40+ Marketing Experts Reveal Their Awful Video Marketing Mistakes

We usually had ideas, produced the content and then checked the results in our analytics panel. What we weren't doing is going deeper.

We started checking video analytics and learned where we lost engagement and in effect, we gained something we could act on. Don't only trust your on-page analytics, but also go one level deeper and see how people interact with your video and where they lose interest to make it better next time.

Video content marketing is not only about creating and distributing valuable videos to attract a large audience. Ultimately, it's about engaging and retaining a well-defined audience to drive conversions and sales.

When planning your video strategy, make sure that you create content that can both attract new viewers and engage your current existing customers and subscribers.

The biggest video mistake that I made was that I usually kept my marketing videos straight to the point without any fun factor or an entertainment factor.

I solved it by adding some memes/trending topics to my videos and the results were pretty good.

Wistia's research shows that videos lasting up to two minutes have the highest engagement rates.

Already in the period from the 2nd to the 3rd minute, viewer engagement drops significantly from 53% to 37%. There is no perfect timing, but in seven years we've come up with a proven standard:

Explanatory videos - 90 seconds or more

Image video - 60-120 seconds

Video advertising on YouTube/TV/social networks - 15-60 seconds

In the beginning, we made many mistakes, but as well as we did more, we understood that timestamping and visual content is more effective than a simple instruction video!

We were creating promotion or review videos but we were not getting enough response. We added emotional value to our videos and added the aim and told how it can be beneficial for any who needs something like this!

It's important to get your audience to see your video online.

Just publishing it on YouTube isn’t enough anymore. Using SEO and Video Marketing together can increase the discoverability of your videos and rank your site as number one in search results.

Thumbnails are everything. While the video itself was great, our rush to publish made us overlook the video thumbnail and simply choose the first frame.

This resulted in low click-through rates and views. Since then, we make it a point to include a thumbnail image as part of the deliverables when producing any video marketing content.

Where possible, include the title of your video or relevant keywords and choose an eye-catching shot. Think of thumbnails as modern-day movie posters. Use close-ups of your subject so scrollers can quickly preview what your video is all about in one glance.

Our biggest mistake, in my opinion, was making our first videos so long that they were more infomercial than short and sweet marketing tools. Because of this, viewers would simply lose interest halfway through and go about their business.

It’s been a learning curve but I now understand that keeping videos short, engaging and informative, with a clear CTA, is absolutely the way forward.

Defining why you are doing it and who your target audience is can greatly affect production. I’d like to say that as the number of videos on the web continues to grow, so does its importance and value.

Video marketing is not a simple endeavor for brands as they must take into account what their consumers want, how long it will take them to create content, patience with testing (i.e., failures), and understand that video content can increase engagement, lead traffic to your site or generate new customers.

As long as the video content matches the intent viewers have when they use that search query, a short call to action is not going to drive them away.

Similar to written content, your video should focus on a single message to a well-defined target audience. And if you don’t have an established presence yet, choose less competitive search queries related to your product and audience that you have a realistic chance of ranking for.

In the past, our videos were longer and we took a lot of purposes. However, when we cut long videos into shorter ones. We left one goal for each short video (for example, to inform customers about new features).

That mistake improved our user’s engagement, it became clear to them what is the purpose of our video and what do we mean by that.

A few years ago, we recorded a bunch of videos for our target audience - freelancers and small businesses. They actually performed really well and over time, they accumulated quite a few views.

That’s the mistake - we didn’t know they would do so well and we should have done more of them. In hindsight, that’s the only thing I would change.

and soon realized that the production aspect of a video is as important as the content.

Having the right background, the right resolution, the right equipment to cancel background noise, the right production software, and much more!

and setting high expectations from that one video was the biggest mistake.

At first, it seemed like the more global a video is the more views it will get but that's not the case. The audience doesn't want to watch a video that doesn't answer their question right away.

Solution: Producing multiple innovative videos for each aspect increased the click rate immensely.

YouTube search as a source of new viewers (and potential customers) from the very beginning.

In the last 10 years when video marketing started to gain serious traction, there was a lot of emphasis put on hosting a video on your own site. But, it actually seriously limited the size and scope of the audience your video could attract.

Meanwhile, YouTube is growing rapidly and now has become the 2nd largest search engine and plays a significant role in new customer acquisition.

Now I realized that there's a lot that can be learned from the top YouTubers you, your customers, or even your kids, are watching.

It's easy to think that you can just rattle off a video, especially if the content is something you're familiar with and/or short, but taking the time to properly script and even storyboard a video can really help save time, as well as force you to really think about what it is you're about to do.

Every video you upload has the potential of containing a clear CTA but do so with caution.

Throwing a million links all over your video as it plays and being all up in people’s faces with exclamation points isn't the right approach.

Instead, throw your CTA in a clear and contextual manner. At the end of the video, add in a link that recommends a webinar or eBook that would benefit the viewer, ask them to follow your social accounts, or to check your products/services.

So, we decided to fix the situation by investing more in videos, making them a crucial part of our overall marketing strategy. As a result, we got our brand message out effectively and in minutes.

Videos also helped us define and segment our audience more accurately. We created audience segments based on how much of the video was watched.

So for those who watched almost a full video, we market our products slightly differently than those who watched only a few seconds of it.

and how they worked. When we started adding video content showing people having fun playing our games, we found that engagement considerably increased.

In other words, we were focused on the features of our product in our video marketing, and not the benefits.

The result is spending a bunch of money creating videos that don't get watched and therefore don't drive sales.

To fix this, we hired a professional copywriter and video marketer to edit our script, make it MUCH less boring and turn it into a funny, well-produced video.

The difference in what they were able to achieve vs what originally wrote was staggering.

which resulted in our videos being too ‘salesy’.

We now realize that it’s super important to concentrate on the user question, ‘What are the benefits for me?’ Since then, we’ve had much better results with our video marketing

I changed our company's approach and strategy via video to educate and teach our existing customers instead.

Now that our customers get more value from our video, we finally saw a large bump in engagement across the board!

My mistake here was that I didn't ask anybody for feedback until I've already posted a few videos. People later pointed out that both my brand and my name weren't very visible in the videos.

Later on, I fixed that by changing the placement appropriately so that they became easily noticeable and much easier to recall.

On our educational YouTube channel, we share various tutorials – from data analytics to the most popular product development approaches.

While we focused on explaining the most basic GSheet functions in one of our videos, we didn’t adapt the video flow to fit beginners

In particular, our viewers shared comments about the presentation speed and the level of detail. And we listened to the viewers’ feedback.

Fortunately, the solution is simple yet effective: when creating videos, always check them from a viewer’s perspective. If possible, test a video draft with the actual target audience.

As per recent Google Search Central SEO office-hours, Google could either return the YouTube landing page in search results or the web page where the YouTube video is embedded.

Secondly, YouTube's video recommendations are designed to keep people watching videos and not to encourage users to sign-up for your product.

To overcome this, I have started hosting my videos on StoryXpress, a cloud-based video platform for business. Now I can personalize the video player, video page, analyze video performance, and can add in-video CTAs, leads forms, and banners.

This is something I've battled with a lot throughout my career and how I've overcome it is by asking myself, ‘what is the job to be done for this project?’

When you focus on the job to be done, you gain clarity on what you need, what you can expect, and how much time you put into the project.

Let's say you're planning to create a video overview of the product or service you are marketing - asking yourself "what's the job to be done" can uncover the structure of your video, the length, the features/services you mention, and the channels you want to use to promote it.

Video is a great way to build trust with your audience as people can actually see who you are and hear the way that you communicate. YouTube is an amazing place to post your videos. Even though it's somewhat saturated now, you can still get a lot of traction and eyeballs on your product or service.

And the best part about it is that once you make a video, it will be "working" for you while you sleep because people constantly search for videos on YouTube.

You can't simply post a video on social media or upload it to YouTube and expect it to bring in results, and yet so many people do just this.

If you're investing in video creation, you need to utilize your videos across multiple platforms and over an extended period of time. This means email, social media, and your website, as well as making the most of suitable advertising.

A detailed plan for your video content will increase reach and engagement, delivering more ROI for each video.

Now I realized not only do keyword-based videos create an informative and useful video, but it also helps to reach a wider audience of potential customers who need your products or services.

When it comes to promoting your company on the web, video marketing and SEO go hand in hand. You can create a blog post and its short version for the video and then use this text for your YouTube video.

As a result, you create a seamless customer experience and provide readers with more information when sharing your video explainer based on the same keywords.

Some people sent me feedback that I am going too much into details and sometimes less is more.

I learned that people who buy those courses are busy online entrepreneurs or agency owners who don't have a lot of time to watch videos and they want the information synthesized. I'll stick to that for my next video course.

When first starting out, we were making fabulous videos but making the mistake of not making our branding clear.

This meant that people were watching it and then going away without a clue as to who we are. We now make our branding crystal clear both orally and in the text on the screen.

Of course the campaign didn't work out as I had planned. Seeing such a constant low average video watch on the analytics, I decided to actually watch a couple of my videos to see where I'm making mistakes.

That’s where I know that I need to learn how to produce high-quality videos, or I'm just wasting my time. So, the lesson you can get from my mistake is that video marketing is the same as any other type of marketing. You need to know your chops and you need to learn and prepare before doing.

Probably the biggest of these was on my first ever attempt when I made the mistake of making my videos way too long.

This meant that people lost interest and got bored before they even got the main point. I’ve since learned to get to the point quickly and keep my video messaging short and dynamic.

I didn't realize that I used another browser, with personal settings and tabs opened. It was nothing serious or incriminating but still unprofessional.

What made it worse is that I realized it AFTER the video was published, not before. I edited and corrected the entire thing, took it down, and reuploaded the proper version.

Now I always make sure to double-check every aspect of a video before pressing the publish button.

However, regularly outsourcing can prove very expensive and until you really know your analytics you may not be able to accurately gauge your ROI.

It may be cheaper and more effective in the long run to amass the equipment and skills to tackle video production in-house.

(at least for me) and 2 hours later, feeling flat and deflated from lack of engagement on my landing page.

I realized that the video was actually marked as private so it wouldn't play because it was embedded. I quickly changed it to public and sent out an email admitting my blunder. Quite embarrassing at the time but I can laugh now!

I made several mistakes in making videos for my marketing. The most trivial? Having a bad microphone. Now I know that audio is KEY when recording videos!

The other very common mistake is not to think about who is watching your video. Try to be concise but provide value and useful information. The attention of the viewer is crucial.

The last mistake is to overcomplicate things. Try to create a video that is interesting for both beginners and those who already know the subject.

Even though my niche is pretty small, I did expect at least some clicks on the videos. What I didn't know about, is the fact that SEO applies to YouTube as well.

After optimizing the videos for proper keywords, I started to see the results. It was a piece of cake to fix—enriching your description and titles with particular phrases does the job.

Still, you have to do keyword research to see which ones apply to your niche. It took some time until the videos started ranking, but in the end, I did gain some traffic from them.

Not making our videos SEO friendly was one of our biggest mistakes as we gave our videos zero chances to rank high on the search results.

Optimizing a few things such as the title & meta description of the video, choosing an engaging thumbnail image, focusing on one video per page, and making sure the content of the entire page is relevant to the video will help your video rank higher and as a result be seen by more people.

One is forgetting that they're not just marketing to their own niche - many of your prospective customers are watching the same videos as the people who are already subscribed to you. So, chances are that if there is a major breakpoint in your video content or if your call-to-action is weak, it will bother people outside of your niche's comfort zone.

Then, companies fail to engage viewers with their content. The first step towards engagement is an effective introduction, which should break any ice and set the tone for the rest of your message or story.

Also, they present themselves as a salesperson instead of an expert in their field who is only summarizing information already publicly available. It's important to act like you're giving advice away rather than trying to sell something (even if you do want people to buy something).

We didn't know about the viewers' time commitment and didn't provide a lot of information or depth to what's being advertised. After all, if no one watches your video because it takes too long to load and is boring, you're out of luck!

Here are some quick tips on how we got over the mistake and turned our marketing videos to succeed:

• Keep your videos short and sweet
• Include captions in each scene so viewers know why they should keep watching
• Use engaging thumbnails if you're posting on social media
• Optimize SEO for better search results

Failing to formulate and strategically position tailor hook sentences throughout your script can make or break how successful your video is at retaining your viewers focus and attention. Attention span is dropping by the year and upkeeping dynamics of your narrative is now more crucial than ever.

A few years ago I created my first video course. I hired someone to make me an intro video and to include it at the beginning of each tutorial. It was a short 3 seconds video but the sound was a little bit higher than my voice. The students had to adjust the sound for every episode or to get annoyed by the intro.

I wish I didn’t have an intro for those tutorials. I wanted to make things fancier but sometimes doing things simply is much better.

We're often busy hiring the best editor, but we sometimes forget that the script is half the success of the overall video marketing. Moreover, the video should capture the viewer's attention in the first few seconds. Otherwise, they'll just leave it. Your effort would be wasted. A successful video is a collective effort of multiple pros in writing, editing, marketing, and more.

We embedded videos to key blog pages because we knew they would add more depth to our content. Later on, we focused on other content optimization activities and relied on videos less and less.

It was a huge mistake as we eventually realized that most of the best-performing pages we had in terms of organic search rankings had videos. Of course, there were numerous other SEO factors that came into play but we certainly had an "aha!" moment when we saw the numbers.