The trend on video marketing is clear – almost every business and its head of marketing wants to create more videos. And, we know why – video content is more engaging, and it works! The biggest challenge for executives new to video marketing is figuring out where to start? There are so many questions – What skills to hire? Which parts do you outsource? Who would write the script? What style of video to create? And, the list goes on..
Most marketers just want to get into the action and churn out videos without understanding, or investing in the video creation process. But, I don’t blame them. Marketing executives rarely have any video production experience, and almost always, video is not their highest priority. The fact is that most people new to video marketing are scared of video creation process, and more often than not make certain mistakes that lead to failure of their video endeavor. This further discourages them from leveraging videos in their marketing plan.
Here are seven typical mistakes marketers make who are new to video production:
Most newbies skip or rush through the planning phase, and invest little time on some of the most important aspects of video creation process – setting goals, conceptualization, and scripting. A lot of time and energy is spent on finding the actors, voice-over artists, presenters, and editing talent, when they are yet to figure out who would write the script. They are eager to jump into video shoot and editing, only to realize later that the output is not at all what they expected. The result is similar when no thought is given to establish a creative approach. Without good concept and creativity, the video fails to engage the audience.
1. Rushing through the planning phase:
I am amazed how many executives think they can easily create a ‘viral’ video. What they don’t understand is this simple fact – things are not ‘made’ viral; they ‘go’ viral. If there was a formula for viral videos, big brands would not spend millions on TV ads when they can reach a far more engaged audience in fraction of the cost. Having said that, there are steps you can take to increase the effectiveness and shareability of video content, which would naturally result in increased viewership. A big factor in this is to hit the right chord with your audience, which leads us to the next mistake.
2. Trying to make a viral video:
Many marketers think they can simply outsource and expect the external team to deliver a perfect video without investing much of their own time. As with any type of content, this is bound to fail. Someone who has little knowledge about your business would (at best) be able to create a video that only delivers the message superficially – the soul, your brand’s voice, and passion would be missing. I have also seen a lot of marketing executives delegating video creation to their team who in turn has little knowledge about video production.
3. Failing to invest personal time:
There are a lot of small mistakes that new and experienced marketers make – long video length, sales heavy script, too many messages, technical jargon, and perhaps most importantly not understanding your audience and their needs. If you fail at these, you are simply wasting your audience’s valuable time. Your focus should be on delivering value to your audience and emotionally connecting with them in the first few seconds. If that doesn’t happen, they’ll move on disappointed.
4. Not valuing your audience’s time:
This is where the importance of planning phase and goal setting comes in. If there is a goal you want to achieve, you would want your audience to take certain action after watching the video. There are so many videos that fail to include any Call-To-Action in their video content. Whether you want your audience to subscribe to the channel, share your video, fill a form, or check out a demo, explicitly ask for it. But, here’s something to be cautious about – don’t include CTAs that are not relevant to the video. Your audience is in a certain state of mind, they’ll be pissed off if they see something totally unrelated to the video content. Now, keep in mind, including CTAs does not equate to spamming your audience with links throughout the video. Too many links, or flashy graphics to attract clicks is only going to irritate the viewer.
5. Failing to include CTAs:
Most marketing teams make the mistake of uploading their video on YouTube, or publishing on the website, and assuming it will somehow reach its target audience. As if, people had been waiting for this video like they do for a ‘new iphone’. You need to have a distribution plan in place – it can be simple, but it needs to be there. Whether you want to focus on a certain social media channel, rely on word of mouth, or want to put advertising dollars behind it, make sure you have a marketing plan for your video.
6. Thinking about distribution after-the-fact:
So, your video is live and you have a great distribution strategy in place – is it time to relax? Nope. Not until you are all setup to track video metrics to find out if the video is in fact resonating with your audience, and whether your video marketing strategy is working or not. And, more importantly, are you achieving the objectives you set out to achieve with this specific video? You can track everything – who is watching, for how long, which parts of the video – so you know what kind of information your customers and leads truly value. How else would you know which type of video content works best for a specific audience? These insights are really important to improve ROI of your future video marketing efforts.
7. Not tracking analytics:
Video marketing done effectively can bring tremendous value to your business. But, if you fail to avoid above mentioned mistakes, the effects can be detrimental to your business and brand.
Did I miss anything? Do you have a specific opinion? Let’s discuss in the comments below.
You can also contact me on twitter @jasmeetio, or on my personal website – Jasmeet Sawhney.
