The 4 Most Common Mistakes in Video Marketing

by Joe Monzo | Oct 5, 2022 | General

The most unfortunate situation I’ve witnessed is an excellent video marketing idea that lost its steam in execution or distribution. I’ve seen many schools, organizations, and businesses take their video marketing seriously, yet the results fall flat once the video is public. Most of the time, I credit these situations to a lack of knowledge and experience.

After all, online video marketing is still very new – it’s only about a decade old – and the lessons we’ve learned from video marketing through television no longer apply on many levels. For those who are looking to market themselves online through video campaigns, I’ve taken the liberty of creating a list that will help you avoid the most common mistakes.

1. Posting Links to Social Media

Social media is constantly evolving, so what is true today about best practices might not be true tomorrow. What will never change is the fact that social media platforms make money when users stay on the platform. Their mission is to keep users scrolling through their feeds for as long as possible, so they incentivize posting things that will keep users interested. On the flip side, posts that drive user traffic away from the platform are naturally unwelcome.

As a result, organizations that post links to their video campaign such as youtube or vimeo rather than uploading them natively onto the platform will not usually enjoy as much success as they hope. Video marketing campaigns get the best results when users can view them without clicking links. Unfortunately, this means you will need to spend extra time formatting your videos and crafting posts according to best practices for every platform you choose. The only time you should provide a link is if your video is too long to post or if the content is not your own.

2. Low-Quality Thumbnail Graphic

Thumbnail graphics are the pictures you see on a video before you click the play button. Thumbnail graphics must be engaging and informative to captivate potential viewers. Oftentimes, an organization won’t see satisfying results for their videos because they have a bad or boring thumbnail.

For example, some organizations decide to use their logo as a thumbnail, but this choice is neither engaging nor informative. If a viewer is on your website, they already know your brand, and the logo tells them nothing about what they can expect from the video. Another bad choice would be a shot of an interviewee caught in the middle of a sentence with an awkward face.

The best thumbnails have text describing the point of the video and use B-roll relevant to the topic. For example, a school marketing video could use a scene where students are playing outside, and a business could use a shot of a smiling employee for its hiring campaign. Thankfully, a bad thumbnail graphic is easy to fix – most platforms allow you to quickly switch your thumbnail out for another.

3. Hosting Your Video On Your Website

The explanation for this mistake can get technical, but you should always upload your videos to another video hosting site such as Vimeo, Vidyard, or YouTube rather than on your own site. Instead of using your website as a host, embed your video with a link to use it on the correct pages of your marketing or sales funnel.

For a number of reasons, most organizations’ websites do not have the capacity to host videos without becoming extremely slow. When visitors click on your site, they will expect immediate gratification, so a below-average load time could frustrate them and cause them to leave. Further, video hosting platforms provide in-depth analytics that will allow you to extract data and analyze the success of your marketing efforts.

4. Unforgivably Bad Audio

It might come as a surprise that a videographer would give this advice, but I urge you to invest in a good microphone before you invest in a good camera. People subconsciously forgive bad visuals, but bad audio ruins a video. Viewers won’t last more than a few seconds if your video’s audio is crunchy, inaudible, or plagued with echos. A high-quality microphone is expensive, but it’s worth the investment. Without it, you’ll waste your time and money to get poor results.

There are plenty more mistakes that I’ve witnessed in video marketing campaigns, but the ones listed above are the most common and the easiest to avoid. If you think you’ve made any of these mistakes or you’re interested in a more detailed explanation, feel free to reach out to Monzo Media Productions with questions.

How To Pinpoint Weak Spots In Your Video

by Joe Monzo | Oct 5, 2022 | General

Experiencing a lack of engagement and results from your video? The Internet and social media are full of video posters who scratch their heads wondering where they went wrong when producing and distributing their content. Without the right tools and knowledge, it’s impossible to find the answer.

Seeking ways to pinpoint the weak spots in your video so that you can learn from your mistakes means you’re on your way to a successful future video. Let’s talk about what you can do to capture and maintain viewer interest in the future by learning about your current video’s weak spots.

Make Data Your Best Friend

Data is king for analytics, and content creators and marketers everywhere depend on it to learn about user behavior regarding their videos, websites, paid ads, and more. If you’re looking for the answers to what is working and what isn’t working in your video, then you must turn to analytics.

At the same time, looking at data can be daunting and confusing for inexperienced content creators. To help you make sense of the analytics, let’s break down the data into practical applications.

Are People Watching?

First and foremost, you’ll want to know if anyone is clicking on your video. You’ll be able to find in the data how many views your video has achieved. If the numbers aren’t where you hoped they would be, then you should ask yourself a few questions:

Are you posting your video where your target audience spends their time?
Does your video have an engaging thumbnail graphic?
Have you made it easy to find and click on the video?
Does the video cover a topic that your target audience would be interested in?

On some platforms, people may click or see the video, but it won’t be considered a “view” unless they’ve watched for more than a few seconds. Make sure you understand the particulars of the analytics service before you begin interpreting the data.

The Whole Video?

In many cases, content creators get a significant number of views, but those viewers do not watch the entire video. Looking into the data is key to learning about common parts of the video where most viewers decide to stop watching. On some platforms like YouTube, you’ll be able to see this information clearly in the analytics dashboard.

Take note of the times in the video that most viewers left. If most viewers left the video after a few seconds, the beginning of the video was not engaging enough. You might be drawing in the wrong target audience or the video might take too long to get to the point. A common mistake I’ve seen is a video that begins with a logo. Let me be clear: 10 seconds of a logo at the beginning of a video is a waste of 10 seconds.

If viewers often leave somewhere in the middle of your video, it’s likely that the video is too long, poorly made, or paced unevenly. Long videos have the potential to be engaging throughout when executed properly, but this can be difficult to accomplish. If you’re stumped, you can learn more about common mistakes that affect videos’ success to find answers for your viewer drop-off.

On the other hand, viewers might leave in one spot for a good reason: they take action. To know whether their exit was good or bad, analyze their behavior in the next section.

What Do They Do When It’s Over?

If your viewers have made it through the entire video, or they leave to take action, then you should be proud – you’ve produced a successful video. How do you know by looking at the data?

The proof that your viewers take action can be found in the analytics on some platforms like Vidyard or Wistia. Data can show you the demographics of viewers, where they’ve come from online, and where they go after they’re finished. This kind of information is key to learning more about your audience and whether the video is successful.

Ultimately, you’ll want to analyze your call-to-action phrases (CTA). Does your audience often click out of your video at the same time that you tell them to click on a link or contact you? Do they go to the next step in your marketing or sales funnel once they’ve finished watching?

Having all this data helps you get great insights into your videos and implement changes to future videos so that you can keep getting better engagement and results. If you have any more questions about how to read video data, contact Monzo Media Productions.