Top 6 Worst Mistakes B2B Companies Make In Their Video Content
Video has been a buzzword for a while now. Everywhere I look, companies are hiring videographers and content marketers so they can hop on the bandwagon. The hype is based in reality: video performs incredibly well.
Or at least, it should. So why is nobody watching your videos?
Probably because you’re doing it wrong.
Every time I scroll through my LinkedIn feed or scope out a company on YouTube, I run into the same glaring mistakes. As a content marketer--no, as a human being using the internet--I find these mistakes offensive on a deeply personal level. Especially since, with the exception of #1 and #2, these things are so easily fixed.
The video format performs well in general, but that doesn’t make it a magic pill. You can’t slap together a random video and expect the views, comments, and shares to roll in.
Companies of every size and industry make these mistakes, but by far the biggest offenders are B2B companies. There are some who might say that video content simply doesn’t work for B2B. Well, those people are wrong, and I will fight them. Seriously, name the time and place. I’m a Texas girl, we’re scrappy.
Listed below are the top 6 mistakes B2B companies keep making with their videos. Over. And over. And over again. It needs to stop.
So please write these down and email them to your content marketing teams or your social media managers or your 20-year-old intern Billy--whoever handles your video posts.
6. Title is bad and not optimized for Search
This is the easiest thing to fix. I’ve seen everything from titles that don’t at all describe what the video’s about to titles like “Customer Story: Jane Doe”, or, the worst, a literal filename. Like VideoXYZ-June2018.mp4. For reals.
First of all, none of these are optimized for search engines. Titles are especially important for YouTube. You literally will not show up in search with a title like “Customer Story: Jane Doe”. Nobody knows who Jane Doe is, so nobody is searching for her. And there are a bazillion customer story videos out there. You will be relegated to the last search result on Page 532439847293.
People search for answers to their questions. Make sure your titles are filled with the keywords they’ll be using. In a way that makes sense, of course. Definitely don’t just slap a list of keywords into the title and assume that'll get you anywhere.
Give people a reason to click. Name the video something that describes the value of what’s in it. And, you want the title to tell a bit of the story.
For example, try something like “How CUSTOMER COMPANY used YOUR PRODUCT to decrease downtime by 1 MILLION %”. Keywords here are the company name, your product name, and the big problem it solves that people are searching for. In this case, "downtime". Now viewers are thinking, “Oh hey, that’s a company I know, and I have that same problem. How did they deal with that?”
5. Thumbnail is bad or *gasp* not customized at all.
The worst ones are where the company didn’t bother to select a thumbnail. In these cases, either the platform pulls a random screenshot or it just displays a blank screen. I hope I don’t have to explain why this is bad but it’s real bad, y’all. Not only could it potentially just be an ugly thumbnail, but how can we see what this video is going to be like if it’s just a black screen? Is my phone being censored? Did the government decide I’m not allowed to know The Top Ten Reasons Why Black Widow Needs Her Own Movie?
The second worst are the ones that are just designed bad. These are either a screenshot of the video that tells me nothing of what I can expect, or it’s just ugly and boring. Why would I expect the video to be any better than its cover?
4. No end screens.
This is mostly a YouTube thing, but it can also apply to videos on your .com property if you’re using a platform like Brightcove/Wistia/VidYard/etc. When the video ends, the customer experience ends.
The ideal end of a video has somewhere for people to go or something for them to do. Make it easy for them to binge. This is where an end screen comes into play, or a link in the video description.
You have to guide people in what you want them to do next.
People are lazy, and 99% of them aren’t going to do the work of digging around to find out more of your content. (That final 1% is partially (a) nerds who will do anything to find out more, and (b) people like me who want to see just how many hoops we have to jump through simply to get to one thing, all so we can sit on our high horses and judge. And oh, do I judge.)
3. No Subtitles, no “baked in” text
85% of Facebook viewers watch with the sound off. If you think about how you watch videos, you’re probably scrolling through your phone in a public place. Or under your desk during a boring meeting.
So yeah, probably not gonna turn the sound on.
If you add subtitles, people are more likely to watch. Even better, use “baked in” text. That’s where the message is a graphic part of the video. The best versions of this are the ones where the text delivers the same story simply through its design. You can get the whole experience of the video’s tone or message with the sound off.
Now you don't have to annoy people on the train by watching Buzzfeed videos out loud.
2. Not optimized for mobile viewing
Just like most people are watching videos with the sound off, they’re also watching on mobile devices. Vertical videos see a 90% higher completion rate vs horizontal videos. Plus, they get 4x more engagement.
My hot take is that any video not on your .com property should be vertical or square. Why? Because normal 16:9 videos are freakin’ tiny on a mobile screen. When people are scrolling their feeds, it takes up so little real estate you blink and then you miss it.
With a square or vertical video, it takes up most of the screen. So not only does it literally take longer to scroll past, but it’s much more eye-catching and pleasing to watch. Plus you don’t have to turn your phone on the side to expand it like you would with 16:9.
This requires more work to fix because not all pre-existing horizontal videos are going to convert to this format easily. Convert what you can, and then plan for future videos to be shot with this in mind.
1. Doesn’t tell a story and/or it’s boring.
I don’t care if you’re selling movies, toothbrushes, or highly complicated financial software, people are people, and people like stories. Most company videos don’t tell stories. They tell long lists of reasons why they’re awesome.
Nobody cares.
What they do care about is themselves.
You can monitor audience interest levels by tracking the average watch time. This is the percentage of the video that most people are watching. High percentage means they’re consuming most of the video. Low percentage means they’re bouncing early. Probably because it’s hella boring.
To fix this? Provide value to your audience. Tell them how you can make their lives better, and tell it like a story, with a conflict and everything. Like how a problem affects people’s day to day lives, how bad it can get if they don’t solve it, and then how XYZ product saves the day. That’s interesting. It won’t be Game of Thrones, but at least it’s watchable and resonates with the viewer.
This is the hardest mistake to fix because it takes the most planning. You have to stop and think about why you need a video and why anybody should bother watching it.
So now that you're armed with the knowledge of how to not screw up your whole video strategy, you can go forth and conquer the world. Of video, anyway. It’ll take time, but I have faith in you.
