Put Video to Work for You

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I was one of the people invited to judge new products at the Backer’s Total Pet Expo this past September. It was fun to see all the new items and carefully consider which ones were the best.

With a few of them, I and some of the other judges were a bit confused about what the product actually could do.

Only after seeing some demonstrations did we understand exactly what some of the products were capable of. If there had been demo video to go with the products before the judging, some of us may have picked different products as winners.

When a product is static and just sitting there on a shelf, it’s easy to not fully grasp what you are looking at—especially if the packaging isn’t as informative as it should be.

Manufacturers, you should have some videos on your website or Facebook page that show what your products can do. You also should have these videos in your booths at any trade shows you attend. Having a tablet that has a video loop demonstrating your latest greatest whatever-it-is will go a long way toward letting people know what it does. If your product is going into a new product showcase or something similar, having a tablet running the demo video mounted next to it will draw attention and let judges and buyers know what they’re looking at.

If you are a pet retailer, think about ways you can use videos in your displays to show the products you carry in action or to highlight anything special your store does or offers.

You can also make use of manufacturers’ product videos in a number of ways. You can list the website that contains the video in your signage so customers can look it up on their phones (or your employees can do this for the customer). You can have these saved in a central tablet for customers to browse through at a counter or kiosk.

Video is cheap and easy to shoot these days. Taking advantage of that fact can help you put information—and purchases—into your customers’ hands.

-Craig Rexford