5 Reasons Why Your Online Video Strategy Isn’t Working

Take a few minutes to browse the Internet, and you will find countless articles providing tips and tricks to improve an online video strategy. By now, most marketers understand the importance of online video to successful content strategy. Yet, many brands creating online videos may not see the results they expected. So how do you troubleshoot your next campaign? Here are the five most common issues our agency sees working with video publishers.

A Formal Online Video Strategy Doesn't Exist

We run into numerous instances where large companies did not create and outline an online video strategy.

In today’s fast-paced, 24-hour media cycle, many companies feel pressure to start publishing videos on their website or social channels without thinking about the bigger picture. Unfortunately, this approach can often lead to diluted branding, mixed messaging, and confusion among your audience.

Online video is as an extension of your overall marketing strategy and therefore needs to align with proper campaign goals. Additionally, the video content's quality should reflect your brand. Your company videos should have the same tone, voice, branding, and production value as the rest of your customer-facing content.

We recommend that companies discuss their online video strategy when they meet and gather during quarterly or annual strategy sessions. Start thinking of video as an extension of everything your brand already distributes. Then, companies should document the plan and make it accessible to all video contributors.

Some of the most successful online video strategies include video publishing schedules, distribution platforms, social media promotion, and production calendars.

Companies Create One-Size-Fits-All Videos

Another common mistake we encounter is brands producing a video that tries to be too much to too many people. They mistakenly think they can reach every single person on the planet. Stuffing your video with every topic is not a practical approach!

While high-quality video or any content marketing can be an expensive investment, it's not efficient to try and target everyone. Instead, what's more effective is to identify your primary and secondary audiences early on in pre-production.

Following the essential step of targeting an audience, marketers should tailor the video to speak directly to that audience.

Some practical advice is to consider how people search for the pain points and issues in your industry. Think about your company solutions and how you can highlight those in an online video. You can be proactive or reactive when creating this type of content. Your video will appear in search results when your audience seeks help on these topics.

A broad corporate “About Us” video is crucial and serves a purpose in your video strategy. However, simplifying your video topics into searchable content will provide more value to your audience and customers online.

Using YouTube for the Wrong Reasons

This is potentially the most significant pitfall with companies and online video strategy. While some companies do not use YouTube, many do. It is the most powerful online video platform at the time of this article, so it’s worth mentioning.

Often, we speak and consult with brands that are disappointed with the results they see on YouTube. For example, they could be happier with their view count, engagement, or video lead generation.

Some of the most common reasons why companies struggle with YouTube are because they take a set-it-and-forget-it approach, a post-and-pray model, or they are simply using YouTube as a video player and nothing more. However, as with anything else, YouTube needs time, effort, and dedication to achieve organic success.

It’s often an afterthought, but YouTube is a social media platform with an engaged user community. Therefore, your videos on YouTube need to encourage social responses if you want them to be liked, commented on, and shared.

Additionally, YouTube has many call-to-action features that some companies ignore. These excellent tools can drive people back to your website or further move viewers along a content journey).

Another missing link we have seen in our YouTube audits is a channel that needs to be optimized. Or leaving out essential items like channel art, metadata, keywords, publishing frequency, and channel trailers.

Take the time to populate all the fields on your YouTube channel for each video upload. These elements matter because they make finding your content easier for YouTube's algorithm.

With almost one-third of all people on the Internet spending their time on YouTube, publishers should be doing everything possible to help their videos stand out from the noise. For starters, having someone dedicated to your YouTube efforts or hiring outside help that understands the ins and outs of YouTube is essential to online video success.

Not Speaking Natively to Social Media Channels

It is challenging to create a single video and expect it to work across multiple channels.

While Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and other channels may have similarities, they are all very different and have their language. In addition, each platform's user experience, user base, and functionality can drastically vary.

While it’s unlikely you may have an audience across all of those channels, you should make a video for only some of those destinations. I suggest taking the top two performing social media channels for your audience and creating video content tailored specifically for those platforms.

For example, if Instagram is a significant destination for you, then look at what’s working on that platform and create a video directly for that channel. That could mean producing something very visual, short, and fast-paced and using hashtags relevant to your content.

Or you can use Facebook live streaming to promote your following big company announcement. Creating a sense of urgency and exclusivity can be a great way to generate buzz around your video.

Less can be more when it comes to social media. First, take the time to see which platforms make the most sense for your brand and which engage your target audience. Then, focus on creating killer video content natively for those channels.

Treating Video as an Accessory

One final poor habit we have seen with company videos is not giving video content the proper exposure. It is way too common to see a company video buried at the bottom of a webpage, presented in a tiny thumbnail-sized video player, or not optimized for a good user experience.

Check out this article about the benefits of giving your video the proper placement. One solution that can work is to take a video everywhere model.

Rather than having one designated page or video portal, you can include video across multiple pages on your company website. Treat your videos as major pieces rather than accessories. For example, consider how a video can complement your following product, service, or FAQ page. Related content can increase engagement and keep people on your site for extended periods.

A final suggestion is to be flexible with your online video strategy. The industry and viewing habits change often. Therefore, frequent communication, platform evaluation, and metric reviews are critical to a successful online video strategy.