No tricks. Nothing that takes forever. Cost effective. Simple. You can do it today. 

Brands often want this route to win more business, get people talking about them and/or to get people to tell other people about them. Here’s a simple one: create detailed, smart and clear videos for the instructions of your products and services. I don’t care if you sell treadmills, B2B enterprise software, Pokemon Cards, carry-on luggage, pain medication or industrial pumps. Your brand knows how consumers can better use your products/services. Your brand knows how to onboard them in the easiest way possible. Kill the instruction manuals, kill the FAQs, kill the random reviews by others, and unboxing videos that strangers are making (don’t get me wrong, some are great… but a lot of them are way off). Make great videos for your consumers. Post them on your website, post them to YouTube, and everywhere else that you can. Be the number one video search result when someone tries to figure out how to make your stuff work. Make them very mobile-friendly too.

Seems obvious, right?

This article could have easily been written a decade ago (in fact, if I should shuffle through my archive, because I probably wrote the exact same thing back then!). It was true then… it is truer today. Still, in a day and age when brands are talking and hyping about marketing technology, artificial intelligence and more, it’s astonishing to discover just how bad most of these brand-created videos are. It’s even more astonishing once you realize how many brands don’t even make videos like this. Don’t cheap out. Get someone who knows about the products in your business to speak it through. Shoot these demos from multiple angles. Let consumers know the stages where people often get stuck. Repeat complex steps. Be as excited about your stuff (and showing it off) as consumers are about getting started with it. This is valuable content marketing that doubles as true utilitarianism marketing, 

This simple act has impact across the entire business. 

It’s not just to make your customers happy once they have bought from you. When done well, fewer people will complain. Fewer people will call customer service. Fewer people will call your sales reps. Fewer people will spread their frustrating across social media. Here’s what will happen: More people will talk about how well the brand services their consumers. More media will pay attention. More media assets will be in play for consumers to share. More stuff will get sold (because you can also use these videos to sell your wares). The list goes on… and on… and on… and on.

Focus. Focus now. 

Too many brands are focused on the next bright and shiny object. Blockchain! A.I.! Voice! Whatever! And yet, it’s easy to marvel about how the seemingly basics get put off, ignored and never optimized. Want to make a better place in the world for you brand? Video demonstrations for everything! Everything! If you get the same question more than twice, make a video answering that question. Better yet, don’t just answer it. In fact, never just answer it… demonstrate it. Use video to demonstrate how to unpack it, open it, use it, troubleshoot it, fix it… you get the point. Being focused solely on what’s next is not going to help your customers today.  

Be smart about the future, but be brilliant in the present.