Marketing through videos: 5 video types to get started

In the previous article, we told 3 steps to include video into your growth marketing program.

As you remember, there are 5 different video types to solve various marketing challenges. A quick guide below in case you missed it.

Besides the dissimilarities in what each type of video aims for, they also vary in how they are made.

Now, let’s consider the differences between every type of video in terms of the production process. The aspects we are going to consider include production time, video length and metrics that are worth tracking. Knowing what’s behind each video type will help you decide on which video is the best fit to upgrade your marketing strategy.

Explainer videos

Explainer videos introduce the problem that the product/business solves. They take up 4-12 weeks to produce because they require a lot of planning. The duration of an explainer video is 45-120 seconds, usually being around one minute. The main metric to track in explainer videos is engagement since the video must help viewers understand a product.

A great example of explainer video by Figma:

Product videos

A product video aims to sell the product, it’s features, benefits, and show how it actually works. This type of video takes different amounts of time, sometimes up to several months, to be created.

The exact production time depends on the style of the video, such as whether it has to include a live-action part or it’s completely designed in motion. Also, the product interface or even 3D animation can be included, which affects the time you take to complete it.

So the style of the video is what really defines the timeframe. Considering its length, around 2-5 minutes is usually enough to deliver an important and useful message. What you should track in these videos are the play rate and engagement.

A great example of a product video by Webflow:

Commercial videos

Commercial videos increase awareness of your product. These are usually a part of an ad campaign aimed for social media. Depending on the case, the production of a commercial video can take at least a week and sometimes up to 4 weeks.

The length of a commercial video is usually 15-90 seconds because it must be straight to the point and take enough but not too much broadcasting time. The metric to track is the CTA performance within the video to see how successful the message is.

An example of a commercial video by Facebook:

Video series

Video series allows to deeply engage with your users via serial video content and is a good solution best for large-scale businesses.

The production time is the most difficult to predict because the time it takes to create one depends on, again, the style of video (i.e. the presence of live-action parts can prolong the production) as well as the number of episodes and their duration.

In addition, since video series implies regular video content for your marketing strategy, the videos can be published in the course of several months. This makes the production time vary from several weeks to months.

As for the length of a series and each video in it, these range from 1-minute to 1-hour episodes. Your goal and content are what define this decision. Long-term metrics are worth tracking in this case.

An example of a video series “How the brain works” we created for ThriveUnion:

Tutorials

Tutorials explain how to use particular functions of a product or a service and enhance user experience.

They are the quickest to create: the production time can take up to 2 weeks. Interestingly, preparation is what takes the most time in this type of video.

These better not last more than 1 minute since they have an educational purpose and include screencasts or UI-animation.

Repeats on certain parts of the video should be tracked to see whether there are any parts that are confusing or heavy on information, which would contradict the purpose of the video.

An example of a tutorial by Vimeo:

Wrap Up

Now that you are familiar with all the types of videos in terms of what they aim at and what it takes to create them, you can bring your marketing to a new level. Based on the detailed overview of each video type and the previous article we did, which type of video is going to be the most effective solution for you?

Drop us a line and let’s look together what suits best into your case.