Today the audience is not so easily amused, so still pictures don’t do the trick anymore. This is why most advertising campaigns are built on promotional video production, to put it short – video sells. Statistics says that over 65% of people who plan to buy something watch a video prior to purchasing. So for a business owner today it’s literally vital to have a promotional video that can be put out into the world to attract new clients.
What do you want to say?
To create a successful promotional video production you first of all need to understand what message will be encoded into the video. What is the main idea of the video? What do you want to focus on: the product or service itself; the benefits that your audience will get from your product or services; the feelings that your product or service arouses? There are quite a lot of strategies that have proven to be effective, such as using animations. Yet, today we would like to talk not about strategies that you can rely on, but rather about mistakes that you need to avoid at all costs. Below you will read about seven most common mistakes in promotional video production. Learn from mistakes of others and be on top of the world!
7 mistakes in promotional video production to avoid
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Talking too much
You might have heard that people don’t read much today, they watch videos. Yet, they got so lazy that videos with lots of text and longer than two minutes in total won’t have any effect. Your audience simply won’t watch such a video till the end, and your message won’t reach its audience. Your goal is to make your promotional video production short and informative. However, if you have a lot of information then break it into a series of promotional videos. Too many facts that are forcibly fit into one short video pose huge risks of offering misleading and confusing information to the audience. Focus on no more than 1-2 aspects that appeal to the audience per one short video.
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Bad or no script at all
If you don’t want people to look at your promotional video production and have a question “What the heck?” or “Who wrote this hell?”, then always have a script before you start shooting. Whether your clip will be 2 minutes or a full-length movie, the script can either save or kill your whole idea. This is the golden rule of Hollywood, so better stick to it.
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Putting the focus on production
Some business people believe that by showing production process to the target audience, you can win their hearts because your production looks great. Well, in the real world it is not. By focusing on the production process you literally overproduce your clip and confuse the main idea of the video. Keep in mind that your promotional video production is not your final goal. Video production process is only meant to reach your target audience and put some message in its head. Keep it all simple.
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Technical issues and lack of mobile-friendliness
There is nothing worse in this world than an incompetently and poor video production. And there is nothing more frustrating to a potential customer than a video that won’t play correctly! If in the process of promotional video production you won’t make it phone and tablet friendly, then you can forget about a half of your potential viewers. Should your video be of low quality, with mismatching audio and video tracks, little glitches or some errors in the middle, be sure to lose another half of your potential audience. Before you upload the final version of a video anywhere into the global net, double check that it’s done properly and works in the correct way.
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Lack of focus on “pain points”
Before you get down to the production, promotional video professionals advise to bear in mind that you’re creating the video for your audience and not for yourself. This means that first of all, you need to understand what your audience likes or needs, what it wants you to clarify and what is already completely clear. Once you find out about these “pain points” of the audience, you need to base your video on it. Don’t also forget that you should not only mention the “pain points”, but also clarify them and give some solutions in a promotional video.
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Forgetting the ‘call to action’
Calling to action in your promotional videos is psychology 101. A lot of website owners don’t believe in this fact or get shy about using the straight language to call the audience to action. But you need to remember that if you don’t call your audience, someone else will! You need to clearly state at the end of every video what you want your audience members to do eventually: sign up for the news, visit some website page, buy something on sale, invite friends, like your youtube channel, etc. Not calling for direct action, in the end, becomes one of the worst disappointing mistakes that can be made in promotional video production process.
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Lack of purpose
Every promotional video production must have a purpose in its core. And this message must always be clearly stated to the audience in the very beginning. Forget to do so, and you’ll mislead your potential buyers and leave no information in their heads in the end. Be smart and by selecting the right purpose for your video (explainer, sales, corporate, or a PR video) and reach your goal with little effort.
You can see that all the above-mentioned promotional video production mistakes are very obvious, yet unfortunately too common in the modern times. Now, as you’ve read about them we hope that your videos will go smoothly and be clear to the target audience. Keep them in mind and make your viewers do exactly what you need them to!
