Did you know that review videos are the second most popular type of videos on Youtube? If you’re not creating review videos for your brand, chances are you’re leaving money on the table. 

By using review videos, you can establish yourself as an industry expert and get people excited about what you have to offer. These types of videos can help create brand awareness and drive traffic back to your site. 

Our four favorite types of review videos for marketing include:

• Product review videos
• Testimonial videos
• Reactions videos
• How-to videos

In this post, we’ll have a look at each of these categories. But first, let’s define what a review video is – and why it’s so powerful.

What Is a Review Video?

A review video is precisely what it sounds like — an assessment of the performance or quality of a product or service. Sometimes, YouTubers will combine this type of video with “unboxing” a product or capture their natural reactions when using something for the first time. Trying to find and watch honest, authentic, and transparent reviews is a part of most people’s online buying journey these days and a popular way to research and compare your options.

Trust and Transparency Are Important Elements in Review Videos

When creating review videos, it’s important to remember why viewers watch them in the first place. They do not watch them to get your sales pitch but to understand how their peers perceive your product or service in reality. So even if you’re initiating, encouraging, or taking part in producing the review videos, you need to make sure they provide a balanced and honest view. Not doing so will immediately backfire and bring a lot more badwill than if a flaw had been pointed out candidly. Discussing both positives and negatives is how you build trust – the viewer needs to believe that you’re aiming to help them make the right decision for them and their needs. 

4 Great Types of Review Videos 

Product Review Videos 

This type of review video is a real classic, and most people consume these regularly. When planning a purchase, many people will simply search for “product+review,” and since Youtube is the world’s second-largest search engine after Google, this is where they’ll often end up. Many successful YouTubers have built their entire careers on creating product reviews within their area of expertise. Teaming up with one of them for content production can have a massive marketing impact. This video review of the new Sony A7 IV camera is a perfect example that shares a review and excellent storytelling around the product “in action,” making you even more eager to go ahead and click that buy button. 

Testimonial Videos

A testimonial video is a slightly different take on the review category but equally powerful. A testimonial is essentially an endorsement from one person about a brand, product, or service. The keyword here is “person.” In marketing, it’s always best to humanize your message by getting real people to tell it for you. Having a customer share their positive experience with your brand builds a lot more trust than if you were to share the same message.

This video that we created for the non-profit organization Wheeling Island Greyhound Adoption Center is a good example. Instead of the non-profit themselves telling you how great pets greyhounds make, you get to hear it from someone who’s actually adopted one. We spent a weekend with two wonderful dog lovers in the Hamptons as they shared with us their adoption story and showed us their beautiful greyhound, Casey Bones Jones.

This resulted in a 30-second TV spot and a  micro doc in docu-style. We even snagged a Gold Telly award for this testimonial video in the NonProfit Campaign – Regional TV category. 

Reaction Videos

A reaction video is typically a short or long-form video that consists of people reacting to specific subjects. The videos can be very versatile in terms of topics. Sometimes, they can even consist of people just talking about a particular topic while others are more about showing their actual reactions to things in real-time. Reaction videos can be made about almost anything, from music and sports to products and services. Letting a popular YouTuber react to your product can be a great way to get traction for a product launch. Or you can create your own reaction videos and respond to anything from competitors to “industry myths.”

This video from Corridor Crew, where VFX artists react to pop culture and movies, is a typical example of this genre.

How-To Videos

As any good marketer knows, a great way to build brand affinity is to be genuinely helpful. By creating useful how-to videos on topics that interest your audience, you will build a loyal audience and remain top of mind with them even when they’re not in shopping mode. This video, for example, that we made for GoDaddy is a tutorial on how to use the Gutenberg editor when building WordPress websites. This type of video helps their target audience with something they need and helps position GoDaddy as a go-to resource for all things web and website-building. 

Covalent Is An Award-Winning Video Production Agency

Video marketing is a great way to promote your brand or business. There are many different video formats that you can use to grow the reach and engagement with your audience. We discussed the four categories here: product review videos, testimonial videos, reaction videos, and how-to videos. 

If you need help starting now or want to discuss your video marketing needs in general, get in touch! Covalent is a full-service video production agency working with both B2C and B2B brands. We can help you through every step of the video production process – from ideation and strategy to the finished product.