. Then hopefully, they’ll eventually become brand ambassadors as well.
• Don’t forget: think outside the box, be inventive, take risks, and get creative. Consumers can read right through inauthenticity, so take a chance and have fun with it!

Sales Videos

Sales videos are another excellent example of an effective style of video you can use to bolster your marketing sales cycle and guarantee people are paying attention to your product. You’ll get them hitting that “Buy Now” button on your website, downloading your app, or going out to a store to make a purchase.

Sales videos are not so explicit about the products themselves and may not feature a demonstration of your product or service. Still, these are a great bookend to video demos to remind people again what they’re going to buy. A slickly-produced sales video will significantly help reduce clogging up in your pipeline and help build customer faith. In a way, they’re much like a hype video or explainer video and work well later in your video campaign to reiterate what makes a product or service stick out from the myriad others.

Another note: Sales video demos can come in many different shapes and sizes, and you can combine aspects of all of these video-making techniques to create something that solves your problems. A product video demonstration can easily feature elements of sales videos or brand hype videos.

Video Landing Pages

These are another great tool to help share your animated product demo videos or a product video demo, as landing pages are designed to grab attention immediately. Once you have it, show them what makes your product or service stand out, and prove just how great it is with a slickly-produced demo video.

You may also want to consider taking a different approach to your marketing campaign and your demo videos by making animated product demo videos instead of live-action demo videos. This can help set yourself apart from the pack and give your demo videos a fresh, unique look that will catch people’s eyes and draw them in to keep watching.

Tips and Tricks

When you’re creating product demo videos, it’s essential to consider the following to make your demo videos a success:

• Identify your customers’ problem ASAP: There’s no need to bury the lede. Identify a potential problem for your customer immediately, and that way, you’ve gripped them within seconds. With the average visit to a page lasting under a minute and users often leaving within 10-20 seconds, you need to hook people as soon as you can. People’s attention spans have also dropped significantly in the last 20 years—from an average of 12 to 8.25 seconds, meaning you need to nail your first impression.
• Make it short and snappy: Building off the last point, you need to keep your content short and digestible. Get to the point, and do it quickly. Identify a problem for your customers, demonstrate how your product can help solve it, include a clear CTA, and move on. Do it efficiently, and you’re golden.
• Show off what makes you unique: What is it that makes your product stand out? Don’t be afraid to compare yourself to competitors if you know you have the product to back it up. After all, customers at this stage of a marketing funnel cycle will still be considering other competitors, so you need to consider that and show yourself off in the best light possible.
• Make your content unique: Have some fun with it. Spice things up by considering animated product demo videos instead of live-action. Infuse it with some humour.
• Stick to a cohesive style: It’s wise for your brand to have a distinct visual style to make you stand out, and that should carry over to all the different types of videos throughout your marketing funnel cycle—from brand videos, all the way to demo videos.
• Have a strong CTA: Finally, it’s imperative to have a strong call-to-action, as the CTA will be the last thing that customers see. A strong CTA will go a long way in guaranteeing customer retention and possibly converting customers into brand ambassadors.

What’s Next?

Now that you know what you need to create demo videos that will shine in your video marketing strategy, it’s time to get to work. Maybe you want to make them yourself from start to finish, or perhaps you want some help.

Explainify has your back. With teams of experts, you can start with a simple consultation. Whether you want guidance through different parts of the process or you’d like Explainify to create a whole suite of demo videos, we can do as little or as much work as you want.

Get in touch, and we can work together to find the best solution for your marketing campaign.