Eight Corporate Video Mistakes to Avoid
A carefully planned, creatively filmed and cleverly marketed corporate video can be a real asset to any business. Whether used to explain your product or build thought leadership, a corporate video is an investment that can yield great benefits. However, in my experience, many companies get their entire corporate video strategy wrong. Here are eight mistakes I've seen companies make:
1.
Calling in quotes from every video agency you can find. This is a huge waste of time— yours and theirs. Get quotes from three agencies and compare those.
2.
Getting quotes before setting a budget. Asking a video agency to quote a project without giving them an indication of the ballpark figure means you'll never be able to compare quotes. Most agencies will curb their creativity to provide the lowest possible price.
3.
Striking the wrong tone. Once you know what you need and how best to portray this in your video, you need to strike the right tone with your audience. Don't make it all about you. A video about the history of your company is far less engaging than a video that addresses a prospect's biggest challenge.
4.
Writing the script yourself. Saving on script writing by doing it in-house could result in a watered-down corporate script that just doesn't do the visuals justice. Script writing is an art— leave it to the professionals.
5.
Doing your own voiceover. This is another corner companies like to cut. But there are plenty of scientific studies that reveal that certain voices (accents, genders and tones) do better with certain audiences. Using the right voice for your audience will make your video more effective.
6.
Copying the latest viral video. Be careful of fads. If you insist on parodying a recent video fad or recreating a style you've seen before, you run the risk of "dating" your video. Going down the overly trendy route could land you in hot water down the road.
7.
Letting your video gather dust. Make sure you work with a company that can also help you get the finished video in front of the right people. Whether that's through great PR, social media or targeted online advertising, you need to think about getting maximum ROI out of your video.
8.
Voting on the creatives. We've seen many video briefs, and those where every person in the company has had their input usually become long, dull flops. To avoid a decision by committee, assign final authority to one person and trust them to make the right decision.
