Brand videos, when done right, allow businesses to share their visions and brand motivations with their audience. Companies get to break away from the day-to-day salesy content and focus on something that genuinely helps them impact their audience.
If you’re here, chances are your brand video is not hitting the mark, and it is only getting people to drop out of your videos only upon clicking play. Well, it shouldn’t be this way.
In this article, we’ll show you the top eight reasons why your brand video is failing and how you can fix them to ensure better results and a great experience for your viewers. So, let’s get started.
1. Your brand video feels like marketing
As per its definition, a brand video should aim to share your brand’s unique vision and reasons for being. If your brand video comes across as trying to sell a product or get people to sign up for something, it won’t work. The purpose of the video is to gain new target audiences, so it makes no sense to offer a product or sell.
In a literal sense, your brand video should tell viewers who you are and why you are who you are. It doesn’t need to be promotional. All you need is to appear natural and share a story that people can relate to with a simple call to action to learn more about you.
How to fix this
The goal of a brand video is to attract attention, increase brand awareness and, most importantly, humanize your brand by giving it a purpose and people to please. And that’s all your brand video needs to be. You need to present your brand’s purpose and mission at a high level to inspire and motivate viewers to want to know more about you.
For example, you can find commonalities between you and your audience or the aspects of your business that matter most to them and frame your brand mission and visions around those points. This will make your story more powerful, and viewers can quickly identify with your brand and act on your call to action.
2. It doesn’t tell a story
When it comes to brand videos, the biggest asset you can leverage to make your video impactful and touch your viewers is storytelling. Storytelling allows you to hook your viewers, connect with them at a core level, and get your message across. You’re missing a big deal when you fail this, and your brand videos will flop.
Storytelling is the best way to communicate your brand story. Your viewers will be able to understand how your company operates and its goals. They’ll also understand what makes your business unique, and that’ll make them feel more connected to your brand than any other.
How to make sure you develop strong storytelling for your brand video
You can tell two stories at once. So, first thing, you need to ensure you transmit one message at a time. Also, develop a storyboard and ensure that the text leverages emotional or psychological elements to hook and win the viewers’ hearts.
3. It doesn’t resonate with your audience
If your target audience doesn’t identify with your brand video, it’s doomed to fail. The problem is that it’s easy to get excited about your business and make the video all about you without considering the audience. This hurts your branded video’s performance for two reasons.
First, viewers will drop out of your video before going any further because they won’t identify with the message. Second, they will leave the video without hearing the message you want them to hear. The truth is that you can engage and persuade your audience with a good story, not with facts and figures. So here’s what you need to do.
How to ensure your video is well-aligned with your target audience
Your goal with this is to ensure that your brand video rolls within your target audience’s ballpark. So you have to sketch a unique way of telling your brand story to your target audience and make sure you provide value. Your story needs to be structured to be simple, clear, and understandable to the audience.
You should also conduct research on your existing and potential customers to identify what matters to them the most. You will then use this information to include specific elements in your brand video, such as a relatable example, to make the video valuable to the target audience. This will also help you shape your story to hook them and touch their emotions.
4. Unclear message
Imagine someone telling you an exciting story but not making it clear to understand. How could you even tell it was an exciting story in the first place?
Part of your brand video’s goal is to communicate your brand’s story, mission, and vision clearly and compellingly. Viewers need to identify with your brand through your message. Falling short of delivering a clear message will confuse viewers about the core message and true purpose of your brand video, and it will fall flat.
How to deliver a clear message in your brand video
To do this, you need to come down to the fact that the brand video is not about you. It’s simply a means for you to share your story and pick up a few more fans, and so you need to break away from the use of industry jargon and only focus on messaging that your audience can relate to. You should strive to keep your script short and only focus on information that matters, as too much information also leads to misinformation.
5. Lack of a clear call to action
When you add a call to action to your brand video, it allows you to keep viewers engaged and provide them with a next step to doing business with you. And so when you spend a hard time creating a killer brand video without a call to action, it’s like hooking the viewers and then breaking loose from the communication.
When your brand video lacks a clear CTA, even if viewers loved it and want to follow up with your brand, they’re left in the dark, and you might lose them to competitors.
How to ensure you have a clear CTA
Think and articulate clearly what you want the viewers to do after watching your brand video. Do you want them to watch another video? Perhaps you want them to check your website or a specific content resource? Whatever you want them to do, say it out loud and clear in your brand video.
6. Lengthy video
For your brand video to be effective, you need viewers to watch it from start to finish. And chances are, your call to action is at the end of the video. This means that the longer your video is, the more it will hurt its performance. No matter how cool your brand is, no one will spend long minutes or hours watching a video about your brand.
How to ensure you hit the sweet spot regarding your brand video length
When it comes to brand videos, the shorter and smoother you can keep your videos, the more you can win with them. Overly long branded videos will only bore viewers. You should strive to keep your script and storyboard direct and concise. Provide them with a crisp and vivid brand story that leaves them wanting more. Ideally, your brand video should be between 1 and 2 minutes long. Keep in mind that the sweet spot for length is 90 seconds.
7. No video promotion or distribution strategy
You may have built the most inspirational and moving brand video, but if people don’t watch it, nothing else matters. Your primary goal with a brand video is to increase brand awareness and win new audiences by telling your brand story.
So, your brand video can only be successful as people view it and like it. And that’s why the lack of a video distribution strategy will make your videos fail. So, it’s not just about making a great video. You should also strive to bring it in front of your target audience.
How to promote your brand videos
Posting your brand video on your website is just the first step in getting the video out there. Next, you need to optimize the page with relevant keywords (based on search intent) to drive traffic to watch the video. While you’re at it, you should also learn some video SEO to ensure your video posts are up to a high-level standard.
You should also promote your video in places outside your website and publish it on social media platforms with millions of monthly active users. This can be YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, industry portals, and all other places you can reach your target audience.
8. Lack of a well-thought-out video production strategy
Your video production strategy can also make or break your brand video. Videos are generally produced in three phases: pre-production, production, and post product. Of the three phases, pre-production is the most important phase, given that this is where you genuinely prepare the video.
This is the stage you prepare the script, the visual element, the people, and everything that goes into your brand video. So, if you are not satisfied with the overall performance of your brand video, there is a good chance that you have neglected or omitted this phase before starting the execution process.
How to ensure a great video production strategy
The first thing to do is to create a storyboard for your video. Doing so will allow you to precisely determine what will be said and shown in your brand video, i.e., the ideas, message, visual elements, locations, resources, and people.
Note that you must develop the storyboard yourself. This is because video production doesn’t know your audience as well as you do. You can also choose to work with the video production company on storyboarding and scripting.
Once you have developed the storyboard, the video production team will be able to perform these tasks in the proper style. You should also be involved in the editing process to ensure that the i’s are dotted, and the t’s are crossed.
Wrap-up
The importance of brand videos for businesses is hard to overstate. Yet, most companies fail to produce the perfect brand video to reach their audience due to common mistakes. The key is to always make sure that you tell a story that your audience can understand and relate to.
You should also strive to keep your video non-promotional, short, non-aggressive and end it with a clear call to action.