Top 8 Mistakes Made in Video Marketing Campaigns
Marketers are always looking for new ways to get in front of their customers. Video helps marketers improve their engagement with target audiences online while also increasing brand awareness and leads. Video highly contributes to ROI and improves the results of marketing and sales strategies across the board, with 70% of marketing experts reporting video converts leads better than any other content.
Digital marketers are constantly researching web and tech trends to keep up with the ever-changing online landscape. For example, many types of businesses are creating YouTube channels to promote their product or service, as well as creating a presence on other social media platforms. In the mobile era, there are many consumer facing platforms where a visually stimulating, multi-format video marketing campaign can be executed.
However, most mistakes in creating a video marketing campaign are made before the video is even produced. By then it’s too late, and the company must try to leverage the video’s potential after production. To help you start off in the right direction with your next video, here are the top 8 mistakes made in video marketing and how you can avoid them.
1. Not preparing a marketing strategy for your video
Make sure there’s a strategy behind your video before producing it. Approach it the way you would any other marketing campaign and ask yourself these questions:
- What is the overall goal of your video?
- Where will it reach the viewer?
Although the digital space is a great platform for advertising, simply posting video content without a strategy in place will not help you reach your marketing goals. When a video is produced well, it can be integrated with email campaigns, content marketing, social media, and other inbound marketing strategies.
2. Not focusing on SEO
Most of the time, one of the overall goals of producing video content is to get as many views from your target audience as possible. There are best practices around SEO meant to drive traffic to where your video is posted, whether that’s on a landing page or your website. Without anyone viewing your message, there’s no point in making a video in the first place. Make sure you use the most effective SEO techniques to increase the visibility of your video.
3. Not keeping your video short
There research to back up the fact that the longer your video is, the less likely your audience will finish watching it. Audience retention is very important because you want your viewer to hear your entire message. Depending on the strategy and style of video, length may vary accordingly. Just remember that when a video is shorter, the audience retention rate is higher.
4. Not addressing your target audience
Marketing videos should be created to speak directly to the target audience. Each business has an idea of what their market is and there they can find potential customers. Videos are a great way to attract and engage both new and current customers, and therefore, should be conceptualized with the customer in mind.
5. Not providing a CTA in your video
When you come across your next video ad, watch to see if it has a call to action. One of the most common mistakes is failing to tell your viewer where to go next. Once you get your audience to watch your entire video message, you must provide the viewer with a link to your website or social media where they can find more of your content. Failing to provide contact information could cause you to lose a solid lead. Keep the viewer engaged and make sure you’re leading them further down the conversion funnel. If you have a specific business goal, try to incorporate that in your CTA.
6. Not providing a singular message
Each video should communicate only one message. You want your viewers to have a definite takeaway if they spend time consuming your video content. Trying to include too many messages in one video can cause it to be lengthy and confusing. You want to make content in bite-size pieces that are easily digestible. When your video does not have a single focus, viewers are less likely to follow your desired call to action.
7. Not being creative enough
A video marketing campaign is an opportunity to have fun! There are many different styles of video that can be integrated in new or existing marketing campaigns. Some common video styles include: comedic commercial, social media shorts, product demos, and customer testimonials. These videos can be live action or animated. Choose a video style that will make a lasting impression on your viewer.
8. Choosing the wrong video team
When it comes to video, you get what you pay for, and the quality of your video reflects on the quality of your business. This doesn’t mean that overspending on a video will give you a competitive edge but rather, not spending enough on a video could give you negative effects. Today, it seems like anyone can make a quick and simple video… sometimes even with an iPhone! However, when considering a video campaign, make sure the quality of your video matches the quality of your brand.
Working with a professional video production company can definitely give you an advantage as opposed to using a freelancer. Professional video crews are quicker, more efficient and guarantee a high-quality production value. Some video production companies will even be able to assist with your overall content strategy with suggestions about how long your video should be, how to capture the audience, which messages work best, where the call to action needs to be, and much more.
As you can see, these are common mistakes that are made by the marketing team before video production has started. Identify your business goals, develop a content strategy, create an engaging video and then finally get it in front of your viewer.
Have any more tips for us? Let us know in the comments section
