It’s no secret that video marketing is one of the most effective ways for your brand to reach a large audience fast. However, for video marketing to be effective, it has to be done right. Unfortunately, many business owners who are just starting with video don’t know how to use it properly and their marketing efforts end up doing more harm than good. In this article, we’re going to explore some of the most common mistakes business owners make when they do video production.
Making Your Videos a Sales Pitch
This is probably the single biggest mistake people make with their videos. People are bombarded everyday with adverts from each and every direction, and once they sense that you’re trying to sell them something, they tune off completely. Yes, the ultimate goal of a video marketing campaign is to increase your sales, but you should focus on building a close relationship with your audience first. Show that you understand their needs and focus on helping them first before you try to hard sell them on your services. They will develop a trusting relationship with you and might be more inclined to opt for your services the future.
Clickbait and Other Deceptive Tactics
While it is true that you don’t want to make your videos blatant sales pitches, it’s also important to be honest with your intentions from the get go. Make sure that your viewers know exactly what the video will be about before they tune in. Don’t start on a completely unrelated subject only to abruptly bait and switch. Remember, you don’t need millions of people to see your videos, all you want is for your intended audience to see them and be intrigued enough about you and your services to learn more. So, no need for clickbait, be honest with your message and you will reap the benefits.
Poor Titles and Thumbnails
Thumbnails and titles play a vital role in any video marketing strategy. While you don’t want to use clickbait tactics, you still want your thumbnails to be as effective as possible at attracting viewers. If you want a large number of people to see your videos, try to use the most vibrant part of your video as the thumbnail or use thumbnail splash screens to get more attention. For titles, try to be as direct as possible and inspire yourself from other popular videos in the same category. This will help you figure out a template for your own titles.
Doing It Themselves
Sure, anybody can use their smartphones to make videos, but good production is essential if you want your message to come across and you want to maintain your brand image. People will usually assume that if your video is of poor quality, your products might be of poor quality as well.
There are tons of video production companies for all types of budgets out there and there’s really is no reason for you to not hire professionals to do the work. Diamond View Studios, for instance, is a great video production team that can help with anything from broadcasts commercials to motion graphics. Furthermore, the costs of video production have decreased significantly over the last few years, making it possible for business owners to get the same level of quality that was only available to big companies not too long ago for pennies on the dollar.
Creating Videos That Are Too Long
This may be hard for many business owners to understand, but with videos, longer is definitely not better. There is a certain sweet spot when it comes to video lengths and anything beyond that point will simply turn your audience off.
People have very short attention spans these days, so you have to make your time count. If you’re going to create a video, make sure that you get your point across in the first seconds of the video and that your audience will be able to get the bulk of your message in the very first minutes. No need for long drawn out introductions, get straight to the point and make sure that your audience knows exactly what they’re going to get from your video from the get go.
Conclusion
Video production is indeed one of the most powerful tools available to marketers today. It’s fast, cost effective and works great across a variety of platforms. However, if you want your efforts to be fruitful, make sure that you stay away from these five mistakes at all costs.
