For marketing videos to be effective they need to engage viewers and keep them interested. While engagement itself may seem pretty complicated on the surface, your goal should be to try to retain more viewers and get them to react to your video in some way. To be honest there are lots of ways in which you could start to work on improving the engagement of your marketing videos, but these four simple steps in particular are a good start:

  • Keep the duration of the videos short

Short videos that are between 15 to 60 seconds in duration can do wonders in terms of engagement, as viewers are more likely to watch them to completion. To pull it off however you’ll need to come up with videos that are focused around a single topic and message, and present that message in a direct and concise matter. If you find that you are unable to keep the duration of a video short, try finding ways to split the topic into smaller topics and create individual videos around each one.

  • Place a convincing hook at the start of the video

Every marketing video that you create should start with a hook that convinces viewers to keep watching. Most viewers decide within 5 to 8 seconds whether or not they want to continue watching a video, so you don’t have long to convince them. Hooks can take several forms, but the main idea should be to entice and interest viewers. One of the most effective types of hooks is to outline the benefits of the video so that viewers know what they will gain by watching it.

  • Show, don’t tell

If there’s one rule for improving videos it is this one: Show, don’t tell. Essentially you should always try to think of ways that you can visually convey the points that your video is trying to make, rather than simply telling viewers about it with a voiceover. Viewers absorb visual information more effectively and respond to it better as well. That is part of why videos are more engaging than other types of media, and you should take advantage of that. In some cases you may even want to use other types of videos such as animation, slideshows, or record screen on Windows 8 in order to more clearly convey your message.

  • Tell a story instead of promoting products

Videos that are overly promotional tend to be far less engaging for viewers, but stories on the other hand have the uncanny ability to grab and hold their attention. That is something that you can use in your marketing videos, by structuring them as stories. In other words if you want make your marketing videos more engaging, you should avoid outright product demonstrations or advertisements. Instead you should focus on stories of people who have used the products, or stories of how it could be used to perform certain tasks. Each of these steps should help you to make your marketing videos more engaging, and you should track their performance and see just how much they improve. Over time you should analyze and learn from the data that you collect as well, so that you can gradually increase your marketing videos engagement further.