Video content has become very popular in the online marketing industry. It has proved to be the type of content that attracts and engages a wide and diverse audience, making it easier to penetrate an oversaturated market. People love watching videos instead of reading pages of text about your products and services. When done well, video marketing becomes a powerful tool, but if you produce a bad video and use it as the pillar of your marketing strategy it can easily do you more harm than good.
A video is not much different than any other type of content you are using during your marketing campaign. It has to reflect your brand and do well for your business objectives. Still, there are many companies that produce and publish video content of poor quality. This is why we have compiled this list of the most common video marketing mistakes your company should avoid.
Making it a Hard-Sell
You should be aware that video marketing is not a brand new thing. TV shows are flooded with boring commercials nobody even bothers to pay attention to anymore. Don’t get the impression that an internet user is much different.
Your marketing video should focus more on entertaining the viewer. Make sure to provide the value that anyone can appreciate. If you end up publishing annoying video material, there is a good chance that it will be popular, but in a negative way.
Forgetting to Promote it
There is a very small chance to create video content that goes viral on its own and there is no chance at all to create viral video marketing content without a good strategy and plenty of work. Keep this in mind when you decide to upload your video only on YouTube and leave it there to reach “success”. What we are trying to say is: promote it via all the channels that cross your mind – your social media profiles, YouTube channel, official website etc.
If you want to have a serious approach, you need to optimize a landing page where your video can be seen, use keywords in the URL, always add a meta description, make sure to send a newsletter to subscribers, write a description for your videos and make sure to have social buttons on your website so that visitors can easily share your video content.
Forgetting to Brand it
This is a common mistake when you are a beginner in video marketing. You successfully create a good video and there are many people who watched it, but if you ask them about it, they can’t remember the name of the company that created the video in the first place. Why? Because it was not mentioned even once.
Yes, the video should be about the product or service you are trying to sell, but you should never miss the opportunity to promote your business and communicate its benefits. Make sure to have your company’s logo or website URL displayed during the first second of every video you create.
Not Knowing the Target Audience
Video content is not a universal tool that appeals to all demographics. If you try to make one multipurpose video, there is a great chance that it won’t succeed in attracting anyone.
This is why you should make a video that is focused on reaching a specific audience and to be able to effectively communicate the desired message. You cannot do this before you do target audience research. Also keep in mind that there are many variables. For instance, what’s appealing to teenagers in the USA doesn’t necessarily have to be appealing to ones in Asia.
Recording or Uploading a Poor Quality Video
This goes both for the content in your video and the video quality on the screen. Make sure that all of your videos are recorded in high-resolution, because bad video quality will make a user form a bad impression about your brand. Also, there is a great chance that no one will have the patience to watch it trough.
If you don’t know how or don’t have the means to record a high-quality video, you should hire a professional to do this for your company. There are many badly produced videos out there, so if you can provide a good one you will surely stand out from the crowd.
As you can see, none of the abovementioned things are too hard to achieve. But still, creating good video content will not be that easy, especially if you are new to the field. Feel free to read many guides about how to make engaging marketing videos. There are plenty to be found online. In case you don’t want to leave anything to chance, consider hiring a professional marketing agency to design a strategic marketing plan for your company.
The author is highly qualified and writes blog posts weekly.
