According to a study by Cisco, videos make up the most of online content, with more than 82% of internet traffic in 2021. This suggests how people today tend to consume visual content rather than written posts like articles and blog news. Given this situation, many businesses have considered using video content to run a promotion on social media. Since people love watching online videos on a daily basis, marketers may as well inject branded content to increase awareness. It works if you avoid common video marketing mistakes.

A lot of businesses have faced a surge in traffic as well as sales after using video content. When your marketing videos become popular, more people will try to find out and learn about your business. 

This entire process of using video content to promote a brand is then called a video marketing strategy. This is a method of utilizing video as a form of conveying a promotional message.

What are the benefits of a video marketing strategy?

Video marketing has benefited businesses over the past years. Ever since the advent of social media, video content has become insanely popular among internet users. 

Whether it’s on YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook, you can literally find videos everywhere. Moreover, videos are incredibly shareable across multiple social media platforms. When users share a video, it reaches out to a lot more people. Therefore, you can increase the chance of getting more audience. 

There are other benefits of video marketing, which includes:

• Gain traffic from a broader audience
• Drive engagement 
• Help your page rank higher on the search engine
• Pull more traffic to your site
• Increase conversion rates

The most common video marketing mistakes every marketer should avoid

Although using video marketing can significantly help improve your business, many have experienced failure rather than a great return on investment. 

Making marketing videos can be entirely different from creating typical entertaining videos in the sense of infusing a “story.” That’s why a lot of businesses have never experienced the benefit it offers from the beginning.

The following are typical video marketing mistakes that marketers have made in the past. 

1. Having unclear goals

A goal is your roadmap to success. With a clear goal, you can take strategic actions to reach a destination. That’s why it’s essential to create one when planning for a new project. 

In business, generally, we aim for two major achievements: increasing awareness and sales. If you’re new to the industry, getting more exposure is what you need to pursue first before focusing on making more sales. After all, people need to know about your business before deciding to purchase your product.

In that case, you can use a how-to video to introduce your business. This step-by-step content is highly engaging and attracts attention. On YouTube alone, how-to videos are so popular that you can quickly find a lot of suggestions just by typing the phrase. 

On the other hand, you may as well need to create an explainer video to help boost your sales. This form of video allows you to showcase the highlight of your product to convince your potential customers. As a result, your audience will be ensured to purchase your product. 

2. Not understanding the audience

Again, every content has its own audience. You can’t expect older generations to engage and resonate with the latest trending video on the internet. They just don’t fit the content even though it has become the talk of the town. 

That’s why it’s crucial to understand who your target audience is in the very first place. Knowing who you make the video for will help you gain more results as it’s made and presented to the right people. 

If you’re working on impressing younger generations, for example, you should make a unique approach that they can quickly resonate with. Use popular songs to connect with them or apply a friendly conversation tone to talk to them.

Understanding their perspective will help you make content that fits their personality. Therefore, it’s vital to research this area before making the video.

3. Having lengthy videos

Videos can deliver messages in a relatively short time compared to other forms of content like articles. That’s why most people prefer to watch videos when learning new information. 

If your video is too long, that counters the reason why people choose it in the first place. They find video content is more attractive and easy to engage. Hence, making a lengthy video can scare your audience away.

Moreover, lengthy videos don’t fit most social media platforms. Twitter, for example, only allows 2 minutes and 20-second videos to get published. When you make a longer version of a video, chances are fewer people will watch your content. 

4. Not applying SEO techniques

Make sure to use SEO techniques on every content you create. Whether it’s long-form articles, images, or videos, SEO will help you reach out to a bigger audience. 

SEO allows your content to be discovered easily. With SEO, you can rank higher on the search engine, which means more people will find and visit your page. 

You can optimize your video content by adding descriptions, using related tags, placing keywords on its title, and more. Incorporating SEO techniques allow the search engine to crawl your content and index it on its directory. So, when people type a specific phrase of your keywords, they will be directed to see your page. 

5. Being too promotional

It’s called video marketing for a reason. You can promote your product or service using video content. However, that doesn’t mean you can squeeze everything down to your videos. 

If anything, people hate being targeted for sales purposes. They also dislike promotional content because they know it aims to get in their pocket. 

While it’s true that marketing videos are made to achieve sales, you don’t want to talk about  business on your video. Try making a video that relates to your target audience. By creating customer-centric content, you can build a strong connection with the audience.  

It’s important that you make content that resonates with people. When they feel a connection with your videos, it will be easier to convince them to start a journey with your brand. 

6. Having boring content

Well, it’s one of the obvious reasons why your video marketing campaigns flop. If it isn’t interesting enough, no one will spare their time to watch your video. 

Every content should be interesting. While the term is quite subjective for some people, you need to ensure that your video is at least engaging. 

Understand what message you’re trying to convey. If it’s something people find hard to digest at first, then you should simplify it. Use animation to break down complicated messages, such as technology and healthcare, into bite-sized pieces. Animation is great for that purpose. 

You can also use a real actor to deliver your message into a video. The actor’s presence will humanize your brand and help you explain messages similar to a direct conversation. 

7. Having a dull call-to-action 

A call-to-action is a copy that guides your audience to take the desired action in a short time. The phrase is often intriguing that people can quickly follow up the lead.  

The problem is when you use a copy that’s too common, people can notice it immediately. Most of the time, the audience won’t get into action when they don’t see the punchline as interesting. That’s why you need to work on making an enticing closing statement that goes well with the call-to-action.  

On the other hand, a compelling call-to-action can significantly help you increase customers. People won’t take a long time following your guide and checking out what’s there for them. Therefore, an intriguing copy is definitely a game-changer.  

Key takeaways

Video marketing has been widely popular even before the increased traffic on video content this year. That being said, incorporating this strategy in times where most people consume more online videos is highly effective for generating leads. Many businesses will compete to make the best video among the massive amount of content. However, only a few succeed in receiving the great benefit this strategy has offered. This list will help you find out what video marketing mistakes marketers have made in the past. Understanding past video marketing mistakes enables you to avoid making the same one.

This guest blog post was written by Andre Oentoro. He is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive return on investment (ROI) from explainer videos (in that order). Connect with him on LinkedIn.