Incorporating tech videos into your marketing strategy is no longer simply a maybe, it’s a necessity. Creating a captivating tutorial, immersive demo, or enlightening explainer has enormous power in helping customers find solutions to their problems. A well-crafted video tutorial can simplify complex concepts and instructions and provide step-by-step instructions that show the solution in action. According to Wyzowl’s “Video Marketing Statistics” for 2023, 91% of companies use video for marketing to increase user understanding of a product and boost conversions.
When done correctly, video tutorials deliver an easily accessible and cost-effective means for learning at an individual pace, complete with examples that show real-world applications of a technology solution or product. The best tutorials show common end-user scenarios and implement targeted distribution to help your potential customers assess whether the solution aligns with their needs and if it will effectively solve their problem.
Video tutorials also allow a knowledgeable presenter or SME to create a bond of trust between your brand and the customer, with helpful insights focused on user needs that save them time over text-based sources.
This blog post covers the critical considerations and planning prerequisites for making a video tutorial. Our aim is to provide the steps involved to deliver valuable information in a digestible and user-friendly manner to elevate audience engagement.
Pre-Production Phase: Setting the Foundation
The first steps in the pre-production phase are related to defining targeted user needs that will lay the blueprint for each subsequent step in the process.
Define Your Goals
Every video tutorial that achieves the desired targeted viewer results starts with a very defined mission. That may be customer education, increased product adoption, brand awareness, driving website traffic, or booking a demo. Identifying the specific objectives and key messages you want to convey through the tutorial sets the tone for your project and informs each successive decision.
Understand Your Target Audience
Identifying and understanding your target audience is paramount to creating a tutorial that resonates with their needs, preferences, pain points, and preferred learning style. This all shapes the content, tone, and even the platforms where the video will be most effective based on your market personas, analytics, and customer feedback.
Outline the Content
Creating a comprehensive outline of the tutorial that covers all the necessary information while maintaining a logical flow supports every phase of planning and production. This outline ensures you include all critical points in your video, the order in which they should appear, and any additional elements while maintaining a logical flow.
Using mind-mapping tools like MindMeister helps organize your thoughts visually, while project management tools such as Asana or Trello keep your thoughts organized.
Script Development
It’s no easy feat to write a concise and clear script that aligns with your goals and speaks to your audience. This is about creating a symbiotic connection between the spoken words and the on-screen visuals. The script brings together the narration, visual cues, transitions, and calls to action (CTAs). There are many free scriptwriting software tools that can guide you through this process, with more than a dozen presented in this G2 blog.
Storyboard creation may be an integral part of the scriptwriting and production process to plot the narration and visual connections. There are many pre-designed video templates available that make the process easier by aligning visuals, narration, and time stamps. This helps you to stay on track, improve flow, and focus on the best approach to reaching the viewer with information they can use and absorb at their own pace.
Production Phase: Creating an Engaging Video
Once the script and storyboard are completed, you can begin the production phase and start making decisions on the tools and methods to actualize your tutorial. Several important aspects to this process will further determine the finished product’s quality and efficacy in moving the targeted personas to action.
Note that the type of tutorial and your target audience will drive the actual production process and editing of the video, whether it uses a screencast, animation video, or spokesperson approach.
Highlight Your Product/Service
The idea here is to highlight unique product features and benefits while helping guide your viewer through the tutorial. One approach is to use screen-capture software tools like TechSmith’s Camtasia and Snagit or OBS Studio. This approach can provide real-world context while showcasing your product’s interface, functionalities, and standout features.
Choose a Training Video Template
Your video tutorial must have a polished and professional look to achieve your focused goals and show your brand, service, or product in the best light. Balancing cost and time savings with the highest video and audio quality possible is less of a challenge today with template-based tools like Canva or AI-assisted production tools such as Synthesia.
Use Zoom In and Out Techniques
Using zoom-in and zoom-out techniques enhances visibility; this helps your viewers focus on specific areas of the product or tutorial to boost their engagement and understanding. These tactics are incredibly useful for tech tutorials where attention to detail is pivotal.
Keep It Concise and Focused
The ideal length of a video tutorial falls between 3 and 6 minutes, but some tutorials can be as long as 20 minutes depending on content and audience, according to TechSmith. The goal is to avoid trying to deliver too much information that can overwhelm viewers by focusing on one process or breaking down complex topics into easily digestible segments.
Incorporate Subtitles
Incorporating subtitles or captions makes your tutorial as accessible as possible for those with hearing impairments and language barriers, or simply for those who prefer text. Tools like Rev, Riverside, YouTube, and others provide quick, cost-effective, and accurate captioning tools.
Maintain Consistent Branding
Colors, fonts, logos, and other brand elements should be consistent throughout the video to enhance professionalism and solidify brand recognition.
Post-Production Phase: Polishing the Tutorial
Once you’ve assembled all elements of the video tutorial, the refinement process can begin in the post-production phase.
Edit for Clarity and Pacing
Editing for clarity and pacing is all about removing unnecessary content to maintain a smooth, logical flow that keeps viewers engaged. Buffer suggests numerous tools for this purpose.
Enhance Audio and Visuals
Bad audio can be a deal-breaker just like bad video production. Luckily, there are many tools available to deliver clear audio background music and effects.
Optimize for Different Platforms
Social media and industry-specific platforms all have unique requirements that may mandate that you create different versions of the video to cater to these nuances.
Add a Call to Action (CTA)
Tech marketing video tutorials must all have a call to action based on the desired focus and outcome of the video. This may be signing up for a demo, visiting a landing page, signing up for a newsletter, or just sharing the video.
Distribution and Promotion: Reaching Your Target Audience
Your market, industry, and targeted end users are all part of a defined ecosystem that shapes your video tutorial, along with where it is distributed and how you will promote it. The following considerations enable you to make those determinations effectively based on desired outcomes.
Choose the Proper Channels, Leverage Social Media
Choosing the proper channels for your videos starts as part of defining the focus, audience, and platforms for your tutorial. Different platforms cater to different demographics, which is why the chosen platforms should closely align with where your targeted personas are most active, such as YouTube, LinkedIn, or industry-specific forums.
Share your video across your social media channels with appealing captions and relevant hashtags. You should also use analytics tools to determine the best times to post and employ social media management software like Buffer for scheduling.
Collaborate with Influencers
Some of your current users may be the ideal collaborators and influencers for promoting your tutorial. They will help you reach a wider audience and establish credibility with targeted personas.
Optimize Video Metadata and Use Performance Analysis
It’s imperative to optimize your video metadata using relevant SEO keywords, interesting titles, and engaging descriptions to improve discoverability and search engine rankings. Your tutorial can always boost its focus, reach, delivery, and content through performance analysis. This means analyzing viewer engagement metrics, such as average watch time, disengagement points, and viewer interaction to understand what resonates and what needs improvement.
Final Thoughts
Incorporating video tutorials into your tech marketing strategy can pay dividends if executed correctly. By carefully considering your objectives, tailoring content to your audience, and adopting a meticulous approach to production and post-production, you can create compelling, informative, and engaging video tutorials. These can serve as valuable assets for brand building, customer education, and even direct conversions.
