How long should your video be?

We get this question all the time and it is very important.  If you go too long you lose leads, customer and attention, but if your video is too short you do not get your message across.   So I am going to give you a simple guide on how long your video should be.

Since our time in the video industry we have noticed a couple of interesting characteristic of human nature.  People like to talk a lot and companies, corporations, and individuals love to add more and more information to their scripts.  They will usually start off with a 2 minutes script idea that somehow magically turns into a 4 minutes script because they feel a craving to hit every market and explain every little detail about their product.  This is unnecessary!  It is great practice to take your initial script and cut things out and maybe reword a few sentences instead of adding.

What is the perfect length?

90 seconds is the perfect length when it comes to explainer videos, demo videos, and intro videos.  These videos are great to capture leads, introduce your company, make people like you, build trust, and get a simple message across in a short about of time.  Audiences do prefer to watch a video over reading text, but to not abuse that power by making them sit through a lengthy video.

3 minutes is a great length if you are selling  something on the back end or if you are creating a tutorial video.  When it comes to educating an audience you need to make sure you have enough time to teach, educate, and inspire.

5+ minutes is where things become very touchy.  Video sales letters can be short, long, or beyond imaginably long, like 40 minutes. You have to know what you are doing when it comes to these types of videos.  It takes testing, testing, and more testing to come out with the right length.  The script and video have to go together so well that you can maintain someones attention for long periods of time.   If you are creating a simple explainer video and it comes out to 5 minutes you better start hacking paragraphs because it is too long. Just because a video is way long does not mean that it will be not successful.

Gary Vaernerchuck of TV Wine library does videos of 10-30 minutes of lengths—long by conventional Internet standards. And yet he is widely viewed and wildly successful.

The statement above is more of an exception to the rule.  Nowadays everyone has ADD, mark my words, nobody has ever complained about a short video.

So there you have it a simple guide to how long your video should be.

More Info About How Long Should Your Video Be?

One the major question we often get asked is how long should should a video be.  That is a great question!  We often assume that the more information we pack into a video the better it will be, but that is not the case.  Did you know that a 20 second video will often times get better results than a 90 second video.  Length of video does not always pay.  Rather than pack a explainer video, video scribing video , tutorial video or a internet video with loads of info, try to simplify.  One of the greatest minds of all time said,

“Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci

Next time you create a script try to keep the important features and facts to a minimum.  It is better to pick one thing than many.  You see there is a bit of a problem with us humans; we tend to fight what is know as ‘decision paralysis.’  Meaning, when we are confronted with a lot of different ideas, choices or solutions we tend to freeze up and not choose any of them.  Decision paralysis stops customers and clients from making choices.  The More info the worse it can be.  So back to the question of how long should your video be?

60 to 90 seconds is the answer. Obviously there are times when a video needs to be longer, but for a standard explained video, product launch video, commerical video your standard length should be between 60 to 90 seconds.  When in doubt settle for less because more seconds can cost you.

So there you have it. That is how long your video should be.