5 video marketing mistakes to avoid

Summary

Video marketing, when done right, can be a very effective tool. But it’s not easy, it’s very common to make mistakes. In this post we will talk about the 5 video marketing mistakes you must avoid.

Why choose video marketing? 

Even though it’s increasingly becoming common knowledge in marketing, it doesn’t hurt to repeat it: video marketing is an increasingly powerful tool to include within your strategy. We have already talked about the 5 five challenges of video marketing. This is the turn of the 5 video marketing mistakes.

Companies that use video marketing want to stand out from the crowd and build a strong online presence, knowing that, when applied and structured correctly, video marketing is definitely the right way to go. 

The effectiveness of videos lies in their ability to attract and engage the audience in a short period of time. The statistics speak for themselves:  

• More than 89% of marketers say video gives them a higher ROI. 
• 96% of marketers say they plan to increase or maintain their video marketing campaigns. 

These numbers prove that video is an engaging format that should definitely be included in your marketing mix. Of course, it’s not enough to simply create videos to position yourself in the marketplace; you need high-quality, well-crafted content. That’s how you’ll get good results. After all, video marketing, like any other channel, must be planned, structured, and produced to ensure maximum yield. If you don’t meet these conditions, rather than helping you achieve your goals, they will hold your business back.  

How do you maximize the results of your video marketing campaigns? The best way to find out is to learn from mistakes. In this post, we’ll show you the 5 common video marketing mistakes that you should know and avoid.  

1. Don’t focus on a single message 

Among the most common video marketing mistakes, the first one we’re going to talk about is creating videos that don’t have a clearly defined message. Having a goal and a clear idea of the message you want to get across to your audience is crucial in ensuring that your message gets through.  

When creating a video, you’ll want to put it in a prominent location on your website. You’ll also be tempted to fill it with as much information as possible. But you’ll only have a small amount of time to engage your audience, so not having a clear focus can make the message you want to convey appear disjointed, uneven, and difficult to follow. This could push the viewer to abandon the video altogether.  

Wanting to devote a single video to listing all the advantages your business has to offer takes much more time than the viewer is willing to invest, so the key is to focus your video on a single strength. Develop a direct, targeted message and keep the video on target. If you have multiple topics you want to cover and multiple messages you want to convey, create separate videos.  

In this regard, there are different types of videos you can create, each with its own specific goal. They including:  

• Informational videos: ideal for explaining what your brand is about and for showcasing your strengths. 
• Customer testimonial videos: ideal for generating the trust of potential customers and reaching a wider segment of the audience. 
• Behind-the-scenes videos: a way to add personality to your image and to establish a dialog with your audience based on empathy and identification.  
• Product videos: show the product and what it looks like in real life. This can create an educational and engaging video experience and an effective product announcement video. 
• How-to videos: show your customers how your products work, making the videos educational and informative. This is popular video content that many viewers love to watch. 

2. Self-referential, sales-focused videos 

Another serious mistake you can make is creating a video whose sole purpose is to sell a product or talk exclusively about you. When a prospect clicks on one of your videos, they are not necessarily ready to buy the product. 

More often than not, what they’re looking for is additional information, to get closer to the brand. The goal is to make sure that the content you use in a video meets these needs. Show potential customers how your product can help them and bring value to them, rather than just bragging about its potential.  

The best way to do this is to ask yourself the following question: “What kind of content do I really want to watch?”. Put yourself in your potential customers’ shoes, figure out where they are in the buyer’s journey so that each video has its own specific purpose.  

For example, informational videos get more attention than other categories. So the solution is, first and foremost, to create videos that are intended to inform and entertain, so that your audience is enticed to return to your site. Obviously, your product doesn’t have to disappear, but it can always be put in the foreground, consistently integrated into this framework.  

3. Not optimizing videos for SEO 

One of the biggest benefits of implementing a video marketing strategy is getting more traffic to your website. Another big mistake you can make is not investing in SEO. Missing out on the benefits of SEO means giving up on higher search rankings. 

Just like in text content, videos also need keywords for optimization and ranking on the first pages of search engine results. Here are some tips to avoid making this mistake:  

• Research potentially traffic-generating topics and conduct keyword research 
• Insert keywords into titles and descriptions 
• Add captions and transcripts 
• Optimize the home page (website links, meta tags, internal links) 
• Create an eye-catching thumbnail  
• Optimize for mobile-friendliness 

In this way, making your videos SEO-friendly will prevent them from disappearing into oblivion and will give them a better chance to increase in the search engine rankings. 

4. Not researching your target audience 

A video that doesn’t target a specific audience is another common mistake in video marketing. This mistake can hurt your conversion rate, with the risk of creating content that isn’t relevant to your target audience. 

Although you may have services or products that more or less everyone can benefit from, every video you create should focus on one target market. 

The goal of your videos should be to provide information that reaches a certain target audience, so it’s crucial to do extensive research on who this target audience is through:  

• Demographic data 
• Geographic location 
• Interests  
• Values  
• Behaviors 

This type of research will enhance your content, making it more relevant and interesting to your target audience. 

5. Forgetting the call to action

The last mistake we’ll discuss is producing a video that doesn’t have a clear call to action, leaving the viewer unsure of the next step to take and making it more difficult to get a conversion.  

A call to action (CTA) is a sort of instruction manual that is offered to your audience, informing them of the next step to take, removing any ambiguity. Ask yourself questions, “Would a viewer unfamiliar with my service know what to do next?”. 

If the answer is no, it means you’re missing something and the work wasn’t completed efficiently. You can include CTAs at the beginning of your video to make sure your audience can see it right away, and it’s also okay to repeat the call to action at the end.  

According to the International News Media Association, the average attention span of an adult is 2.8 seconds. Therefore, bite-sized content is a great way to reinforce your brand voice and drive sustained traffic to your target pages.

Of course, you also have to take into consideration the platform you’re operating on: the CTA must be consistent.  

For example, on YouTube one of your goals should be to keep the user watching the video for as long as possible, because YouTube rewards view time. That is, the more views a video receives, the more likely that particular video is to appear in that search and in related searches. A plus point could be customizing the end screens, the so-called “endcards”, to invite viewers to watch more of your videos or subscribe to your channel. 

Conclusions 

Running an effective high-profit video marketing campaign is not easy. There are a few pitfalls to avoid in order to ensure that your video works well, helping you reap all the benefits and ensuring that your efforts don’t go unnoticed. 

After this examination of the most common video marketing mistakes, you’ll definitely be more ready and aware for creating an effective video marketing campaign that will reach your target audience!