Did Your Latest Business Video Marketing Campaign Fail?
You’ve made the decision that you could no longer go without a business video as a part of your marketing mix, but not long after the money was invested, the video was produced and deployed. About a month or so after launching your marketing video the painful truth hit – it was a bomb. Not a lot of people watched it, it didn’t achieve what you hoped it would and now you’re stuck trying to figure out what went wrong…The only silver lining in these troublesome results is that – you’re not alone!
The best marketing videos translate the key “benefits” of your product or service into a compelling visual story. This is the most important part of the video development process and it’s the hardest to get right, yet it’s usually the piece that gets the least attention. It’s simple, if you don’t use video marketing effectively then you will quickly lose your audience.
Here’s our list of the most common reasons why your video failed:
1. There’s no clear message.
While there are numerous critical components to creating a truly successful marketing video, one of the most important pieces is the script. It’s the foundation to creating a message that will be interesting and engaging. An example: “ABC Consulting is the world leader in the provisioning of leading edge solutions and robust, mission critical systems for it’s global client base.”
Uh-huh. Even if you have a well defined audience, problem statement and customer benefits, you still need to communicate in a clear and convincing manner what it is you do and for whom. The viewer has to be able to easily relate to your message and you should be able to articulate exactly what it is you do, why you do it and how you solve your customer’s problems.
What’s the solution? The video shouldn’t be about you. No one cares about you, as we’ve already noted above they only care about how you can solve their problem. Avoid B2N (Business to No one) If your message is so general that it applies to everyone it probably won’t resonate with anyone.
No amount of cool filming or editing or creative is going to fix bad messaging.
2. Poorly defined objectives.
Why are you making the video? What’s the business objective? (‘Updating your website’ isn’t an objective, it’s an activity.)
What’s the solution? Define your business objectives! Can you easily fill in the following blanks?: This video will help ___{this type audience}____ understand that our product or service solves ___{this specific problem}___ and provides ____ {these benefits!)____ . We will measure the success of this video by ___{the following rating mechanism}____.
If you can’t clearly and succinctly fill in the first three blanks, chances are, your video will fail to achieve any measurable results. If you can’t fill in the last blank you’ll never know what was achieved.
3. No call to action.
What do you want people to do after they have watched your video? If you don’t know, your viewer won’t either.
What’s the solution? Add a call to action in your video. Tell the viewer exactly what you want them to do: sign-up now, register, call you, etc. Your call to action should be clear and concise.
4. Taking the DIY Approach
Maybe this sounds familiar: “We saw an amazing video of a competitor, so we set aside a few hundred dollars out of our budget to do our own video. Yep, that’s all we’ve got, but we still want it to look like a blockbuster hit, and my cousin Ralph said it would only cost him about $300 to make the same video.”
What’s the solution? Hire a professional video production agency, and invest in a high level production quality. Too often, businesses think they can get away with amateur or homemade videos. Warning! This can do more harm than good for a number of reasons.
With the cost of video being more attainable, especially for small businesses, it’s wise to invest your valuable marketing dollars with a professional video marketing agency. They’re far better suited to produce a marketing video that is not only engaging, entertaining, and will achieve your desired results, but also properly reflects your brand, what you stand for, how you want people to feel and the value you bring to the marketplace.
If you’ve read to the end of this post, it’s because you already know the value of video marketing, but have probably committed some of the mistakes we covered. Give us a call for a no-obligation discovery session, and make your next video marketing campaign a success.
