How Can A Product Video Help Promote My Business?

With people twice as likely to share videos with their friends than any other type of content, it’s undeniable that video is an essential way to bring your product to market and a fantastic opportunity to showcase your brand.

Whether you’re a small start up with the latest mind-blowing product that we didn’t know we needed, or a corporate giant with new, innovative software that will revolutionise businesses across the globe, video marketing is a powerful way to share your product with the world and the great news, you don’t need a blockbuster-scale budget to do so!

In this article we share our top tips to make sure your product video is a success and explain the services Dead Ready Productions offer which will ensure you’re in safe hands when it comes to creating your video. But first, let’s start by sharing some compelling statistics about video marketing – because who doesn’t love a stat?

Cisco reports that 82% of global internet traffic will come from either video streaming or video downloads in 2022.

This figure is set to increase as companies continue to realise the importance of this medium, so take action now to start exploring how video could form part of your marketing strategy.

As reported by Wyzowl in their 2022 Video Marketing Statistics Report, a staggering 96% of people have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service.

This proves that video is an essential sales tool and that potential buyers look for this information to learn about your product whilst considering their purchase.

It was reported by Statista that in 2021, online videos had a worldwide audience reach of 92% among internet users.

With nearly 3.5 billion internet users set to consume video by 2023 it’s essential that you are engaging with audiences in this way to promote your products to potential customers.

According to data collected by Statista, over three billion internet users will watch, stream or download video content during 2022.

This figure is projected to increase annually, reaching nearly 3.5 billion by 2023, which makes producing video content undeniably the most powerful format you can include in your marketing strategy.⠀

These are just four tips of the ice berg when it comes to the power of video and with figures this big, you could be forgiven for thinking video might be on the verge of hitting saturation point. Yet, thankfully (especially for us), that’s not the case! There are still underutilised opportunities you can explore, so taking this all into consideration, how do you go about writing a brief for a product video that will ensure you get the best response from your customers?

We provide our 3 top tips for making sure you get the most out of your product video and explain how Dead Ready Productions can bring your brief to life.

3 Top Tips For Making The Most Of Your Product Video

1. Keep It Positive

The phrase “Ever had that thing happen that really isn’t great?” never features in the world’s most successful promotional videos. So, despite it being an age-old sales tactic to outline the problem that your product fixes…

You need to ditch all the negative connotations and keep your video positive by emphasising the benefits your product will bring to the user.

Writing a video brief can feel daunting, but the best way is to break it down into simple stages. First start by answering the following two questions “What do you want to say? and “Who do you want to say it to?”, then consider the pain points of your potential customers and list the benefits that your product will bring – your aim is to leave your audience with an overwhelming sense that you are the solution they’ve been looking for and they can’t possibly live without ‘you’ in their life.

2. Keep It Brief

This is essentially a tip for every promotional video of almost any kind – use the minimum amount of your audience’s time to convey your message.

Audiences are more time poor than ever before and they have an endless array of choices. They are not forced to watch your product video, they will choose to, so if they are not engaged, they’ll turn off or move onto the next. It’s that simple. They’ll also associate your brand with boredom, however subconsciously, and no one wants that!

The golden rule is to try to keep your product video to a maximum 90 seconds. If you do need longer, you’ll need to work a lot harder to retain interest in your video.

You can do this by ensuring you have a stronger concept and a greater variety of content to keep them engaged, but ideally keeping your product video concise, engaging and if the subject matter allows it, even fun, needs to be your main priority.

3. Have An Identity

Consumers have become incredibly savvy shoppers, so a product video is a fantastic way to show the world who you are as a company, your background, your ethos and your fantastic products.

People don’t just want the short-term fix of buying a product, they want a background story. They want to feel like they’re part of an exclusive and knowledgeable community when they make their purchase.

It is therefore essential that your product video aligns with the rest of your brand values, so keep this in mind when you’re writing your brief. It will guarantee your product video hits all the right buttons with your audience and will keep them watching for longer.

How Can Dead Ready Productions Help You With Your Product Video?

In addition to a whole host of video, animation, photography and graphic design services to help businesses promote their services or products, there are three specific types of product video that Dead Ready Productions produce. These include:

Studio-Based Product Videos

These demonstrate the craftsmanship of your product with a studio video shoot, where every detail can be captured in a controlled environment to ensure that your product looks more appealing than ever.

Lifestyle Product Films

If you really want your customers to understand how much of a benefit your products can bring to their life, consider a lifestyle shoot where the product is featured prominently in desirable and exciting real-world contexts.

Ecommerce & Retail Videos

Product videos used to accompany listings on ecommerce websites are a powerful way to drive sales as they can offer a 360 degree view of your product that photography alone can’t achieve. This style of product video not only helps you get more qualified leads through the door, it can also increase your chances of converting a sale.

If you have a video brief, or you would like to find out more about the services Dead Ready Productions can offer your business, simply get in touch via the Contact page on our website or by calling +44 (0)208 339 6139.

* Statistics courtesy of the Social Shepherd.

3 More Top Tips For How To Look Good For Video Conferences

We all know where to put the camera and how to light ourselves for a decent looking video call these days (and if we don’t, check out our earlier vlog), but now that everyone is used to meeting online, we’ve noticed some of the more subtle traps that people are falling into.

In this update, Dead Ready Director, Chris Tongue, takes us through his top tips to make sure you come across perfectly in your web conferences.

Here’s the transcript for fun:

Hello! Back at the beginning of the lockdown I posted a tips video on how to look good in video calls. Since then, we’ve recorded hours of interviews for several clients over the web and have noticed a few extra traps people can fall into, so thought I’d post a short update with a few more tips.

Extra Tip #1

Be mindful of reflective surfaces and how they have a habit of giving away ugly or embarrassing things in the rest of the room. This applies not only to windows and mirrors in the background, but also to those who wear glasses – a bored attendee may choose to make your window full screen, where it might be obvious through reflections that the discussion doesn’t have your undivided attention… (I’ll then zoom in on my glasses which will show that I’m playing solitaire or minesweeper).

Extra Tip #2

Remember to keep eye contact. This doesn’t mean that you have to look at the camera, just that you should keep looking at the people you are talking to on screen.

It can be tempting to look away while you form your responses, but you’ll lose your audience’s attention if you don’t appear to be talking to them. This counts double if you’re being interviewed or are delivering a presentation as you’re on screen for much longer.

If it helps, have your notes on screen, it’ll keep your focus in roughly the right place.

Extra Tip #3

Value your production values. If you’re being filmed taking part in an interview or you’re a guest speaker at a virtual conference – remember that your video quality reflects whoever is posting the video, so getting your setup correct is more than just a vanity exercise and can affect whether or not you’re invited back.

Good luck out there and thanks for watching!

Where Can You Fly A Drone In The UK?

Drone filming is one of the most exciting developments in the video world, bringing the capability of capturing soaring, majestic footage to the masses.

The technology has advanced in leaps and bounds over recent years, and there’s now a huge range of drones, or UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), available at various price points that are capable of recording stunning 4K video.

However, with the proliferation of drones in recent years, there’s been regular changes to the legislation and policing of them while the authorities race to keep on top of things. This has lead to a fair amount of confusion amongst both hobbyists and professional pilots about where they can actually get up in the sky and take cool pictures.

While most of us know and accept that you’re unlikely to get away with a sweeping flyover of Buckingham Palace or a tight orbit of the Gherkin, it quickly becomes much more of a grey area when you start looking at less obvious locations.

What should you consider before choosing a location?

1. Having a suitable take-off site and flying area

It’s crucial to have a suitable take-off site available. This means that the landowner has given permission to the drone pilot to take-off and land the aircraft, and that the drone can be kept 30 metres clear of any person, vehicle or structure outside control of the film crew while taking off.

Once up in the air, the rules regarding proximity of the drone to potential hazards changes. The drone must now be kept at least 50 metres away from anyone or any vehicle/structure outside the control of the film crew, so it’s important to consider where exactly it will need to fly to get the required shots and how any hazards can be managed and avoided.

For example, these rules do mean that most back gardens aren’t going to make a suitable take-off site for most drones and if you have a drone that’s heavier than 7kg (which is unlikely for most productions), those distances may also be higher.

2. Crowd avoidance

Drones must be kept at least 150 metres away from a ‘organised assembly’ involving a large group of people, such as a sporting event or concert. ‘Large’ is generally defined as being 1,000 people. So unfortunately flying your drone over a crowd of people at a music festival isn’t an option.

3. No fly zones and local laws (e.g. parks)

This is a big one as the rules set by local councils and landowners about where you can use your drone are rapidly becoming more defined. A lot of ‘no-fly’ zones are clearly identified (noflydrones.co.uk has a good list), and some newer drones are equipped with ‘geo-fencing’ meaning they will simply refuse to fly into forbidden areas. A lot of parks and councils have specific policies (e.g. you can’t fly in any of London’s 8 Royal Parks or Chelsea without specific permission) but some are less clear – if in doubt, it’s worth checking with the local council beforehand.

4. Avoiding other air traffic

Although some may consider smaller inexpensive drones as toys, they’re all considered to be aircraft by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and as such there are rules in place designed to minimise the risk to other air traffic. You can’t fly near any airport, airfield or aerodrome without specific clearance – so you need to check that where you plan to fly is outside their exclusion zones. Again, noflydrones.co.uk provides a map outlining these.

5. Flying within the rules

Assuming you are looking to film in an area suitable for taking of and flying a drone, you’ll need to keep in mind that the drone pilot needs to be able to see the drone at all times, and that it is flown under 400 feet vertically and less than 500 metres away from the pilot horizontally.

This is referred to as ‘the bubble’ and helps to minimise the risk of collision with other air traffic, as well as ensuring that the pilot is close enough to operate the drone safely. Keeping in mind these rules is important when planning exactly where to carry out the drone flight to get the shots you’re looking for.

6. Don’t be annoying

The way the drone is operated makes a difference – some parks and councils have rules that, somewhat subjectively, allow drone flight as long as it doesn’t ‘annoy’ other people.

It’s generally common sense, but being reasonably discreet, not causing a nuisance, or flying it recklessly, will mean people are less inclined to complain and more likely to be amenable to your planned flight.

7. Indoors vs outdoors

This is an interesting one – drones are generally sold for what they can do outdoors, but newer ones are also touted for what can be done with them inside. Once you’re in a building, the drone is no longer considered air traffic since it’s not in open airspace, and so then you’re in the realm of needing permission and clearance from whoever owns/manages the building, and the usual CAA rules don’t apply.

Being indoors obviously carries its own risks so it’s really worth doing a full risk assessment and considering your insurance situation!

With drones being such a hot topic at the moment, it’s going to be interesting to see how the rules and regulations develop in the coming years. It’s likely that public perception will feed into this, and so those of us operating drones need to do our best to ensure we’re following the rules, conducting flights legally and safely, so that hopefully the laws become more relaxed rather than more stringent. Time will tell!

To talk to us more about where drones can or can’t be used, and how we can help ensure you get the aerial footage you need, please get in touch via the button below or by calling +44 (0)208 339 6139.

Event Filming: Planning Your Video Production For Maximum Effectiveness

When organising videography for your event, it can be difficult to work out ahead of time exactly what you want to film, and what type of video you want to create.

Often people end up choosing a supplier, let them get on with the job on the day and then, once the dust has settled and there’s more time to think about it, figure out what exactly to do with the video footage.

While this may give you the results you’re looking for, you can ensure your video delivers above and beyond by taking into account a few key considerations beforehand.

Know your objective

It sounds obvious, but knowing exactly what you want to achieve by filming your event is hugely important, and yet often overlooked. Are you looking to record the event for an audience unable to attend on the day?

Provide a recap for those who were in attendance? Or are you looking to create a promotional video to boost sales and marketing for your next event? Just three examples, but all benefitting from a different filming approach.

Develop a filming schedule

Try to avoid ‘winging it’ on the day and deciding what to film while the event is actually in progress. Working with your video supplier to develop a filming timetable beforehand that corresponds to your event programme will help you to make sure that you’re getting all you need, and can highlight any logistical issues – particularly when multiple cameras are involved and more than one type of video is being created.

It’s not unusual for requirements to change on the day and the crew will need to be flexible, but a schedule provides an important starting point.

Consider combining videography with photography

One of the challenges of running an event is having to deal with many different suppliers. Using the same team for both video filming and for stills photography can help with this, saving you time when it comes to briefing people on what you need, and generally simplifying the process. Of course, you need to be absolutely sure that the team you’re working with has the capability to deliver on both fronts.

Decide how you’ll use and distribute the video

Many don’t think about this until the video has been created, but it’s worth considering – will it go on your webpage, social media channels, how will you notify people when the video is ready? Knowing the answers to these questions beforehand can influence the filming approach taken by the crew, and will lower the risk of hold-ups and delays in post-production since the distribution strategy has already been agreed.

Review previous experiences

If you’ve worked with video production teams at events before, make the most of this and think about what worked, and what you would like to do differently. Focus less on the process but more on the outcome of the video – did it achieve what you wanted it to and why/why not? Refining the process is an important part of ensuring that each video surpasses the one before.

Having provided video and photography services for a huge range of events both across the UK and internationally, we’re no strangers to working with a brief that’s less than fully developed. However, by considering the above you can help to ensure that your event video has the best chance of reaping all the rewards that video can offer.

If you would like to find out more about the video, animation, photography and graphic design services Dead Ready Productions can offer your business, please feel free to get in touch via the button below or by calling +44 (0)208 339 6139.