A video instruction is a good way to please your customers and to help spread the word:

• - People are more inclined to buy if they are able to see the product and evaluate its features before buying it;
• - People are more eager to spread the word if they clearly understand what they are promoting;
• - People are more likely to review your product on their sites if they have additional content types (images, videos, graphs, etc) to put in the article.

All in all, videos are easier to digest and more fun to promote. A good video instructing how to use your product or navigate your resource will help you a lot: you’ll see fewer questions from your (potential) buyers and more bloggers embedding it in their pages. It is not really too hard to create a vide, just mind a the following tips:

• Make it simple. Don’t try to describe all features as you will end up with another boring video no one can watch up to the end. Besides, with online video you should also mind the load time (not to lose those people that were going to watch but left before the video loads). If you have a lot to say, better split the video in several tutorials / chapters.
• Make it at least a bit entertaining: just a few visual effect will add some spice even to a video instructing on a purely technical stuff;
• Refrain from directly emphasizing “why” people should buy your product. In other words, don’t make it too “infomercial”. Don’t force it - your product should speak for itself.
• Don’t use widely used pitches or infomercial cliches (they are recognizable by anyone and have negative connotation by now).

Now let’s take a look at few examples:

An instructional video that tells basically nothing:

This video is meant to be an instruction on how to use a new FireFox addon that shows similar website in its sidebar while you browse. I installed the addon but never saw a single site in the site bar, so I went to their website, clicked “More Info” and found this video. Did it give me “more info” or answer my question or properly explain how to use the tool? No, no and no.

Purely instructional video:

I love the tool and the resource but would be more eager to watch the video if it were at least a bit more entertaining. I don’t mean it needs music or cartoons, of course not. But just a few visual effects: color highlighting or subtitles would do.

Purely infomercial (but funny):

Both instructional and infomercial video:

The video may look good: I like the kangaroo character that guides me through the features, visual effects that still keep me up to the point and other entertaining elements that prevent me from being bored. I feel like trying the tool already. What I didn’t like was the infomercial-style voice speech behind the scene. Too many cliches made me feel I am being persuaded to buy something I don’t need: “what if”, “any time anywhere”, “fresh and free”, etc.

Instructional commercial (but not infomercial): Apple iPhone

Note: no matter how many features the product has to offer, the video is limited to only few basic ones which makes the video easy to digest. Thus without even trying to add any entertaining motives, the creators managed to produce a video that sells. And no matter how great your video is you need Search Engine Marketing services to properly promote it and make sure it’s driving conversions.

A note aside , you can also check out the commercial parody for some fun.