Video Marketing Gone Wrong (And How to Fix It) Part 1

As a marketer, you understand how challenging it can be to provide new and unique ways for your product or service to stand out amidst a sea of competitors. In hindsight, video marketing is nothing new — but it can prove as a unique, powerful, and efficient aspect of a marketing strategy.

As a matter of fact, online videos are so popular that they increase the click-through rates of emails by 200 to 300 percent. Further research shows that adding videos on a landing page increases conversions by 80 percent. Today, 60 percent of marketers use video in their marketing and roughly 73 percent plan on improving their use of video. The continuing growth of video marketing is due to the 90 percent of people claiming that product-focused videos help them make better buying decisions.

Now, you may be one of the 60 percent of marketers leveraging on this powerful strategy — but why exactly are your video marketing efforts failing?

In truth, producing video after video is not enough. You have to do it right if you want people to take action, make a purchase, and believe in your brand. If your video marketing investments are not producing measurable growth for your small business, here are the top reasons why (and how you can fix them).

1. Are you creating original content?

No matter what kind of product or service you put into the world, always remember that your brand will not be rewarded for doing what everyone else is doing. Your target audience will recognize originality, so steer clear of distinct resemblances to your competitors.

The Fix: There is no other workaround than to be original. You must take calculated risks, have fun, and build your brand. Like how every person has a unique personality or quirk that differentiates them from everyone else, your brand must possess a stand-out character. If you don’t know your brand well enough, it will be difficult to use its charm to your advantage. In this case, put your team through rigorous branding to figure things out. Remember that some of the world’s most authentic and inspiring business owners are unapologetically themselves.

2. Is your message or objective clear?

Making an online business video just for the sake of making one is never a good idea. Have you ever heard of the saying, “If you can’t explain it simply, you simply don’t understand it,” — and neither will your audience. If your objective is unclear, or if you are struggling to put into words the message you want to convey, your audience is unlikely to stick around until the end of your video.

The Fix: To start defining your objectives clearly, here are the two questions you must answer:

• How will your video help customers and prospects solve their problems?
• What benefits do your products or services provide?

It all boils down to crafting a high-quality script. All successful business content has a clear and concise message. They comprehensively describe a problem, provide a groundbreaking solution, then present quirks that show their brand’s personality to keep the video compelling.

3. Are you connecting with the right audience?

A great video does one thing that no other form of content can — it makes information super-easy to digest. If a viewer is not able to connect with your story, your video is likely to fail. Aside from the possibility of having an unclear objective, another cause could be not knowing who your target audience is. If you are attempting to tap into all audiences instead of segmented groups, it won’t connect to anyone.

The Fix: It is crucial to make sure that audience research is a significant part of your pre-production strategy. Section your audience using demographics, interests, behaviors, and other related factors.

4. Are you striking a balance between selling and authenticity?

You may be the one producing the videos, but they are more for your audience than for your business. Therefore, hard selling will not be an effective tactic to draw in more prospects. If your videos are just like the commercials people see on TV, where they only showcase their product like an advertisement — your campaign is bound to flunk. Take a good look at how successful Youtube online creators talk about a product. Many of them gather millions of loyal subscribers by making a legitimate effort to define a product, while staying true to their brand’s personality and authenticity.

Customers are hypersensitive to being sold. Applying psychological pressure or pushing your viewers through urgency and other hard selling tactics will not deliver the results you desire.

The Fix: Make sure that your video strikes the right balance between selling and authenticity. Though the reasoning behind your video is to sell your product or service, that should not be the goal. Instead, let’s move on to reason #5.

5. Do you nail your sales pitch?

At this point, you may be thinking, “My content is original, my objectives are as clear as daylight, I connect with the right audience, and my brand’s personality shows — but my videos are still failing to convert!” If this is the case, the issue could be the journey you create for your viewers. In fear of hard selling, you may be slacking on providing a comprehensible or easy “next step” for your viewers.

The Fix: Similar to writing a blog post, it’s not necessary to leave your call-to-action (CTA) at the very end. Make sure to use more than one type of CTA, but keep your desired action consistent. Know your CTA options and experiment with different placements and choice of words.

The types of video CTAs include:

• Verbal: Spoken by a narrator.
• Annotations: Clickable text layered on top of a video.
• In-Video: CTAs that are part of a video.
• End Cards: CTAs that are at the final screen of a video with credits, which include links.

In the simplest sense, do not forget to tell your viewers to “reach out to us,” “sign up,” “register,” “call now,” “click here” or do whatever it is you want them to do.

What’s next?

If your videos are guilty of any one of the five bases, now is the time to redevelop your video marketing ventures. But wait! There is still much to learn about video marketing and why your campaign efforts are failing. Keep an eye out for part two of this article, where we will further discuss the factors that impact the conversion-driving power of online business videos.