SEO Optimized YouTube Product Demo Videos

YouTube product demonstration videos have added an incredible new dimension to online marketing that benefit both the buyer and the seller. Done properly, videos provide the next best thing to physically shopping in a store. True, you still can’t feel the texture or the weight. However, you can come pretty close to conveying that information if you provide a close up HD video describing those characteristics explaining the benefits of your product.

Most product demos show someone standing 15 feet away from the camera holding the product that’s so small from that distance you can hardly see it or at least any of the important details. Most often they describe the product very quickly in sweeping generalities often using a tone that I affectionately describe as “too cool for school”.

There are two reasons for the “very quickly in sweeping generalities”.

• Studies show that viewers think a demo video should be less than one minute or certainly less than 2 minutes and they’re trying to stay in that time frame. However, the weakness of those studies is that the questions are so general. What’s the product? How informational are the videos in their frame of reference when answering the question?
• The second reason is that the person in the video or who wrote the content of the video doesn’t know much if anything about the product they’re demoing.

Aside from the tone my main complaint about most demo videos is that you don't learn from them... they tell you the obvious.

I've been successfully using demo videos in my online stores for years. Here's my approach.

• I make my videos in HD and close up. People are interested in the product... not me. I want my hands to be the customer’s hands… just as if they were shopping and holding the product shopping in a store.
• I point out the features, benefits and weaknesses if any.
• The duration should be as short as possible but however long it takes to describe the product. If it’s 30 seconds it’s 30 seconds. If it’s ten minutes it’s 10 minutes. The overwhelming majority of people do stay for the full duration of the video because it’s actually helping them with their purchase decision and/or how to use and care for the product when they get it.
• The tone is personal and conversational. (I wish I sounded like the guy that does the Allstate Insurance commercials.)
• The audio sounds professional because I use high quality microphones and mixing software to eliminate breathing, lip smacks or whatever other extraneous sounds are picked up while recording.
• Videos are high quality and informative because I use sophisticated video editing software as well as adding the audio over the video which significantly cuts down on the "number of takes" until we get it right.
• The demo video benefits both the buyer and seller because the buyer knows exactly what they’re getting and how to use it so there are far fewer returns, complaints and calls to customer service. The level of customer satisfaction is high and they're likely to be repeat customers.
• YouTube video title and descriptions are SEO friendly and that there are adequate backlinks to the selling page.
• I embed the video on the web page because I want the viewing time on the page… not on YouTube... whenever possible because the time people spend on your site is a major consideration for Search Engine Optimization. Embedding the videos in your web page slows your page down considerably. There are ways to code the embed that will not significantly slow down your page.
• Embedded videos are responsive so they resize and maintain their proper aspect ratio over desktop and mobile devices.