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Seven Mistakes When Producing Marketing Video; The Do’s and Don’ts of Marketing with Video for the Web By Ed Primeau

Guest post by: Edward Primeau

Article Overview: Watch out for common mistakes that are easily made when producing marketing video. This article will save you money if you are about to produce marketing video. Learn how to make it short and simple; be clear and have a creative vision.

Seven Mistakes When Producing Marketing Video; The Do’s and Don’ts of Marketing with Video for the Web By Ed Primeau

Video is still one of the most viable tools for Internet marketing. A Web video campaign will help put your website closer to the top of search results. Marketing video content is critical because it’s the content that search engines crave. Of course you can add a selling edge to your marketing video as well as be creative with your content. Professionally produced video works best and represents your companies perceived value the most. However, you can record your own video content with low priced solutions and a little understand of a video software editing program like Windows Movie Maker.

Some items to consider adding to your video are:

- A script so you know what has to be communicated

- Titling to reinforce your points and communicate without sound

- Production music adds to the design of your video

- Audio post production to balance out and maximize your sound

You may have noticed that there are many production companies available today that can help you produce video. Be careful, in many cases you can produce video as good if not better than most of them. When choosing a video production company, look at their past clients, the quality of their work and their reputation in their industry.

Here are a few items (seven to be exact) to avoid when producing marketing video for the web:

Seven Mistakes to Avoid Regardless!

1. Try to Fit Your Message into One Video

Don’t try to squeeze everything about your message into one video. It’s better to create a series of videos and keep them bite sized.

You're better off creating a series of shorter videos and focus on a particular aspect of your message. Ten minutes is generally the maximum you can hold someone's attention on the Web.

For example, You Tube has a play list option that allows you to post a series of clips and have them back to back in order of content flow. Similar methodology can be used for short website video clips. Ask your webmaster or give us a shout if you would like to learn more.

2. Try to Please Everybody.

No matter how good you are, you are not going to please everybody with your video. Somebody will not like what you do no matter what. Rather, let your instinct guide your creativity and be yourself. There are people who will not like you or your message no matter what! Do not try to appeal to everybody when producing a marketing video will lengthen your video and confuse your market niche. You are so much better off focusing on your best customer and create a video just for them .

3. Not Be Clear with Your Brand

Marketing is all about creating a brand or identity so that people will remember you. When small talk conversations bring you business, you know you have the right brand or identity. You hear people say things like, “I want to hire that spreading contagious enthusiasm lady”.

Your brand is your personality that people will recognize and remember. Companies like Starbucks and McDonalds continuously create new products for the same customers because they have established a strong brand. I am not saying you and your company have to be as large as Starbucks, but why not at least identify their success formula. Instead of trying to get more customers, sell new products to your existing ones.

Sure new customers will come along but the existing ones that already know and love you will buy your new product. Video helps to create a buzz for that new product launch.

4. The need to accommodate everybody's agenda.

As companies grow they hire new people, and wherever there are groups of people there are opposing opinions, and opinions can very easily turn into agendas. Your sales people want lower prices, your accountant wants higher prices, and your advertising people want something new; everybody has an agenda and they all conflict with each other. The result is compromise. And compromise kills brand personality and corporate identity.

Even big companies with deep pockets and access to any and every expert in the world are susceptible to agenda creep. Take the fast food giant McDonald's for example. Their television advertising is all over the place. They use different themes, different approaches, and even different music in almost every commercial, each aimed at a different market with a different product offering. The only thing that seems to be consistent is the logo and signature jingle that is slapped on to the end of each spot. As individual commercials they my stand up, obviously they have high production qualities but as a marketing message strategy they become mere advertising noise rather than building on each other to form a coherent approach and brand message. What they seem to want to say is that McDonald's is for everybody no matter what age or food preference, and that kind of approach only leads to a muddled message. McDonald's may get away with it in the short term because they are McDonald's and have a long history of effective advertising. Whether McDonald's simultaneous multiple campaign approach is the result of a desire to accommodate different agendas, or just designed to appeal to everybody doesn't matter, the result is the same - muddled messaging.

5. The lack of vision.

And speaking of corporate identity, do you have one? Do you have a vision, a point-of-view, an attitude; a perspective on how you can best serve your clients. The idea of a corporate vision is something that is easy to ignore, after all, how much is a corporate vision worth? It's not like you can go on eBay or Amazon and download one for a few bucks.

I recall seeing a documentary on a very successful clothing manufacturer. The founder of the company was reviewing the company's latest line of running shoes. He looked at the shoes, looked at the product manager, and said, "Where's the logo?" to which the product manager answered, "We can add it anywhere." The company CEO in no uncertain terms told the executive that that wasn't good enough. The logo represented the company and the company represented a particular lifestyle. The shoe being presented was just another shoe and that was not acceptable. The shoe needed to fit the ideal for which the company stood. The CEO had a vision and everything the company did had to conform to that vision. Developing and presenting a unified corporate vision is how you create a brand and how you build a business.

6. The fear of failure.

No matter how good you are, you are bound to have some failures. These are learning experiences from which you can develop new and improved initiatives. Building a brand identity is a slow and continuous process and it doesn’t always move forward without some bumps in the road. Sometimes what initially appears to be a failure is not a failure at all, but rather the foundation for future more successful efforts. As long as your company has a vision of whom it is, what it does, and why your audience should care, and as long as you stick to that vision, you will ultimately find a way to get your message across as long as you keep trying.

Like any kind of advertising program, whether it’s video, print, or anything else, one-shot efforts almost never show results.

7. It’s all about the features.

The insistence on promoting features without tying them to an emotional benefit is one of the most common marketing mistakes made. You may be offering your customers the most features available but unless you also offer them an emotional value proposition, you will never get beyond the “whose-the-cheapest” type of sale process.

No matter what features you add to your product or service, you know your competitors will follow with something better, and probably at a lower price. It’s a game no smart marketing executive should play. Discovering the emotional value in your product or service is not always easy when viewed from an internal perspective. If you haven’t discovered what that underlying subliminal value is and how to communicate it then your producer needs to help you find it. It’s the most important element in building long-term marketing success.

Conclusion

There you have it, the seven deadly video marketing development sins. No one said this stuff is easy. It would be nice if you could just look at your analytics, and eureka, a marketing solution would appear, but that’s not the way it works. Marketing is a psychological marathon that takes time, commitment, practice, and a good coach you can call on to move you in the right direction.

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Article Tags: brand, creative vision, dos and donts, marketing, money, primeau, video production
Referred by: http://www.rgrondeauenterprises.com



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Dramatized the product - Tough one... It's going to have t be a mix of different media. 1. Testimonials of current owners of the product and how it's helped them. This can be done thru Video and print 2. Somehow I believe there will have to be Video of it being "dramatized" 3. People of influence will have to support or sponsor the product. just some that came to mind..
Re: How do you earn trust with an online business? - Add VALUE to your target market. How? Well depends. If your business can start by Educating the target market about how your product or Service can add value to their lives. This can be done via Video (hot right now), basic text, audio etc. I've had a lot of success with Video and am using it primarily as a lead generation tool. If done right your Content can add Value and add to your bottom line at the same time while building Trust.
Re: Traffic! How do you get it? - Traffic is the lifeblood of your internet business and it is one of the most popular questions asked all the time how do I get more traffic. The following are some good strategies that are proven to work to help ou gain traffic to your website A) Forum Marketing b) Article Marketing - (Where you distribute your content is the key to success with Article marketing) c) Video Marketing d) Blogging e) Social Media ( sharing content amoungst a targeted network of friends or creating Fan Pages and updating) f) Ezine advertising ( send solo mailings to email lists of people within your niche) Go to google and type in your niche name followed by ezine or newsletter g) Pay per Click H) Joint ventures and ad swaps ( generally will need a list of email subscribers of your own) I) Classified adverts online J) Banner and Image ads - go to google and type in google image ads - full tutorial their I would reccomend you pick one strategy and learn it until you can generate some great traffic and then you should look to move on and implement other strategies.
Re: need pricing help please - here's my opinion that was derived from the person I heard it from (Russell Brunson) I view internet Marketing products as a Ladder. At the bottom of the Ladder is ebooks and at the top is One on One Coaching. so the ladder would look like this starting from the Top ($$$) to Bottom($) One-to-One Coaching ($$$$$$) Workshops ($$$$$) Teleseminars ($$$$) Video($$$) Audio ($$) ebooks ($) I agree with this methodology mainly because of the convenience factor and value from the customers point of view.
Re: What is your Business? - We are running a Online Marketing Firm and we have some good clients to which we are offering a complete Digital Marketing strategy like Search, Mobile Marketing, Branding and Design. I think in Online Marketing company online presence can be a wining factor for the success of the company.


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