What Makes a Good Video? 5 Expert Tips for Creating Video Content

Without a clearly defined and well planned strategy – your video becomes another piece of the content that doesn’t drive results.

There’s a simple logic behind this – either you control your customer’s attention, or your competitor does so. It’s especially true nowadays, where the majority of the buying process is done without a single interaction with the client – we have a situation that if you are not leading your customer, they are being led by others – usually in the direction far away from buying your product.
With this article, we will take a look at some expert tips on how to make great, strategy infused videos.

1. Start with Strategy, Not Just Creativity

Before we start talking about how to make a good video – let’s go even deeper, and talk about the single thing that will make sure your video is amazing, lands well with your audience, while achieving your goals across ToFu, MoFu and BoFu.

We are talking about a Strategy-First approach.

Usually, 90 percent of SaaS, AI, Tech companies use video the wrong way – because they lack the very core understanding on how to marry their business goals with the right video strategy.

To make sure your company “avoids” this dysfunctional marriage, before jumping into video production – define your goals, and where you are at with your product, and what’s missing within your overall marketing funnel:

• Where does your SaaS/AI product stand at this very moment?
• Why isn’t your ICP choosing you 7/10 times?
• Do you have a lot of website visitors, but almost none of those convert?
• Answer this truthfully: is your product too complex for people to understand from the moment they first interact with you?
• Do you have high churn rates?
• Do you have lots of discovery and sales calls, but most of those don’t convert into sales?

This would give you, and more importantly – your chosen video production agency – a better understanding of your goals, and how to achieve them.

For example – if you have a higher than usual churn rate – you might not need an Explainer video, but a series of how-to and tutorial videos for your existing customer base – as people are struggling to integrate your solution into their workflow. 

2. Clarity Over Complexity

Following on the theme of imbuing strategy with your videos – let’s talk about clarity, which will make sure your video is better. Some of the best in class companies – think Stripe, ClickUp, Hubspot, Notion – have a fairly complex selection of their products. Normally, this would be a big bottleneck – as conversions would suffer, and people would bounce from the website, as the product just seems too complicated.

These industry leaders use Explainer videos to bridge that gap – bringing in the much needed clarity to and make their messaging easily digestible. And what makes a good explainer video? A few things spring to mind:

• Strategize around your message until it’s concise and clearly speaks about how you help your ICP.
• Avoid feature dumping, being too technical and in the weeds with your marketing.
• Use visuals in combination with your narrative, to reinforce the message.

If you are not explaining your product effectively, rest assured, your competitors will speak about why they are better than you.

3. Optimize for Every Platform and Video Usage

Again – best video strategy doesn’t bet everything on one, even amazing, hero video. It’s all about having the right content, placed strategically across the customer journey.

It’s like leaving breadcrumbs – to guide them and help your customers successfully arrive at the end of their buyer journey with you.

Short form videos thrive when they are, well, short form. Make sure you are staying within a 15-30 second range, as that’s the sweet spot for shorter content. If you are looking for a budget friendly solution, you don’t need to create a separate video from scratch – your video production team can produce a variety of adapted cutdowns from the Explainer/Demo hero video.

• Homepage Explainer Video. This serves as a net to catch those curious about what your product does. If you’ve done well with strategy and clarity, they should be opting into your sales funnel after watching the video – make sure it’s concise at around 60-90 seconds.
• LinkedIn & YouTube Ads. Here, you have your cold lead generation and creating awareness. Best done with quick, bite sized video – fast to produce and easy to adjust to A/B testing.
  If you are working with a tighter budget, you can also cutdown your initial 60-90 hero video into shorter, 15-30 second clips
• Testimonial & Case Study Videos. These videos help when potential buyers already have a high level of interest in your offering – this will be your MoFu and BoFu content.
• Retargeting Ads. Use short form content and keep yourself top of mind with bite sized, 5-15 second videos.

This is what the leaders in SaaS/AI/Tech are doing – they purposefully use video across the entire funnel, starting from the first outreach with cold awareness, to assisting their sales people with closing deals.

4. Quality Matters, But So Does Performance

Sleek visuals are important of course – but metrics and actual raw numbers always come first. It’s really important how your video will align with your goals.

A/B testing different hooks and formats

Make sure you produce high quality videos that can be customized and tested with different hooks, formats and resizes. A 60-90 second video in 16:9 might not land from the start, but if you have an alternative 20-30 second, 9:16 resize – this might as well be used to a better effect.

Cutdowns and resizes

If you create just one video – and put all of your eggs in one nest – it’s really likely it’s going to flop and not produce the needed improvements.

Clear calls to action (CTAs)

Of course, once your viewers watch till they end – they need to be guided by a clear and simple CTA.

5. Continuous Optimization for Maximum ROI

There’s a lot to be said about nailing your message, delivering it to the correct target audience, and converting them into paid customers. Needless to say – even the greatest company video would be unable to do it from the first try. That’s why creating variations of your video content, A/B testing different hooks, formats, lengths – helps you maximize ROI and lower your acquisition costs.

At Zelios, we have a strategy first approach, and we are all about testing and optimizing your video to achieve your goals.

Because good video + continuous improvement = great results.

• Month 1: Launch & Test – Normally you would run a couple of short, brand awareness/ad style videos to catch wide audiences and start opting them into your sales funnels. These are short, 
• catchy, fast to make and test, normally 15-30 seconds depending on the use case.
• Month 2: Adjust & Optimize – See what works, and double down on the problem/messaging that worked.
• Month 3: Scale What Works – Now, based on the messaging that already works – and you have tested rigorously – you can build a whole sequence of assets, with the throughline of what already works. This is exactly what we did for our client – Allfred, a SaaS project management platform.
  

BONUS – Tips For Video Formats

How would we leave you hanging without some actionable tips? Here are some tips for a variety of formats.

What Makes a Good Explainer Video?

Apart from strategy – how can you make sure you have a great Explainer Video on your hands? 

• Lead with a problem – agitate – solution framework, or similar style to build your narrative. Remember, your Explainer video is best served within 60-90 second video.
• When selling to humans – make sure you are using relatable language, and not some Chat GPT generated slop. People can detect it in seconds, which ruins their perception of your brand messaging.
• When you are working with fast paced, blink and your lead is gone environments – make sure you are bringing your best possible quality to the table, especially for your Top and Middle of the funnel content, like an Explainer Video.

A great example of explainer video is our video for StoreTrack SaaS – clean, dynamic and gets to the point without overstaying its welcome.

What Makes a Good Promotional Video?

Similar to the Explainer video, some stand out features of a Good Promotional Video is how laser focused the messaging is.

• Strong, crystalized messaging, stripping away all of the necessary fluff – helps your promotional videos gather the most amount of cold audience and use that energy to drive them towards the main conversion points in your sales funnel.
• A strong narrative, preferably packaged in a 40-60 second video. Even better if you can do it in 30-40 seconds.
• Of course – once you have earned the right to pitch – make sure you have a clear and direct CTA.

A great example is our promotional video for Supahub – such a dynamic piece, that not only stands out as an example of a masterfully done animation and design, but also becomes an example of an optimized video with lots of views.

What Makes a Good Company Video?

A good company video talks about the very core of the company – not about having pizza parties, being a dynamic environment – or other nonsense. It talks about the people behind the product, company’s contribution and its impact as a whole.

• Aligns with your business goals and customer pains points – as well as being clear on how you solve customer pain points.
• Built in a modular, “building blocks way” – able to be adjusted and tested with different angles.
• Provides the needed level of quality and range of customization, to make sure it can be scaled across a variety of formats, use cases, and so on.
• People first approach – let your employees speak on their experience and work.
• Shows how your product not only provides a clear ROI, but also how it helps with a variety of charitable initiatives.

And here’s a good example we’ve created for Ontra – combining live action footage, with animation of the product and results of their various initiatives and fundraisers.

What Makes a Good Training Video?

A good training video is defined by how easy it is for people to digest, and retain the information. They rely on being a bit longer than your promotional content, but the trade off is that they have to be simple to understand during the viewing.

• Clear audience focus – this format doesn’t need to be flashy and stunning to serve it’s purpose. Moreover, too much motion and visuals might detract from the audience’s focus. Also make sure you are aware of your audience – and their knowledge level for the topic.
• Make the format engaging and digestible, and structure it in a structured, modular way for easy consumption, and easy for future updates.
• It should be practical and interactive, if possible – if you have a SaaS tool, show how the workflow looks from an animated screencast approach. Our video for LangEase below, if a great example of that approach.
• Of course, while you don’t need to go all out with visuals and animations – having a high production quality always helps. After all, if you are not making it better than your run of the mill PDF – then the video is not performing its main purpose.

What Makes a Good YouTube Video?

• Overall, it follows the same logic as most videos does – having a strong hook as a starting point, always promotes higher viewership. One thing you will also notice is that the title is also optimized to promote the video, and hook the viewer even before they start watching the video. We are using our example for Supahub below.
• It should be no surprise that you have to set up your videos to succeed with the algorithm. For this, sometimes you can even sacrifice your content, 
• An amazing thumbnail – all of this helps with meta data for increased discoverability.

Great example of all of these points is our video for Supahub – the most watched video on our YouTube channel.

What Makes a Good Video Testimonial?

People. Authentic stories of how your solution genuinely helped the customer solve their problem. This is true lightning in a bottle.

• Have a genuine chat with your customer, letting them take the center stage. Then, with great editing
• Focusing on specific application of your product, and quantified result of how it helped the customer featured in the testimonial
• High quality production and editing is preferred, but is not a prerequisite.
  

What Makes a Good Short-Form Video?

Short form video tests your marketing message and pushes it to its limits.

• Short form videos thrive when they are, well, short form. Make sure you are staying within a 15-30 second range, as that’s the sweet spot for shorter content. If you are looking for a budget friendly solution, you don’t need to create a separate video from scratch – your video production team can produce a variety of adapted cutdowns from the Explainer/Demo hero video.
• Of course, make sure that they are fit for the occasion, and are natively resized in 1:1, 4:5, 9:16 and the main 16:9 dimensions to 
• Short form content tests your marketing messaging and brings it to the limit – by needing you to be as concise and to the point as possible – and best in class short videos have a clear and immediate value from the very first seconds.

The Final Takeaway: More Than Just a Video

To sum up – a good video is not only a valuable piece among your marketing kit, but also the one that brings the right message, at the right time, and at the right moment in the buyer’s journey.

With Zelios, you will be able to make great videos, ranging from explainer to testimonial videos, retargeting ads that will play a crucial role in converting your prospects into customers.