Before you start down the path to video marketing excellence and reaping the benefits, you need to know what to avoid. Read on to find the most common video marketing mistakes!
Video marketing is a great tool to use to promote your business or cause. However, it's very easily used incorrectly and inefficiently. This strategy takes a lot of work so you want to ensure that you've used your time and resources wisely.
1. Too Much Hard Selling
You need to identify the purpose of your efforts is. Sitting down and developing a solid video marketing strategy is key to success. There will always need to be a goal that you can measure.
On the flip side, you need to find a way to present your material without seeming too in your face. People don't like being sold to because it doesn't feel genuine. That "salesy" content isn't going to get you anywhere and it turns people completely off.
To avoid this, think about what your viewer is going to get out of your content. Is it helpful or entertaining?
2. Not Enough Emotion
This is a great follow-up to the previously mentioned mistake. Depending on what the goal of your content is, you need to find a way to make it seem genuine. What's more genuine than emotion?
Again, it will feel quite "salesy" if you fail to incorporate emotion into your video marketing. A monotonous lecture about your product without any emotional history will have your viewers bored out of their minds.
This type of content is not memorable and it isn't effective. When you're planning out the goal of your video you should be thinking about how you can put emotion into it.
3. No Story
Marketing with videos is best done when you have a story to tell. Creating topics for videos that benefit your goals and keep the viewer entertained and engaged. Engaging content is exactly what you want otherwise it's a wasted attempt and no one is paying attention.
Now, the key is to create a good story! And what makes for a good story? Emotion!
You know that your customer is getting something from the content by being entertained. But, how can you make them actually feel something?
The Hero's Journey is a concept that has proven time and time again to be successful. This is just one example of a story that you could use to gain their attention. Making memorable content should be a priority.
4. Low Quality
We're living in a time where people basically expect their content to be in 4K at all times. We are spoiled with amazing technology.
The quality of your videos represents the quality of your business to viewers. They will immediately associate you with low-quality products and unprofessionalism if you can't get your marketing materials right.
Low-quality videos come from shakey cameras, blurry footage, bad acting, watermarked stock footage, and poor storyline. There are plenty of other areas that you can mess up on too. So, make sure that everything is top-notch otherwise you could be causing damage to your image.
Animations are a fun way to increase the quality of your video when it's done properly! This is another way to grasp the attention of viewers and show that you've put the extra effort in.
5. It's Off-Brand
Every business has its own brand identity. This is an important concept to stay true to when marketing your business online and offline. You should have spent time developing this when you started your business.
That means you should stick to your brand identity. From your social media marketing to traditional marketing you want your customers to be able to identify that it's your brand. This goes right along with improving brand recognition.
You wouldn't want to create a video that doesn't follow the values and structure of your brand. This means you need to be careful when developing content. Ask yourself; does this make sense coming from us?
6. Video Is Too Long
The human attention span is roughly 8-12 seconds. That's how much time you have to get the attention of a potential customer and keep it. Creators are making their video content shorter and shorter because the viewers aren't interested in watching something for too long.
Keep your videos short and to the point. Cut out any unnecessary content that doesn't hold a lot of weight towards your goal (often referred to as "fluff"). Unless you are filming a mini-documentary then your video needs to be no longer than a couple of minutes.
7. Lacking a Call to Action
A call to action (CTA) is something used in marketing that encompasses what you want your viewer to do after they see your content. You obviously have a goal in mind, you actually need to state what you want them to do.
The hard part is figuring out how to do that in a way that doesn't put people off.
Avoiding Video Marketing Mistakes
These video marketing mistakes are something that you really want to steer clear of. They can completely discredit your efforts. You can reap tons of benefits from video marketing if you do it correctly.
No one has ever said that it was easy. But if you're going to do it, you might as well do it the right way.
Need help with your video animations? Read more about how we can help you make your videos the best they can be.