The sheer power of video in the digital age cannot be overstated. Consider where corporate video continues to prove its marketing worth; social media, landing pages, self-help portals, and more. It’s engaging and digestible, and it humanizes brands to build trust. However, like all marketing and video production, it’s also prone to mistakes. There are ample ways to go wrong, from the first shoot to the last use of the final product. Some are right on the drawing board, and some lie in use contexts. So, let us explore the 7 biggest video marketing mistakes you should steer clear of.

Why video marketing is worth your time

But first, you may wonder about video marketing’s actual merit and whether it’s worth your time. If so, let us briefly reassure you that yes. It very much is.

For one, video marketing is highly versatile. It helps generate leads, enriches customer journeys toward conversions, and presents opportunities to explore complex processes in visually digestible, step-by-step forms. If a picture is worth a thousand words, one can only guess how many a video is.

And second, beyond theoretical, video marketing is demonstrably effective. Wyzowl finds it has an excellent Return on Investment (ROI), dubbed as at least “good” by almost 90% of marketers. Studies corroborate this, finding that 54% or more of consumers prefer video to other types of content. And finally, studies also find that video on landing pages can increase conversion rates by up to a stunning 86%.

In brief, yes, video marketing is very much worth your time. As audiences become increasingly focused on visuals, this trend should only continue well into the future.

The biggest video marketing mistakes to avoid

With introductions in order, now we may cover video marketing mistakes and oversights you may keep in mind. In no particular order of importance, consider the 7 that follow.

#1 Not having your video present you in the best light

Let’s start with humanization since that’s often the initial goal. Marketers will often contemplate how to present a company on video – from the video to where you use it. They’ll know they must present it in the best light but may not know where to begin.

Here, “humanization” is the keyword to mind. That goal drives influencer marketing, a booming industry, so one can’t overlook it here. Consider small clips of employees working, interacting, and being human; that’s what many videos of this nature tend to lack.

As we’ll see next, many more factors are at play, applicable to all video material. But in the meantime, please turn off the auto-play; it comes off as intrusive and works directly against your goals.

 

#2 Neglecting conciseness

Among other factors, a common misstep lies in neglecting conciseness, videos that cram everything in, turning viewers away. Yes, not every use case and every audience calls for the same length – but brevity is the soul of wit.

As a rule of thumb, consider the 3-minute mark as the initial goal. Exceed it if needed and if your analytics say so, but also consider going lower if you can. The modern viewer’s attention span is short, and every second of their time, you claim, must be worth it.

#3 Focusing too much on your product

One of the worst ways to claim your viewers’ time, and one of the biggest video marketing mistakes, is to focus too much on your product. You’ve likely seen such videos before; soulless, corporate, showing nothing but a product in a vacuum. Would such videos convince you?

Granted, you must showcase your product. However, the better way to do so is to focus on your audience’s pain points. What does your product offer them? Which of their problems does it solve? What do past customers say?

Simply outlining your audience’s needs and desires confirms you understand them and makes your video engaging and relatable. Not doing so and just reading your product’s features may be easier, but it doesn’t work.

 

#4 Focusing too much on your audience

That said, there is a balance to strike between your product and your audience. These videos you may have seen too; ones who seem to know you well are very pleasant to watch but don’t quite offer solutions.

To avoid this extreme, remember to answer the questions you pose – even if this only comes up during video editing. Present your product as the solution if you know your audience’s problems. Leaving audiences wondering what to do next is nothing short of a disaster; you engaged them, but not meaningfully. So, chop down on peripheral fluff to leave room for your proposal and a meaningful call to action.

#5 Overproducing your videos

There’s also such a thing as expending too many resources on a single video. Overproduction is among the biggest video marketing mistakes to avoid for two distinct reasons.

For one, it’s not an intelligent use of resources. Most businesses cannot compete with their industry’s juggernauts, budget-wise – so attempting to match their production value is often futile. That’s not to say your video shouldn’t be of high quality, from shooting to editing, only that there’s a reasonable quality threshold to mind.

And second, overproduction can often lead to a feeling that’s “too corporate.” The reason why influencer marketing and low-budget videos work is that they appear genuine, in part because of lower budgets. Often, overproducing has video marketers miss the mark in this key regard.

#6 Underpromoting your videos

Finally, one mistake any marketer can make is to let production efforts go to waste. That outcome can happen in two typical ways; underpromoting and underusing one’s videos.

Underpromotion tends to come up when a video is not meaningfully promoted where it’s relevant. For example, an engaging YouTube video may not be promoted on other social media platforms. This kind of oversight is the question of the tree falling when nobody hears it, in video form.

#7 Underusing your videos

Underpromotion often overlaps with underuse, too. Say, a how-to video may be abandoned in a self-help article when it could be repurposed or used elsewhere. It could be incorporated into or linked to written content, promoted on social media platforms alongside instructional content, used to enrich email campaigns, etc.

Unfortunately, both are often the byproduct of not incorporating video content creation into a broader video marketing strategy. And both, alone or in combination, make for poor resource management most businesses can’t afford to engage in.

Conclusion

To summarize, the biggest video marketing mistakes a marketer can make span a video’s lifespan. They can start within the video and expand to its uses and promotion.

From the early stages of creation, one can neglect to have a video present the company in the best light possible. One can fail to balance focusing on the audience as the consumer and the product as the solution. There’s even the trap of overproducing at the cost of washing away perceptions of genuineness, which video marketing thrives on.

While brief, we hope this list helped you avoid the most common – and often highly avoidable – pitfalls.