There are many ways a company, brand, a product or service can benefit from online video, and you can look at it from the Life Cycle point of view. Meaning whether your product is already on the market for months or years, or you’re about to launch a new one, there are ways you can leverage online video for the best results.
For simplicity sake, we’re going to divide it into three big phases: Pre-launch, Launch and Post-launch.
PRE-LAUNCH
So you have a new brand or product you’re going to be launching. In this phase, what you should do is tease the target audience, show them something intentionally mysterious, make them wonder what it is all about.
That is what the movie industry has been doing for decades now (product – movie), and something brands are catching up in the these last few years.
Take a look, for example, at the Motorola Xoom Tablet pre-launch teaser:
See, they tease to the max, not even showing how the product looks like! But that helps build buzz for the product, get the converstations started and going.
Here’s another one that does a very good job at teasing the audience, the Google Wallet Pre-Launch Video:
Google is indeed the master of online video use, and you can find dozens of examples from each of this phases on their vast online video portfolio.
LAUNCH
At launch, the main goal want to showcase your product or service. But it doesn’t have to be a full description of all its features, its cost, etc. You should find a way to connect with your audience through the product.
Here is where you can make a great looking ad-like video that will speak to your potential customers. A good example is the Nintendo Wii Fit Plus launch video:
See how they use the video not only show to show features of the device, but also showcase several use situations? That is always a good strategy and connects emotionally.
POST LAUNCH
Now after the product is already out there, there are several things you can do with video to grow your user base and manage the existing community.
Like, for example:
- making several short videos highlighting and showing selected features; make as many as you want – why not instead of making a 2 minute video, make 8 15 second ones, each one with a single feature?
- maybe even doing a Video FAQ instead of plain old written FAQs!
- Customer Service (answering questions etc) with video;
- Customer Testimonials.
There are countless examples of this out there, but see how Twitter (which has 74 videos on their Youtube account) has used it in this video to explain how to use the platform to search for Music recommendations:
As simples as that, they didn’t build a set, get very expensive cameras and shoot something at 1000 fps (not that there’s anything wrong with that – it’s awesome actually): they did it as simples as it can be, capturing the screen of them using their own product, and adding music, that’s it!
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So as you see, you can adapt your online video strategy to the life cycle phase your product is in and even create multiple ones according to that.
