How Long Should I Make My Corporate Video?

How Long Should Corporate Video Content Be?

“If you build it, they will come.” This age-old saying is a popular adage in the creative and marketing industry, to remind people that just because something is created, and it’s now ‘there’, it doesn’t necessarily mean that people want it or will consume it.

When creating a corporate video, this message is important to remember. Just because you can create it, you should still consider whether it’s executed for the right reasons. This is particularly important when considering the length of a brand marketing video.

Marketers are obsessed with storytelling. They want to share information about their brands, their products, and their services with audiences in a way that sheds the best light on them. But it’s important to keep in mind that your audiences’ attention spans are shorter than they’ve ever been. Video content on Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, among others, is engineered to be lightning-fast. For brands, that means there’s a very quick window to get the most important part of your message across.

Our recommendation to our clients and partners is to be as efficient as possible with your video content, and keep the length as concise as they can while succinctly delivering their message to their viewers. Below, we’ve listed four key questions to ask yourself when you’re planning your video projects and each one’s total run time.

What type of video are you trying to create?

The type of video you’re creating often has an influence on the run time. If you’re creating a paid ad for a platform such as Facebook or YouTube, or a commercial for a broadcast channel, you’re often constricted by a certain length based on your media plan. But if you’re creating a video for your YouTube channel, social media, or your website, you have some more flexibility. Interviews and testimonial videos, explainer videos, and instructional videos may require more time to cover each important point. On the other hand, an “About us” video should be concise, and rapidly tell your audience what makes your brand different and special.

What message or story are you aiming to convey?

What core message, or single-minded idea, are you trying to share? Can this information be summarized in less than two minutes? By creating a video storyboard for your project, and timing your script, you can gauge the approximate length of your video. This also allows you to be confident that your message is clear and your video’s call-to-action is easy for the viewer to find and act on.

Consider the correlation between video length and engagement

YouTube and other video platform usage data show that the longer the length of a video, the less engagement it will receive from viewers. We also see that lengthy videos (those more than 12 minutes in length) are rarely viewed fully to their end. Because of this, it’s important to drive your core message, or single-minded idea, as early and directly as possible in video content.

Ask yourself: would you watch it until the end?

After all of these considerations and questions above, you should simply ask yourself if you would watch it to the very end. Think about how you consume video, and how often you scroll, swipe or tap ahead to skip to the next piece of content. This gut-check will help ensure that you are setting yourself up for the best return on investment, and are publishing content that is impactful, engaging, and sheds the best light on your brand.

We’d love to hear about your next creative idea and work with you to create a video that’s engaging, impactful, and of the perfect length. To start a discussion with our team of strategic, creative professionals, click here to schedule a discovery call with our team today.