Con­sumer will­ing­ness to con­sume more video con­tent, accord­ing to a study from Lev­els Beyond, is increas­ing. How­ev­er, the same report showed that 75 per­cent of brands aren’t meet­ing con­sumer desires for video.

The true secret behind a suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing cam­paign is giv­ing your con­sumers what they need. Edel­man has recent­ly released Brand­share 2014 and the study clear­ly high­light­ed that con­sumers seek mutu­al ben­e­fit from their rela­tion­ships with brands. Ful­fill­ing con­sumers’ needs remains the best way to engage with them.

Branded How-To Videos

Beau­ty brands have found a great vehi­cle to engage with their cus­tomers in a use­ful way by using brand­ed video tuto­ri­als.

L’Oreal’s YouTube chan­nel has a ded­i­cat­ed sec­tion to how-tos. Rem­ing­ton, the per­son­al care man­u­fac­tur­er, uses the same strat­e­gy. Their YouTube chan­nel is full of video tuto­ri­als about their hair-straight­en­ers and razors.

Google research shows that 50 per­cent of beau­ty shop­pers watch a beau­ty tuto­r­i­al video before and after buy­ing. Beau­ty brands have their con­tent mar­ket­ing sweet spot.

Why Are How-To Videos So Popular With Consumers?

Greg Jar­boe, pres­i­dent and co-founder of SEO-PR, points to the old proverb: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a life­time.”

“For exam­ple, FUJIFILM SonoSite Inc., the world leader in bed­side and point-of-care ultra­sound, pro­vides its prospects and cus­tomers with a wide range of ‘hands on’ and ‘e‑learning’ videos,” Jar­boe said. “What they’ve dis­cov­ered is that these videos help to short­en the sales cycle because mem­bers of the buy­ing com­mit­tees at hos­pi­tals who haven’t met with SonoSite’s sales reps can still ‘see’ how their prod­ucts can be used.”

Brand­ed video tuto­ri­als, or how-to videos, are the best way to meet con­sumers’ needs and hit three key objec­tives of the con­sumer deci­sion jour­ney. Here’s how even :

• Be Eval­u­at­ed: When con­sumers are eval­u­at­ing your prod­uct you want to make sure you pro­vide all the infor­ma­tion they might need: how to use it and all the cool things they can do with the prod­uct. The tra­di­tion­al shop­ping expe­ri­ence is full of shop assis­tants will­ing to explain all the prod­uct char­ac­ter­is­tics for you to eval­u­ate before pur­chas­ing. With online shop­ping con­sumers miss that expe­ri­ence, but brands can eas­i­ly recre­ate it with video tuto­ri­als.
• Opti­mize Feed­back: After pur­chas­ing your prod­uct cus­tomers seek out videos again to learn how to bet­ter use your prod­ucts. Admit it. Every­one hates instruc­tion book­lets, so why not replace them with great how-to videos that will gen­er­ate pos­i­tive feed­back for your brand? The Lev­el Beyond study revealed that 40 per­cent of con­sumers would rather watch a video than read the same infor­ma­tion from a brand­ed book­let. More­over, tuto­ri­als, how-tos and instruc­tion­al videos are just the type of brand videos that 67 per­cent of con­sumers want to watch.
• Build Loy­al­ty: Build­ing cus­tomer loy­al­ty improves your brand rep­u­ta­tion. Pro­vid­ing your cus­tomers with use­ful videos about your prod­ucts encour­ages them to vis­it your web­site or your YouTube chan­nel. Those are the places where you can tar­get them with new infor­ma­tive videos about your lat­est prod­ucts. You could even adver­tise oth­er tools that can be used in com­bi­na­tion with the prod­uct you’re explain­ing.

With dig­i­tal devices and media more present and a part of people’s lives than ever before, there’s noth­ing as good and gen­uine­ly use­ful as instruc­tion­al con­tent fea­tur­ing human inter­ac­tions to sell, explain, or describe a prod­uct. Videos are a nat­ur­al solu­tion for this con­cept.

Mod­ern con­sumers have busy and hec­tic lives. Time is a pre­cious resource that peo­ple don’t want to waste.

Who wants to spend ages read­ing an instruc­tion­al book­let when you can watch a demo video with a friend­ly person/voice explain­ing and show­ing you how assem­ble a com­pli­cat­ed prod­uct and how to make best use of it? Your con­sumers cer­tain­ly don’t.

Which Brands Are Doing A Good Job?

Beau­ty brands aren’t the only ones pro­vid­ing cus­tomers with video tuto­ri­als. Com­pli­cat­ed prod­ucts such as tech devices need more expla­na­tion and some smart brands are already pro­duc­ing video instruc­tions for their con­sumers.

Google (no sur­prise!) under­stood it first. They pro­vide how-to and “get start­ed” videos for all their prod­ucts and ser­vices. If Google is doing it you should do it as well.

Sam­sung Mobile’s YouTube chan­nel has a series of “first hands on” videos that pro­vide the Sam­sung new­bies with all the infor­ma­tion they need to use their smart­phones.

GoPro, the pop­u­lar cam­era man­u­fac­tur­er, has a YouTube chan­nel full of prod­uct sto­ries, “get­ting start­ed” tuto­ri­als, as well as “field guides” and a “tips and tricks” series.

Ikea does­n’t sell tech prod­ucts, but assem­bling a wardrobe could be as hard as learn­ing how to use a new device. On Ikea’s YouTube chan­nel you can find many “how-to build” videos that help their cus­tomers putting togeth­er their fur­ni­ture.

Developing Brand Stories

Edelman’s Brand­share study shows con­sumers want to be involved in the devel­op­ment of brand sto­ries. It’s evi­dent from the ever grow­ing num­ber of views that peo­ple love tuto­ri­als and YouTube is their nat­ur­al habi­tat.

Con­sumers make their own how-to videos to share their expe­ri­ence and prod­uct knowl­edge with online com­mu­ni­ties. They ful­fill a post-mar­ket touch­point where brands com­mon­ly neglect and also encour­age users to estab­lish them­selves as brand advo­cates.

The con­sumers’ involve­ment in brand­ed how-to videos is an oppor­tu­ni­ty that brands are still miss­ing. User-gen­er­at­ed con­tent is trust­ed by con­sumers, espe­cial­ly by mil­len­ni­als.

Smart brands should encour­age their cus­tomers to pro­duce their tuto­r­i­al videos and pro­mote the good ones. This untapped strat­e­gy would allow brands get an incred­i­ble pro­mo­tion and to build trust and loy­al­ty with a min­i­mum invest­ment.

Cus­tomers who pub­lish their videos about your prod­ucts are, in their own way, telling your sto­ry. No one knows your sto­ry bet­ter than you do, so it’s impor­tant to reward those who do it in the right way.

Key Takeaways: Recognize The Opportunity And Take Advantage

Includ­ing video tuto­ri­als in your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy can only ben­e­fit your brand:

• It helps your poten­tial cus­tomers get­ting all the right infor­ma­tion about your prod­uct when they shop online and, as a con­se­quence, it increas­es your cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and grows your rev­enues.
• It improves you post-sales mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, pro­vid­ing your cus­tomers with instruc­tions and tips about your prod­ucts and it gives you the chance to adver­tise oth­er prod­ucts that work in com­bi­na­tion with the ones your explain­ing.
• Encour­ag­ing (and reward­ing) your cus­tomers to pro­duce your brand­ed tuto­r­i­al or tips videos improves your brand rep­u­ta­tion, and build loy­al­ty.

Bot­tom line: How-to videos offer mul­ti­ple ben­e­fits, no dis­ad­van­tages, and require a min­i­mum invest­ment.