When you’re putting together a video marketing strategy, one of the questions you should ask your team is “How long should the video be?” You can’t underestimate the power of a good video, but it seems like less is more these days... or is it?
Video content is one of the best ways to engage with your customers online. It allows your target audience to “meet” you and understand what you’re all about. It’s the perfect opportunity to make a good impression — so it’s imperative you put your best foot forward.
But not knowing how long to make your video can easily stifle your inbound marketing efforts. Thirty seconds? Ninety seconds? Anything, as long as it is under 5 minutes? Let’s take a look at the best ways to determine how long your video should be.
Determining your video’s length will depend on your audience and your content. You have to understand what your audience wants and form great content around it.
Wistia is a video hosting site that also does a lot of digital marketing research and provides marketing tools you can use. Their researchers did some data tracking to get to the bottom of this debate. What they found may surprise you.
Wistia created a 30-second video and a 90-second video with the same content. It turns out the first 30 seconds of both videos had the same amount of viewer engagement; however, an average 30-second video was viewed 85% of the way through while an average 2-minute video was viewed 50% of the way through.
And how about this? An Animoto survey found that Facebook recommends small businesses try keeping videos to around 15 seconds as much as possible. They shared that 47% of value in a video is delivered in the first 3 seconds.
This information is helpful because it tells us the first few seconds of your video are the most important. You will want to hook your viewer right away in order to keep them engaged.
Vidyard is another video hosting site that provides the results of the research they do. They took a deep dive into the length of videos and looked at multiple factors and platforms. Here’s what they found:
So, you can see that the length of your video will depend on a few factors.
As you’re putting together your video marketing strategy and trying to determine how long your video should be, keep in mind that the platform you’re posting on will play a big role.
As we see in the stats from Vidyard, Instagram videos should be shorter (less than a minute) and most are less than 2 minutes long.
Longer-form videos typically end up on one of your landing pages or possibly your YouTube channel.
The other major factor will be the type of video you’re producing. An on-demand webinar will be much longer than a 15-second spot.
Keeping your video as short as possible will help keep your viewers engaged. Here are a few helpful tips to shorten the length of your video:
Using these tips will help shorten your video, but don’t lose sight of your target audience. If you’re producing great content for the audience that’s craving it, it won't matter how long (or short) your video is. They’re going to watch it!
The length of your video should always be a part of your video marketing strategy because it will ultimately help you post it on the correct platform, and in front of the right people (your target audience).
If you’re having trouble getting your video marketing strategy off the ground or need help in other areas, check out our video marketing page to find other tips on how to create great videos. Or take a look at some additional examples of videos that we’ve produced for our clients.
