The video has emerged as the go-to way of communicating for any business interested in ensuring they are able to market their brand and products effectively. While it used to be the written word that had the most profound effect, platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram have utterly changed the landscape. While plenty of companies have managed to embrace this change and discovered incredible benefits from doing so, others have been slow to react and, when they do, find themselves making numerous mistakes that can be easily avoided with a bit of understanding of what’s involved.
This post aims to educate those in the latter category about how to prevent the sorts of mistakes that most commonly scupper any attempts at video marketing and that tend to end up costing businesses in terms of money spent and resources allocated to the task.
Common Mistakes to Avoid in Video Content
i. Avoid Doing Everything In-House To Save Money
When many businesses suddenly get the feeling that they really ought to spend a bit more time creating videos, the outcome is usually an incredibly amateurish attempt that fails to convey their desired message and, if bad enough, will end up being a meme of some sort that can do severe damage to the brand. Your best bet is to invest the money and opt for video content creation experts whose primary task in life is generating amazing videos by coming up with the right sources that align with your brand message and crafting the sort of video that looks polished and complete.
You will need to allocate a decent budget to the job, but when done well and promoted correctly, you’ll soon discover that the investment was worth it compared to what you could have produced using the free version of CapCut!
ii. Understand Your Target Audience’s Preferences
Regardless of whether you’re going to create your video in-house or outsource the job, you will need to figure out who your target audience is and where they consume such content. You might think that you already know this information from previous marketing research, and while you can absolutely use whatever data you already have on hand, it can pay to repeat the process but with video in mind this time around. When it comes to video, you need to know:
- Why you’re making the video in the first place
- Who do you want to target
- What platforms do they use
- How they consume videos (mobile, laptop)
- When the best time to release your video might be
Once you can answer these questions, you should be in a better position to capitalize on your first attempts and make it far easier to continue creating them in the future.
iii. Keep Your Videos Concise And Engaging
Whether you’re making a health and safety instructional film that will only be shown to your employees or creating a TikTok video in order to appeal to younger generations and convince them to buy your stuff, the video must be engaging. In practice, this will mean making it as concise as possible to appeal to the shorter attention spans that tend to consume this sort of content.
Again, it’s worth noting that your market research will guide you on how engaging and once it ought to be (for instance, if you’re creating a video for older folks, you might need to slow down a tad compared to younger people), but in almost all situations, you really need to get to the point and avoid rambling.
iv. Use Clear Audio For Better Comprehension
When discussing video, most people tend to focus only on how they can generate something with the highest resolution possible and invest thousands in 4K cameras, etc. Nonetheless, all of this investment will be for naught without the proper consideration put towards audio. Crisp, clear audio can make the difference between a professional-looking video and one that appears to have been made by the owner’s 14-year-old nephew on their budget tablet.
v. Optimize Videos For Mobile Viewing Experiences
It might be an assumption, but in most cases, it’s fair to say that most folks tend to consume video in the form of short-form, portrait videos via something like TikTok et al. Consequently, ignoring the way in which most people view this content will only serve to doom your attempts from the get-go. However, if you really want to appeal to the broadest audience possible, and/ or if your content is generally best suited to the more usual 16:9 ratio, you can always generate two options and upload them to the various platforms.
Video is something that every organization needs to embrace, but it is not quite as simple as picking up your smartphone and hoping for the best. Using the tips in this post should give you a good idea of how to proceed and avoid most of the most heinous mistakes, but when in doubt, it’s typically best to hire the pros.
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