High Quality Videos may not be worth it.
There is one unspoken truth about video marketing the few will tell you.
Save your money and don’t spend money on a video with high production values.
Now I know you are thinking to yourselves what utter nonsense. Blasphemy!!
But hear me out before you get all huffy and puffy . I’m a big proponent of striving to attain the best quality in all aspects of business. However, when it comes to video production, the quality of the visuals only really matters if someone actually watches your video. So without putting the proper effort into implementing a comprehensive video marketing strategy that includes a post production distribution, monitoring and refinement plan, your high end video will have a limited return on it’s investment. What that means is that you’ve wasted money that could be put to better use.
The truth is that many companies are simply wasting thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars making a marketing video that has great production values that has limited ROI.
A marketing video such as a Branded company video, an Explainer Video or even a Retail Product video is just a tool. Simply a conduit to the next step in a marketing or sales funnel. And like any tool – it needs to be used properly to get the best results.
So stop trying to make a ‘perfect’ video. Why? – Because most business marketing videos – whether they be branded content videos, overview style videos or even product demonstration videos are only 30 – 90 seconds in length. (Not enough time to prepare a bag of microwave popcorn.) And what really counts is not the production value but whether the viewer took action (immediate or delayed) based on what they saw.
What really counts is who is really watching your videos, for how long and most importantly – what they do afterwards.
Of course a better produced video will drive longer viewership, but only up to a point.
There are six main areas of a good Video Marketing program – Strategy, Planning, Execution, Distribution, Measurement and Refinement.
Unfortunately the one that gets the most attention is the Execution/Production stage. While other aspects – strategy/planning and distribution measurement and refinement get the least amount of ‘love’.
Since an increasing percentage of business videos are watched on a small mobile device, many of the high production values aren’t even noticed. No one is paying attention to the small details in the background that your video production team spent hours perfecting. (Note – don’t let video production ‘creatives’ drive the entire marketing aspect of your video without coordination with the post production team)
It’s crucially important to monitor how someone actually watched the video.
Think about it. Most B2B and even a large portion of B2C videos – which cost anywhere from a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars – never get watched all the way to the end. An engagement of 80{3e9617ed35741cdf289e64273d2e13c32b046ef3556ba3b1d2bc684943f1f2ba} (meaning that 80{3e9617ed35741cdf289e64273d2e13c32b046ef3556ba3b1d2bc684943f1f2ba} of viewers watched the entire video) is considered high. Most videos actually have a significant viewership drop-off after 30-60 seconds. Or less.
That means that companies are paying lots of money for something that nobody watches.
Which leads me to the central point of this blog (rant).
What really counts is not the creative component – but how the video is used.
Using an a sport analogy – like golf. It’s not the golf clubs that we care about, but how they can be used to get results we want. The same is true with video production and video marketing. The emphasis is so often misplaced – with the bulk of the attention on the production component and not on how the video will actually be used.
You can produce the greatest video ever made, but if you don’t leave something (a lot actually) for distribution and promoting the video correctly – then the investment in the video will not be realized.
You think the famous Dollar Shave Club video just happened to go ‘viral’ by itself. WRONG.
The story goes that it was made with a shoestring budget. And then it went viral and the rest is history. (The company was sold for $1 Billion in 2016!!)
Everyone applauds the founders on making it happen on a shoestring budget. But was that really the story? Not quite – This was a very well coordinated effort – well before production started and continued after the video was completed. Without the strategic use of social media, understanding timing and other post distribution activities, the video would not have gone as viral.
So – stop wasting your money on high end video production and start using more of your video marketing budget on what really counts – getting it watched by the right people.