There are a couple of different types of videos that marketers put on their websites. Product demonstrations are a common type.  They typically provide an overview of a product’s Is-Does after which they show how to use the product. Sometimes they fall into the tutorial category.  How to properly press coffee, how to use a new mobile application, how to clean your shower grout. 

Another type of web video is educational. It uses visual narrative to help consumers learn more about a product or category so as to make them seem like an authority — and as an authority deserving of special purchase consideration.  Category leaders, the saying goes, educate the market.  

A third type of website video is the infotainment or sales-otainment video. They look good on paper, read and view well on storyboard, and often look beautiful as a finished edited product.  The problem with some of these sales-otainment videos is they are nothing more than a script, a giggle, a product shot and invoice.  Like “we’re here” advertising that does no more than state a product name and where to purchase, these sales-otainment videos are all over the place. The goal of many of these efforts is to “go viral.”  (Wrong goal.)  Big ad agencies are doing them.  Recent film school grads are doing them. High school friends brothers are doing them.  

There is comedy writing and acting. There is directing and producing. There is invoicing and remittance.  But let’s not forget that web videos have to sell. Of course they have to be interesting, but that alone will not work. If research doesn’t indicate predisposition to buy more product after having seen a sales-otainment video, it has failed. Sales-otainment videos need an idea. A selling idea.  Peace!