How Long Should a Promotional Video Be?

The honest answer is: as long as it holds attention and not one second longer. That's unhelpful on its own, so here are the working numbers by placement.

Website homepage: 60–90 seconds

Long enough to establish who you are, what it feels like to work with you, and one reason to choose you. Short enough that a visitor with intent will actually finish it. If it plays automatically as a background, keep it silent, under twenty seconds and looping — that's atmosphere, not a film.

Social feed: 15–30 seconds

Vertical, captioned, and interesting inside the first two seconds. Most viewers watch without sound, so anything that depends on hearing a voice needs to be on screen as text.

Paid advertising: 6–15 seconds

One idea, one action. Ad platforms reward completion, so a fifteen-second film watched to the end usually outperforms a thirty-second film abandoned halfway.

Testimonials: 30–60 seconds each

A customer explaining one specific problem you solved is worth more than five customers saying you were great. Keep each one to a single story.

Longer formats, and when they're justified

Two to four minutes works for recruitment, complex services where the process itself is the sell, and anything a prospect watches after they've already contacted you. The audience there has committed. Cold audiences have not.

Why the five-minute overview fails

It's usually made to satisfy everyone internally: every department, every service, the building, the history. The result has no argument. One film that makes one point beats a comprehensive film nobody finishes — and if you genuinely need to cover several services, make several short films from the same production day.