Best Practices For Video Length and Audience Retention
Nobody, and I mean nobody can tell you exactly “how long your video should be”.
At least not without knowing a few more details. The simplest answer (and most frustrating one) is “as long as it needs to be”. Which isn’t a cop out – it’s just the best answer without any additional elaboration.
Since your ideals will vary on platforms, product complexity, value propositions and purpose within the sales funnel. We’ll get into this momentarily.
For now, lets set the stage by saying length isn’t your main concern unless you’re a pure materialist or worried about budget.
Some of the more important metrics are: retention and engagement. Who’s watching it? For how long? And what else are they doing?
These “soft indicators” can reveal a lot of mystery.
The basic blahblah: your demographics matter
It both feels redundant and extremely necessary to start with demographics section. Yes everyone knows that your audience is the difference maker, so…
Before making the video, you should know a) who it’s for, b) what it’s for, and c) what it aims to do (inform, educate, sell). Once you have that set, the basic best practices are:
- Following optimal video length guidelines
- Keeping it to the point and dynamic
- Incorporating neuroscience principles to aid retention
This is the theory which we must turn into practice. Yet, this isn’t an article on how to write an explainer video script so lets not dwell on it too long.
Lets talk about how different types of videos differ in length and complexity.
How Long Should Videos Be?
A quick look at the statistics show that there is a sweet spot when it comes to video length and retention.
Did you know that 56% of videos are under 2 minutes in length? For business videos, a small percentage of 4% are over ten minutes. What you’ll most likely find is that the average length of business videos are under ten minutes.
Regarding retention, if the video is under a minute, 62% of viewers watch the whole video, but 59.9% said if it were too long, they’d stop watching.
On social media, Facebook states that 15 seconds works best for retention, while Instagram states that the most commented on videos are around 26 seconds.
Do shorter videos get more views? It seems that in this day and age, the shorter, the better, depending on the platform or its place in the funnel.
That being said, these are almost anecdotal statistics. Because your individual circumstances could be so different from these suggestions. To the point that they are borderline contradictory to what you really need.
What Is The Optimal Video Length?
The optimal video length is as long as necessary. Knowing what the video is for should tell you how long it should be, as it always depends on where you plan to embed it or on which platform you’ll share it.
To illustrate this point lets consider two examples
In the first you’re giving away a free Iphone latest edition. In exchange you’d like someone's email. This won’t be hard - 15-20 seconds will be enough.
Now for our second example: you’re a bank selling a full on mortgage. To do this effectively will take a lot more time.
There’s a few reasons for that
- Your offer is way more complex and will require more education
- The stakes are higher which naturally creates more objections
- The complexity of the subject matter influences all of this
- Your call to action is not so simple as enter your email
And now consider this… in example #1 you may have a higher view rate and retention because who doesn’t want to win a free iphone?
Yet in example #2 you might be satisfied with only 2% of people completing the video, and less than 1% acting out on your offer. In fact, these people could even be viewed as extremely qualified if they watch a 75 minute presentation.
This can help you understand the reality of “how long should my video be”.
How Long Is Too Long For A Commercial?
Typical commercials range from 15 seconds to 1 minute. Anything longer than that needs a strong message to sustain interest for a longer period.
This usually has to do with platform restrictions or advertising costs. Since commercials are often shown during prime time on TV. There’s a limit to length imposed by your platform.
Info product commercials do great during late night programs. And those are the anti-thesis of short. They are repetitive, and non stop bombardment of the same ideas over and over.
But advertisers have proven: it works. The budget pays for the length and the length persuades people to buy creating a profitable business model.
What Is The Best Length For A Business Video?
Business videos come in all shapes and sizes. What always matters is the purpose and the message being conveyed. If the purpose is sales, they can be from 30 seconds up to 2 minutes. If the video is an explanatory video, it can be as long as twenty minutes.
Again you need to know where you are in the sales process more than a general rule about length. The general just may not be as useful as you’d like here.
How Long Should Different Kinds Of Videos Be?
Lets talk about some of the commonly used videos and how long they are suggested to be. This is mainly based on the purpose of each time of video.
Sales Video
A Sales video can be very short depending on its stage in its funnel.
The first outreach stage is usually under 30 seconds.
Once interest has been established, the sales video would incorporate questions and answers, or zone in on one aspect of the business or product, which is why it needs more screen time. This would occur in a later stage of the sales or marketing funnel.
Often these objection specific videos are used once a sales team has an idea of what its purpose is. So when you get the same objection 20x within a day, that’s a good time to consider making a video around it.
Tutorial Video
A tutorial (or How-To video) is normally between 2 and 10 minutes. It is expected to be longer because of its purpose. Tutorial videos educate or inform. They show a process from beginning to end, so its length depends on the content.
The trick with these is to edit out all your unnecessary content. This is where most people go wrong – their videos are a drag and it’s hard to see what the tutorial is about.
Your goal is to get it across in the least amount of time possible. With video every second counts and tutorial videos too often are an afterthought and extremely boring as a result.
Explainer Video
An explainer video is 60 to 90 seconds long most of the time. It needs that minute or more to explain what your product, service or brand is about. It’s a high-level explanation without the details, so pre-sales process usually.
You’re giving the broad strokes so prospects can decide whether or not they should pay more attention, or go looking for other solutions. This is why the most common formats are problem-solution and aspirational videos here. As they get the point across quickest.
Culture Video
A culture video can be 2 to 4 minutes in length. It focuses on your company’s culture, and incorporates any angle that shows off your company in an in-depth manner.
There are options about how to structure the script or story in a video like this, but the uniting factor is that your team or employees will play the biggest role. Usually used for investor relations or for hiring since it can position the internal culture in a positive light.
Demo Video
What is the ideal saas product demo length? Usually 2 to 5 minutes. The demo video is underrated as a sales tool and often doesn’t get the love it deserves.
I believe the reason is that it usually gets left to sales teams. So they do with what they have which is often using Loom and their headset microphone. It creates a video in quality which is usually sub par but functionally amazing.
There’s nothing more effective than showing your actual UI/UX to get the customer interested. And too often this is the exact things customers want to see - and quite literally the last thing they will be allowed to see.
For this reason Demo Videos are A+ tier.
Webinar
Webinars can be anything from 15 minutes to one hour. It is expected to be longer in order to give depth to the topic. It will usually have different parts to it, including speakers, interviews, even tutorials, and it usually ends with a Q&A session.
There’s a whole approach to webinars and funnels which needs to be followed for maximum results. It’s not as simple as making a presentation and expecting it to work. This is actually one of the more complex uses of video because of the length.
It implies you have a very profound understanding of your customer, market and goals.
Promo Video
Promotional videos are between 30 and 60 seconds. This is what most people think about when we say video. Something cool, flashy and “fun” to watch.
This includes some ads you see on TV from big brands where people say “wow that was a great advertisement”. These are usually a mix of story, concept and nice visual effects. Most video budgets within organizations goes towards this.
Partially because they are effective, and partially because nothing else is measured with as much effort as these.
Thought Leadership
The ideal length of a thought leadership video depends on where it’s going online. If it’s a talk aiming for Ted Talks or YouTube, they can be around 15 minutes long. If it’s for a social media site, under 2 minutes is the ideal length.
Interview Video
Your interviewee may be comfortable to talk for up to 60 minutes, but interview videos are normally about 10 minutes long. Again, it’s rare someone is naturally gifted at speaking in front of a camera where uncut footage can be used.
So in most cases you will record considerably more than you need. And then cut it down to the amount you can use. Which can be anywhere from a 1 to 1 to 100 ratio of raw footage to actually usable.
FAQ Video
Try to keep your FAQ video to under 10 minutes. This amount of time should give you 5 or 6 questions to answer, at roughly 2 minutes per question.
To keep these from being too run on, you can always split it up using software to create chapters. This allows viewers to browse through the appropriate questions without needing them all. These can be closely related to tutorial style videos as well.
Case Study Video
Typical case study videos are about 5 minutes long. If you choose smaller studies and plan to have them in bite-sized chunks, they could be around 60 to 90 seconds each.
The important thing is to include something special or relevant. The best case study videos are those which actually contain something of value and get it across. So before starting the video, ask yourself: what have we done remarkably?
That will be a great place to start.
Are There Ideal Lengths For Different Social Media?
Social media platforms have differing ideal lengths. It depends on what angle the social media company has for users. For instance, YouTube, a dedicated video platform, has the availability for both short form and long form content, while TikTok users expect much shorter videos.
The thing is that each platform serves a different type of audience.
And as such requires unique content for their tastes. It can be a variety of age groups, gender or intent of usage. However it should be stated that more and more everything is blending towards one generic use.
For Facebook
You can have videos for up to 4 hours on Facebook, but retention would not rank high if you meet that. The most popular videos are usually only up to 90 seconds long. Facebook Stories, on the other hand, are limited to 20 seconds.
For Instagram
Instagram gives you 60 seconds for videos, but 30 seconds is ideal. For ads and Instagram Stories, 15 seconds is the right length.
Instagram Live Videos can go until 60 minutes, and once you reach that limit, you’ll have to start recording another live video.
For Twitter
Twitter allows videos to be up to 2 minutes and 20 seconds long, but for tweets and video ads, the ideal length is between 20 and 45 seconds.
For LinkedIn
As Linkedin is a site for professionals, longer videos are common. Up to 10 minutes is what LinkedIn gives you, but most videos are from 30 seconds to 5 minutes in length.
Video ads range from 15 seconds to 30 seconds.
For Snapchat
The shortest video length we find is for snapchat, at up to 10 seconds per video. It’s best to make many, or leave links for more information once you’ve hit that 10 second mark.
For Pinterest
You have up to 30 minutes on Pinterest if you need to have demo videos on the platform, but in keeping with other social media sites, 15 to 30 seconds is the ideal length.
For TikTok
As more businesses use TikTok for brand awareness and campaigns, you get up to 10 minutes on TikTok. That said, unless it’s for storytelling, most TikTok videos are only minutes long.
For YouTube
As YouTube is the most established video platform, you can have videos play for up to 12 hours. It’s not ideal to have videos of that length though, and most businesses go for around 2 minutes a video.
What Should You Consider Other Than Length?
Though length is important, audience retention is also key for the video to be successful.
In the chart below, you can see that engagement drops the longer the video is. This does not mean that all videos need to be shorter. The focus, instead, should be on how to keep your viewers’ attention.
Length isn’t everything, so, how do you improve audience retention?
There are ways to ensure your video gets watched from the beginning to the end. Why does retention matter? You can invest in a brilliant video for your needs, but if it does not hook the viewer, who will then watch to the end, the video could get ranked lower on the platform it’s on.
Retention doesn’t just matter for statistics’ sake, or for rank, but also for your trajectory. Knowing that your video has ticked the right boxes means you have delivered to your viewers, and your methods are working.
Video analytics can help you see what you’ve done well and what you need to work on.
How Can You Improve Retention?
It’s possible to improve your audience retention by:
- Making good videos - dynamic with visuals
- Using the book method - delivering context immediately
- Using a hook in the opening 5 to 15 seconds to engage the viewer
- Applying video analytics to see at what point the audience drops off
- Ensuring your videos are the right length for the platform or the digital channel
Typically, the length and the quality go together to create an atmosphere that encourages viewing.
Though many studies are being published, it is important to remember that these studies are looking for general patterns. Videos for B2B purposes are evolving according to our technology and methodologies.
Despite attention spans seeming lower than ever, this is not to say that all videos need to be as short as possible to be successful. Ultimately, the video must meet its aim and deliver results whether it aims to inform, educate, or drive sales.
Some of our favorite books to help you create videos with better retention:
- Story by Robert McKee, is a great approach to using emotion in video
- Made to Stick, helps breakdown common psychological principles
- Influence, is the best academically referenced marketing book out there
Can Using Neuroscience Principles Improve Results?
What studies do show is that neuroscientific research into the effects of video on the brain can help us to make better videos that retain our audiences.
Take the Dual-Coding theory, for instance. We know that learning by sound and sight is more successful than just seeing or hearing. We know that we need to be in positive environments and that emotional engagement helps with the retention of knowledge.
You should aim to reduce cognitive load in your videos, so just because you can have a video for up to 12 hours on YouTube doesn’t mean you should. By and large, having simplified videos is better for long-term retention.
The Future Of Video Length and Audience Retention
The future of audience retention is better analytics. And with better analytics we’ll draw the correct insights - those which lead to results.
Today a lot of top marketers suggest testing out creative as the ultimate optimization. Why is that? Because a different approach can be so much more effective than simply optimizing a part of the video.
It also will take much more work to get the critical mindset necessary to this.
And this critical mindset needs to be fed the right data, both in the form of analytics and soft-questions which can’t always be answered (but must be considered).
It’s things such as
-Click statistics: like CTR, cost per result etc
-Scroll time
-Whether your audience watches multiple videos at once
-How many videos they watch at once
-Whether or not text/description is read
-Comments, shares, interactions
Thus, the success of a video depends on the audience, platform and content, and the traffic source. And without looking into the details of each, carefully measuring, you can only take this article as generalities.
In the not so far future retention will become more and more important. And all algorithms are optimizing around it – why wouldn’t they?
As platforms compete against each other the relative quality of the content they show to viewers becomes more important.
So get a headstart on it. Take your engagement, retention as seriously as “how long your video should be” as it can lead you to more specific answers.
