You spent six months building something genuinely good. Then you spent $8,000 on a launch video that looks exactly like the last twelve launch videos your audience scrolled past.
The screen recording with the floating cursor. The stock footage of someone typing on a MacBook. The synth music that sounds like it was generated by a mood board. You know the one.
The template problem
Most SaaS launch videos fail for the same reason most SaaS landing pages fail — they follow a template instead of telling a story.
Here's the template:
- Open with a pain point ("Tired of managing spreadsheets?")
- Introduce the product ("Meet ProductName")
- Show three features with screen recordings
- End with a CTA ("Start your free trial today")
This worked in 2019. It doesn't work now. Your audience has seen this exact structure hundreds of times. Their brain pattern-matches it as "ad" within the first two seconds and they scroll.
What actually works
The videos that perform — the ones that get watched, shared, and actually drive signups — break the format.
They lead with a moment, not a pain point. Instead of telling people they have a problem (they already know), show them something unexpected. A visual metaphor. A scene that makes them stop scrolling because they don't immediately know what they're looking at.
They show the product in context, not in isolation. Nobody cares about your dashboard in a vacuum. They care about how it fits into their day. Show the moment of relief, not the feature grid.
They have a point of view. The best launch videos take a stance. They're opinionated about how work should be done. They don't try to appeal to everyone — they magnetize the right people.
The two-second test
Here's a brutal test: show someone the first two seconds of your video with no sound. Can they tell it apart from your competitor's video?
If the answer is no, your video has a positioning problem dressed up as a production problem. No amount of better motion graphics will fix it.
What to do instead
Before you brief your next video, answer these three questions:
- What does your audience already believe that you need to challenge or confirm?
- What visual world does your product live in that no competitor has claimed?
- What would make someone send this to a friend even if they don't need your product?
If you can't answer all three, you're not ready to make a video. You're ready to make a strategy.
The video is the last step, not the first.
