The Do’s and Dont’s of Video Marketing
It is important to make sure your company (and its customers) are unique, you must establish what will most effectively reach its target demographic. The good news is that many popular videos share common characteristics.
These are broad recommendations that can be tailored to your situation to improve your odds of success. Here, therefore, are the dos and don’ts of video marketing that will help your business thrive. Give them a shot with your next video project, and give us feedback on how they fared.
Contents
Do’s of Video Marketing for Your Business
There is a list of Do’s you might need to follow. Remember these things while making marketing videos for your company’s growth.
Do Disseminate Genuine Content
Today’s Audiences are inundated with media and savvy enough to see through dishonest videos (images or text) on their mobile devices. To keep readers engaged, keep your content grounded in reality. Here are some suggestions for incorporating this into your overarching video advertising plan:
Ensure that not all videos in your planned batch are heavily weighted toward perfection regarding production value and scenario presentation. Content that is created quickly and casually resonates better with viewers.
Think about sharing the successes and failures of your company. It is only human to want to let others in on the good times, but you should also consider how you may communicate the challenges you have faced.
Communicate with your listeners like you would with close friends. How do you explain what you do to those closest to you? How would you sell your wares to a former coworker? Try using this phrase to make your videos seem more genuine.
Have A Detailed Plan
You will need a plan that specifies the following:
- How videos will be conceived, created, and promoted
- Your video marketing objectives and a timetable for achieving them
- Your video marketing budget
- Who is your intended market is
- How will you evaluate outcomes
Creating videos for the sake of making them will yield little positive results. Developing a strategy increases the likelihood of video marketing success significantly. It also establishes a framework for analysing each video you share. This enables you to make adjustments and develop as you progress.
Do Adapt Your Strategy To Your Objectives
The most common error made by businesses new to video marketing is failing to align their content with a larger purpose or objective. Creating video content is terrific, but if you only share content for the sake of sharing content, you may miss opportunities to connect with marketing or sales initiatives and elevate your business to the next level.
After all, specific categories of video content are more appropriate than others for achieving particular objectives. “About Us” videos effectively increase brand awareness, whereas product demonstration videos frequently drive sales. If your strategy begins with a specific video execution instead of a goal, you must approach production from the right side.
Instead, begin with a specific objective, such as “generate engagement on social posts with new followers” or “drive purchases from customers who click on product pages on our website.” You don’t necessarily need to quantify these goals (although you certainly can!), but having a specific outcome in mind will help you create the perfect video for your business.
Do Measure Performance
Finalise the “to-do” list by measuring the efficacy of your content and video’s performance once it has been distributed. Too frequently, marketers believe it is too difficult to measure the ROI of video content and opt not to monitor the results.
This is an enormous error! Even if you do not calculate ROI, you should keep track of views, engagement figures, watch time, and any changes in sales or revenue that can be attributed to your content. Keeping an eye on these data points clearly shows what your audience enjoys, dislikes, and what you might want to change for your next shoot.
If one video format consistently performs better than the others, you should prioritise that format for most of your future content. If short-form content produces superior results than long-form content, remember this insight and keep your forthcoming video content brief. These findings will help you enhance the results of your video strategy over time.
Do Perfect The Illumination And Sound
Lighting and audio quality are two features that promptly indicate to viewers whether they should continue watching your content. If any of these elements are substandard, your audience will likely scroll past your video in favour of higher-quality alternatives.
The most straightforward lighting configuration should ensure your subject is evenly illuminated without shadows. Typically, this involves seeking out natural light or adding additional overhead lighting or lanterns to achieve the desired balance.
In most cases, recording audio snippets with a separate microphone rather than the camera’s output is preferable. Due to the ease with which decent-looking content can be produced today, placing a small amount of thought and effort into your lighting and audio prevents your audience from becoming distracted by low-quality video.
Do Either Educate Or Amuse (Or Both!)
Recently, have you heard the term ‘edutainment’? Edu-tainment content is content that is both educational and entertaining, as the term suggests. Many videos will have a subtle bias in one direction or another, but today’s viewers expect even the most uninteresting topics to be engaging. If your content suits neither of these functions through your preferred marketing channel, it is a clear sign that you need to start over and create a new video that is more likely to attract viewers.
Do Give Your Distribution Strategy Some Thought
Once your video has been created and you have completed a successful project with proper search engine optimization in mind, it can be alluring to share it once and move on to the next endeavour. Worse still, some businesses produce a stunning video asset but fail to distribute it anywhere.
While these brands may have the best intentions of discovering the ideal use case in the future, your video serves the only purpose if your audience is watching it.
Consider the following distribution options for your next video to reach the appropriate audience. Consider how you can repurpose or redistribute your content across other channels while you are at it.
Should you upload the same video to your website if it is already on your social media page? Can you include a teaser in your marketing communications if the video is posted on YouTube?
We have yet to encounter a situation where a video cannot be repurposed, so maximise the return on investment for your video initiatives.
Don’ts Of Video Marketing
In addition to the advice above, avoid these typical blunders while using video marketing.
Remember To Include A Call To Action
The first and most crucial tip permanently ends your videos with a call to action (CTA). While there may be exceptional circumstances when this is not necessary, the goal of every video should be to encourage viewers to perform a single, well-defined action.
Prominently highlight this in the video to maximise the likelihood that it will be acted upon. If you want people to watch the entire video, it can give them a hint at your CTA early on and then make a more critical call-out at the end. To ensure everyone sees your CTA, consider including on-screen text, conversation, or voice-over.
Stop Trying to Go Viral!
The aim of “going viral” for your material is not constructive. One problem with masculinity is that it does not provide a measurable result for your company; instead, it should focus on raising brand awareness. Furthermore, even for well-known content creators whose careers depend on producing viral videos, it is tough to actually “make” content go viral.
Instead, you should target your campaign toward brand awareness objectives, produce a video meant to aid in achieving those objectives and incorporate some of the characteristics many viral videos share. You will feel incredibly accomplished if your article becomes popular. If not, at least you have something of value that can help you get new viewers.
Don’t Get Stuck On One Medium
You should rely on something other than just your website or YouTube video to host your videos. You can market your film on numerous websites, so test out as many as possible to find the best fit. If you want your videos to go viral, host them on sites like YouTube and Vimeo.
Then, instead of uploading the movie to your site, you may embed it from one of these sites. Video files can significantly slow down a website when uploaded directly to the server. This is especially important if you want your website to have a lot of video content.
Do Not Presume That People Are Watching With Sound
The days of exclusively listening to media while viewing are over. Nowadays, videos with a lot of visuals are the norm. Therefore, it is essential that the core of your message can be understood even without the audio. In practice, this entails thinking about ways to highlight important points using graphic on-screen text and adding captions for any speech or voice-over.
This additional measure guarantees that your content is available to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Suppose you need help determining whether you have completed this stage correctly.
In that case, you should have someone who was not involved in making the video (or, even better, unfamiliar with your brand or product) watch it without sound. You are on the right track if they can retain the essential takeaways.
Avoid Excessive Publicity
Make videos that teach as well as amuse. Do not use them as a means of shamelessly advertising yourself to readers. It is acceptable to make general comments about your business and its offerings. However, the viewer’s needs should be your primary concern.
Engagingly demonstrate your product’s benefits to the user. Show how to use your products, the problems they answer, and proof of how they help through testimonials instead of just expressing how fantastic you and your things are.
Brands just starting with video marketing sometimes think their work is “done” once published online. While it is essential to mark the original release of your video, it’s also important to remember that your material can be shared on various channels and platforms. Assessing the video’s reception on the principal distribution channel can help you decide how best to reuse or repurpose it in the future.
Don’t Neglect The Thumbnail For Your Video
The thumbnail of a video is the first item viewers will see before clicking on it. Typically, the thumbnail is one video aspect that compels users to click on it. You must avoid adding a subpar thumbnail to your video. Determine the most exciting aspect of the video and use it as the thumbnail.
Avoid Doing What Your Rivals Are Doing
If you are just getting started with video marketing, it can be tempting to mimic the approaches taken by established companies in your field. Even though it is a good idea to audit existing videos relevant to your business quickly, you should use such movies to inspire your unique content.
Why? First, it is impossible to gauge how well the material of your rivals is genuinely doing. Some indicators, such as engagement rates and total views, may be visible, but you will still be one step off from the valuable data, such as return on investment or the number of conversions. Even if a video does well regarding Instagram likes, it may need to do better regarding commercial outcomes.
Your objectives differ from your rivals, allowing you to outperform the industry standard rather than merely settle for mediocrity. It is recommended to check through their material, take notes on what you like and do not, and then apply those observations to your team’s ideation session. Most of the time, you will be able to think of an idea with more potential for success than the videos of your rivals combined.
Keep Video Length To A Minimum
Your video should be substantial enough to cover all of the relevant ground. A shorter video can be beneficial since many people will only bother to watch it partly. Think about how you can have the most significant influence in the least period.
Make your argument in the first three to five seconds to guarantee full attention. Try maintaining video lengths between two and three minutes, depending on the subject. Short videos (about 30 seconds) help summarise complex topics and post on social media.
Keep videos to at most 10 minutes in length unless necessary. Consider making it into a series if you need more time on it. Cut a big video into shorter ones of two or three minutes, then include a link to the next part at each conclusion.
As a result, the odds of the video being watched in its entirety improve. It also increases the possibility that the viewer will continue to the next connected video. You could cut a ten-minute tape into four segments of two and thirty seconds. In some cases, this can increase the likelihood that a person will watch the entire ten minutes of video compared to simply posting the whole clip.
Avoid Hoping For The Impossible
The success of only one or two videos could be better. It may take some time for your videos to gain traction and lead to a noticeable uptick in sales, even if you post to them regularly and provide valuable content. To see results, you must continuously produce and upload high-quality videos. You should also constantly promote your films, engage with your audience, and assess its reaction.
Avoid Doing Everything In-House
Finally, while do-it-yourself video production has its place in video marketing, it should only constitute part of the plan. DIY content is perfect for Instagram Stories or TikTok videos that need to have a more genuine vibe. DIY production is risky, especially for high-stakes projects like product films, customer testimonial videos, and commercials.
You could wind up with a good video, but outcomes are typically more excellent with something professionally produced and substantially higher quality. It is suggested to outsource (to a production business or freelancers) for your more significant or “official” pieces of content while keeping the do-it-yourself approach for your more relaxed pieces.
Summary
Start with these essential ideas and construct the rest of your video marketing strategy on top of them to ensure success.
- Create an emotional bond with your audience and win their trust with the help of video. Use that to your advantage, and stop using video to repeat facts.
- Be genuine. In contrast to sticking to your talking points, showing enthusiasm for your work can endear you to your listeners.
- Make sure you tell a good story. The story always triumphs over pristine execution. Recognise when shaky or otherwise flawed footage adds to the authenticity of your video and when it detracts from it.
Also, as you are making your plans, be sure to define your marketing metrics. Find out what works for your company to create an emotionally engaging video for your target audience. Moreover, one that does not get so awful that it needs a documentary to fix it.
