With the advent of video marketing, it has become far easier to speak directly to your audience without having to invest in expensive TV commercials. It is also a worthwhile investment for its ability to create better retention rates and interactivity with the viewer. Yet with more ways to market video content, there comes an increased difficulty in differentiating your videos from all the rest. Additionally, you cannot simply assume that because you have a large following on social media by preaching one message that you will be able to see quick or even tangible results from your marketing efforts on YouTube. Envision marketing is the goal. But before you can envision marketing, you must first be successful in recognizing the great challenge involved.
Here are some of the more difficult things about video marketing:
1. Your viewers have a short attention span.
You might have heard that the average attention span of an adult is 8 seconds. The reality, however, is quite different from what you would expect. In fact, the cognitive processing of human beings goes down to approximately 5 seconds; which means that if your message cannot be easily communicated within the first 5 seconds, chances are that you will lose your audience’s interest before they can even process what you want to communicate in the first place. You need to establish your message immediately or face losing your core audience before you can even start getting them to take action as part of a call-to-action (CTA).
2. Video marketing is not straightforward.
You have to understand that when you make a video, it will not just reflect your brand personality and overall message. It will be judged by how well it relates to the current trends and tastes in the online world. Prior to even thinking about producing a video, due attention should be given to analyzing your social media profile and the actual cross sections of your niche’s audience before finalizing on what kind of video you can produce that will ensure that you have at least 75% retention rate upon first watch.
3. Targeting your audience’s age has become increasingly complicated.
In online marketing, you have to be more strategic in your video production. This is particularly true of videos that are produced using YouTube and other video-sharing sites. For one thing, you need to know your viewer’s age range: what they are into and how old they actually are; watching the first five minutes of a video will give you a good idea of whether or not they are in the target audience for it. Just because some viewers have commented on the same topic does not always mean that they would necessarily be interested in watching the same video again.
4. Cost is not the only challenge with video marketing.
There is no way you can simply go ahead and produce a video for the sake of it being made. You must consider how much it will cost, how much your audience will like it, how much time you have to make it, etc. You also have to understand that everything you produce will have to be moderated and edited by professionals who have expertise in creating videos of a similar level as your own; this means that your video’s production must first pass through their hands before they can even post it on their website or YouTube account.
5. You cannot just rely on your social media accounts.
In order to market your videos, you have to engage in real-time marketing by having a constant presence on social networks like Facebook and Twitter for example; YouTube’s algorithms are more focused on the number of views, interactions and watch times rather than the amount of followers that a person has or how many “likes” they have received. By creating video content that is unique from other people’s content, it will be easier for you to get noticed. Otherwise, even if you have a high-quality video uploaded to your channel, it will not be able to stand out from the crowd.
6. Video marketing can be a long process.
There are many things that you need to consider before producing a video online. You have to know how much time you can devote to it; drawing from the aforementioned factors, you need to do your own market research and find out what your target market is like before starting on every aspect of the video, from the video’s production through its editing. You also have to decide on how much content you want included in it. You must first be able to determine the core message that you want to convey about your video and then think of ways of delivering it that will meet with your target market’s needs.
7. You cannot just produce videos and expect them to bring you success.
Just because you have a lot of fans on social media platforms is not a guarantee that they will also watch your videos regularly and with increasing frequency as time passes by; another factor is the quality of the video itself.
