5 Video Marketing Mistakes That You Should Avoid like the plague … There’s tons of great Video Marketing things TO DO, Here are 5 things TO DON’T
1 – Turning off viewers with overly long introductions.
People care what you can do for them, they care that you can solve their problem or answer your question. Get to it! Don’t run them off with a blabber about yourself, they won’t care about you until they get that you care enough about them to help. I recently did a whole video on this topic that’s definitely worth a watch because boring is an easy video marketing mistake to avoid.
2 – Making Videos that ignore customer searches.
You know what you know and you know what you want to talk about – here’s the thing; what do they want to hear? Customer searches should inform the specifics of your video, by searches I mean the specific words they type in to the search bar on google or YouTube. The more closely your headline and content relates to their search, the more useful you are to the searcher, the better you appear in the results, since that’s the goal of the search engine; to produce the best results for the searcher (sadly, googles goal is not to get us the most views). It’s not a revolutionary change, a more nuanced ‘massage’ of the copy and content to match they way they are searching and the words they are searching for. The best way to figure this out? Type your words into google or YouTube search and see what they autosuggest.
3 – Expecting one video to serve all purposes.
Some videos introduce, some explain. Some videos answer questions, some entertain or illuminate – and some videos sell. You want to keep your videos concise; as short as possible, as long as necessary. Get to the point, make the point and be done. People are watching for a specific reason, give them that and fight the urge to wander abound trying to cover everything. You want to say hello on social with a simple selling message? Great, Say Hello! Doing FAQ’s to prove and provide expertise? Do that – and then send them to your website for more info if they want it. Ready to offer a sales presentation of demo on your website? Be focused on exactly that. You want to make it easy and efficient — for the viewer. Putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak, is a video marketing mistake you definately want to avoid.
4 – Serve long form video to people who want a snack.
The expression I’ve heard is ‘when someone asks what time it is, don’t tell them how to build a watch’ – I’m guilty of this for sure. The first marketing course I offered years ago was, as a close business mentor pointed out, was ‘a phd in digital marketing … when business people are looking for a kindergarten education, or basic training’. That’s clearly the type of video marketing to avoid. Keep your videos short – give the basics, give them what they ask for – if there’s more, send them to another video or your website. Talk for two or three minutes when that will do, you’ll get more viewers who watch more of your video and those who want more, can get more. I find that when I’m making a video I want it to be longer, when I’m watching one, I want it to be shorter. Think of what’s best for your viewer, the potential customer, and you’ll avoid that video marketing mistake.
5 – Downplaying the emotional investment that your viewers make over time.
A lot of the work we put into making marketing videos is built around providing solutions, showing and sharing expertise and building relationships. Your viewers are investing in you, they are spending time watching what you say and show, they are coming to know and appreciate you, they have an emotional investment in you that you don’t yet have in them, keep that in mind and do everything in your power to respect and acknowledge that – respond to comments, be part of that conversation. I’m always happy when a new client calls and mentions the videos of mine that they’ve seen; it proves the power of video (which is super useful if, like me, you run a video marketing agency) and it indicates that they know what they want and they are pretty sure I’ve got what it takes. That’s the key; when someone has watched your marketing videos (of all sorts) and perhaps commented on some of your social postings.
Each tip on video marketing to avoid something leads to a better idea of what TO DO –
Now that you know what to avoid, here are 3 simple video marketing ideas for small business that you can easily put to work for you today. As a professional, simply making a video that shares what you love about your work makes it easy to connect with your prospects in a fairly natural and authentic way.
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