Waseem Saddique Provides Top Tips for Avoiding Common Online Video Marketing Mistakes, Part 1

With more businesses utilising online video marketing as part of their marketing strategies, Waseem Saddique Marketing Services provides some top tips on avoiding common online video marketing mistakes.

Waseem Saddique states: “The stark reality is that merely producing and uploading a video is no longer enough. Such is the competitiveness among businesses to produce online marketing videos to reach the consumer that the market has become saturated, with thousands of online marketing videos now uploaded on a daily basis.”

Some of the things to avoid when launching an online marketing video include:

• Over Promotion

Surprisingly, consumers do not visit websites to watch adverts, most people experience      enough TV adverts. It is important that a video gets the message across about a product and/or service. However, it’s equally important not to ‘overdo’ it. Making an online marketing video that is a sales pitch is unattractive to the watching audience.

How to avoid this mistake – Concentrate on entertaining your audience with a ‘how to’ video, by providing a solution to a problem or by educating them. Doing this as opposed to imposing a product or service on them will generate a more positive response. Treat your viewers with care and show them that you have their best interests at heart.

•  Under Promotion 

Opposite of over promotion is under promotion. Some online marketing videos lack the content in order to drive people towards making a purchase. The key is to sell the benefits of a product or service via the video.

How to avoid this mistake - Reflect on what you want the video to achieve. Set clear goals and targets and establish how promotional the video needs to be. Employ the services of a copywriter to provide assistance on landing page videos.

• Long Length

The competitiveness involved in maintaining the attention of consumers on the internet is fierce. Waseem Saddique says: “Fact. If your video is too long, be in no doubt that similar content will be available to the audience that’s shorter, simpler and much more interesting and it’s all just a click away.”

How to avoid having people navigate away from your video – Unless you’re 100% sure that your audience can endure lengthy content (most common when viewing educational videos), it’s advised to limit your video duration to between 30 and 120 seconds.

• Poor Placement on a Website

Whatever your budget, it’s worth noting that producing an online marketing video is not cheap. Therefore, it’s vital that the placement of a video is absolutely spot on because what’s the point of producing an exceptional video that no-one can view?

How to avoid making this error – Simply embed the video where it will make easy viewing for consumers. One solution is to assess the analytics of your most viewed page and put it there.

• Failing to Identify your Audience

The scatter gun approach to reaching an audience is a pot-luck scenario. Producing a video and releasing it to the masses in the hope of generating ‘quality’ leads is ill-advised. Waseem Saddique comments: “Bringing in a huge numbers of consumers will mean a business can spend more time sifting out irrelevant leads as opposed to focusing on those consumers who want to buy the product or use the service on offer.”

Any video produced should instantly appeal to a specific target audience. Therefore, the video needs to be clear and focused and adapted to reach the desired audience.

How to avoid missing your audience – Research, research, research. Doing your research is the key. Establish what your target market is before launching into a creative idea that’s completely irrelevant to those you’re aiming at.

• Being Boring

Put yourself in the shoes of a customer. As a customer, can you recall the number of times you've navigated away from a video simply because you got bored? The simple truth is that if people are bored by your video, they won’t watch it.

How to avoid making your video boring – Identify what your target audience likes to see, don’t fill it with content that suits your tastes. The key here is to seek advice; videos produced by one person leave the fingerprint of that person and are based around personal taste, rather than appealing to the wider audience.

Waseem Saddique Marketing Services was founded in 2007 and the company has consistently provided small to medium enterprises as well as larger corporate firms with a range of digital marketing & online solutions.