The Top 7 Corporate Video Production Mistakes to Avoid

1. Making corporate videos that are too long.

As a rule of thumb, it's best to keep your corporate videos to around 60-90 seconds in length.  This is because attention spans have dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds in the last few so trying to keep your viewers’ attention for longer than a 60-second video is extremely tough.  

We recommend that the best way to engage someone’s attention is to show them in the first 8 seconds of your video what’s in it for them.  This means getting your main core value message across within the first 8 seconds to hook them to watch your video content until the end. 

It’s also worth noting that each social media platform has its own upper limits on video length so there is no point in creating a 4-minute video to share on a social media platform that only has an upper limit of 60 seconds in its feed.  Instead of leaving the decision to post-production, it’s critical that you plan right from the beginning of the video production process where you want to distribute your video campaign to ensure your video production company edit the video to align with the required social media formats.

2. Not knowing your corporate video objectives

Before you send your brief to video production companies, it is crucial that all key business stakeholders invested in the end video content are aligned on the reason why you are making the video.   

As outlined above you have a very short window of time to convey your message to your audience, so you need to know from the beginning what it is that you want the video to say and ultimately do. It is also important to build engagement during creative development when planning video content, and this starts with pre-production.

A simple way to do this is to think clearly about the problem you want the video production to help solve and make that your business objective.  This could be to reduce customer enquiries by making a product demo video or explainer video, or it could be to enhance learning by making training videos. 

3. Cramming your corporate video with too many messages

Corporate video production does not come cheap so it’s understandable why some businesses may want to push lots of messages into the same video.  This will however have a direct result on the impact your video has on your intended audience. Too many competing messages will result in the final video leaving the viewer confused and unable to fully absorb the information you are trying to convey, resulting in your main message getting lost. 

When writing your corporate video script, it’s always best to have one clear core message that will underpin your video and inform all the sub-messages and soundbites that you choose to communicate. This means your video production agency can produce focused, high-quality content and can be the key to turning a good video into a great video.

4. Forgetting to keep some budget aside for marketing your video content 

Businesses can get so wrapped up in the costs of video production that they can forget to put money aside to market the video to its intended target audience.  Failure to have a marketing strategy means that no matter how high your production values are or how great your end video looks if it’s not able to be found it’s a complete waste of money.

To ensure you budget correctly you need to be clear on who your target audience is and where they hang out online.  Once you understand this, you can then research how much money you might need to spend as part of your video marketing campaign to get your video in front of your potential customers. 

This budget can then be put aside from your video production budget and this way you know how much you must spend on making a video content campaign that will truly get watched.

5. No call to action 

It’s important to remember that the purpose of investing in a corporate video is to encourage your viewers to take a defined action depending on where they currently sit in the customer journey. 

Omitting this essential tool from your video content will leave viewers confused about what to do next or how to connect with your business.

When creating an impactful and engaging call to action you have to go back to the purpose and objective of what you want your video to do.  It’s also super important that it aligns with your key video message.

Your call to action may direct your audience to a specific landing page, another video that directs them further down the sales funnel or to speak to a sales rep. The key point is that a good call to action should always align with what you ultimately want the viewer to do next.

And when thinking of where to place your call to action, it’s important to remember what we said about attention span dropping: ‘you can expect to lose 20% of your audience during the first 10 seconds of video on average and this abandonment rate peaks around 120 seconds with a 60% abandonment rate'.

Therefore, we recommend that you not only put a call to action at the end of your corporate video but also close to the beginning. 

6. Creating a corporate video in a silo

We find, that with corporate video, a business can decide they need a corporate video for a particular reason which is great.  However, what businesses can fail to do is to view video content as a business-wide strategy and don't think to build video into their annual marketing plans. Video production work can generate leads, raise awareness, and improve investor relations.

So when thinking of investing in video content, it's best to think of it as a business-wide investment and really look at where video could support the business and marketing initiatives over the course of the next 12 months.  

This means that when you come to partner with a video production company they can truly maximise filming days to ask questions beyond the immediate needs of the video content and fulfil more longer-term objectives and requirements saving you money and maximising your video output across the year.

7. Failing to add captions 

Nowadays, 85% of videos watched on Facebook are watched with the sound off. Failing to brief your video production company to add captions to your video content means that 85% of the people watching will miss out on the message you are seeking to communicate. Captions have been shown to benefit everyone, as they can improve comprehension of and memory for the video. Importantly, they also make the video content accessible to everyone who wants to watch it.

And as an added bonus, captions also give your video content an extra SEO boost, especially if you use keywords within your video script.