Video exploded over the last decade. From TikTok dances to B2B eLearning modules, video is being produced, used, and talked about on a mind-boggling scale. And it’s going to get bigger.
TikTok hit 1 billion monthly active users in September 2021. The amount of online video people watch has doubled since 2018. In 2022, that’s an average 19 hours of online video watched per week.
Video is an integral part of peoples’ lives now, and the demand for it is increasing. Not only is video a useful tool, users expect it. And that expectation doesn’t only apply to the consumer side of things. Businesses use video for marketing, customer success, sales enablement, product updates, and more.
According to a recent HubSpot survey, 94% of marketers said videos helped increase users' understanding of their product. 41% reported that video improved customer engagement and retention.
Video is growing, and it’s got the potential to add to your bottom line.
COVID thrust countless businesses into working online, forced us all to get comfortable with video collaboration tools like Zoom.
This boom in video communication coincided with a drop in expectations– of the “business casual” dress code kind and the B2B corporate video kind. Users and corporate content creators alike found they cared less about “Hollywood” level production value, favoring instead information value. Accuracy and consistency matter more than perfection.
This means users do not expect expensive production value on SaaS software videos, but they do expect videos throughout their entire journey– from pre- to post-sale. Luckily this lower production value frees up companies to focus on quality of information rather than quality of stage lighting.
Video is awesome and you want in. Great! There’s just one little problem.
If you’re a SaaS company, you can’t hop onto TikTok, make a slew of software explainer videos, and be done. Technically, you could if you wanted to, but things start to get complex when your software changes frequently.
A healthy, up-to-date content library is both a baseline expectation and critical to customer success. Every time you launch a product or push an update, documentation, help articles, and videos must follow.
Documentation is easy to update, but what about videos? Who has the time, the know-how, and the software to go in and re-shoot, re-edit, and re-publish videos every time something in the software gets tweaked?
When you’re a SaaS company continuously delivering updates, the idea of a healthy video content library feels impossible.
High demand for video plus continuous product updates means that SaaS companies need a way to create software videos easily, quickly, and sustainably on a large scale.
Technical writers already have solid processes for quickly updating documentation. These processes can apply to video production–if you have the right tool. Like Videate.
Videate makes it easy to turn documentation, help articles, training guides and more into software videos. Without needing any special coding or syntax.
If you’re ready to create software videos at scale, request a demo here!