Video can be easily embedded on your company website and posted on social media, making your online presence more engaging, and more likely to convert potential customers into sales. Online videos are a powerful tool, but only if they’re produced well. Bad corporate videos can be profoundly ineffective, and sometimes even communicate the exact opposite of what you’re trying to do! Here are five common mistakes made with corporate videos.
#1 Expecting Experienced Video Out of the Inexperienced
One of the most common corporate mistakes is to find somebody working in your organization, hand them a camera and demand a video by the end of the month. Properly assembling any video takes time, planning and dedicated resources. Assigning the task to an employee, in addition to their usual workload, means you’re unlikely to get the results you want. Producing a truly engaging video is much more than a side project, and requires considerable time and expertise. You can also expect poor results if you hire an unproven film student. Incorporate videos, just like any other aspect of the business, you get what you pay for. Would you hire a first-year accounting student to be your Chief Financial Officer? Would you appoint a business graduate fresh out of college as your CEO? Why would you hire somebody with a limited video portfolio to essentially serve as your public face for millions of potential clients? Inexperience, especially in corporate videos, costs you money and time, and the results may well be below your standards. You need these videos to convert sales prospects, and an amateurish video could turn them off.
#2 Lack of Direction
Corporate videos need to be concise, both in terms of time and in terms of message, so expert planning and project management are crucial. You need to present an idea or concept in a way that’s concise, simple to grasp, and doesn’t get bogged down in trivia. Potential customers have very short attention spans, and won’t wait around for a meandering, directionless video that takes a long time to get its point across. In many ways, a good corporate video is like a good movie. It’s fully aware of its audience, and it carefully considers the needs of that audience. Great movies rarely happen when you decide to just show up and wing it, and good corporate videos rarely result from that, either.
#3 Bad Visual Production
Video producers don’t show up with light gear, filters, reflectors and other equipment because they like to mess around with the stuff. They have it because, without it, you can have a washed out, ugly image or a corporate video that has so many shadows, it looks like a bad crime movie. Far too many corporate videos are shot with the belief that, “it can be fixed in post.” This is rarely true. To make a truly professional, engaging video, you have to start with high production value from the beginning of the process. Bad lighting and poor composition will turn off your viewers immediately, and your video will be very unlikely to convert them to a sale.
#4 Bad Sound
We separate this from the rest of the production because so many otherwise well-produced videos fall squarely into this trap. It’s much more difficult to fool the ear than it is to fool the eye. There are many subtle mistakes that can be made in corporate videos, visually, that many without training will gloss over. Abrupt jumps in dialogue, excessive amounts of hum and hiss and cable noise are just a few of the problems inexperienced video producers run into, and they can ruin your video far more effectively than any visual mistake.
#5 Stiff Presentation
A good corporate video is built as much on those in front of the camera as those behind it, and an experienced video producer knows how to put camera-shy or otherwise awkward employees at ease. People can tell when subjects on camera are uncomfortable, and it tends to impact their ability to absorb the message. Corporate videos made by professionals will keep discomfort for everybody to a minimum.
