Featuring real people proves to be a popular video commercial ad format for Massachusetts video production company

Video commercial formats can be produced in 15, 20, or 30 second run times, sometimes even longer. But on the web it is not necessary to adhere to traditional TV broadcast run times.

Here at eTown Videos, we produced our first web commercial for a Western Massachusetts non-profit organization back in 2006, and the total length of the original video was 7 minutes. We then reduced the run-time and condensed the message to about 2 1/2 minutes which suited the client’s purpose much better – seems we had learned quickly that often less is more 🙂 Over the years after creating and producing hundreds of videos for Massachusetts and New England-based businesses, we found that a particular style of video worked quite well for our customers. We chose to focus on the 90-150 second spot which we often refer to as a mini-documentary. At this point, I’d like to invite you to take a brief look at a few video commercial examples that we’ve produced recently by viewing one of our video demo reels (feel free to come back to it later if you prefer). Some longer form mini-documentaries with an 8-10 minute run time can work well for specific corporate events or sales meetings, but for most web video commercials I recommend keeping your video around the 2-minute mark.

The reason the “mini-documentary” styles have worked so well for clients is because they provide potential customers with a glimpse into their business in a concise manner before they ever visit your business location or contact you. At the same time, you also learn what makes the organization or business unique by hearing it first hand from the owners and managers. We feel that it is important to feature real people and business owners in the videos instead of actors. While we’ve worked with actors in the past, they are not necessarily the focus of the web commercial.  We found that web viewers want to see the owners and manager of the business communicate their vision with passion and sincerity. Since November of 2011, we’ve had the pleasure of working with The Greater Easthampton Chamber of Commerce to help promote the chamber’s member benefits by producing a monthly member spotlight video. The response to the mini-documentary format has been very positive. Our team has also been able to apply a style of storytelling to the mini-documentary format that has been very effective and helpful to local and regional businesses.

In general, what makes multimedia content so critical on the web is because in B2B (business-to-business) customers won’t contact a salesperson until approximately 60% of their purchasing decision has been completed through online research. This means that calling a salesperson may be a last resort for many web visitors (rather than the first call). Therefore, the more information and content you provide for your web visitors the better. Video is the most popular and effective method to deliver that information about your company. Be certain you get noticed on the web and consider a mini-documentary web video.

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