It’s 2020: Average Videos = White Noise

If you haven’t yet embraced video marketing, it’s probably fair to call you a bit of a late adopter at this point. But that’s okay! In fact, I’m expecting this to be the year that lots more companies jump on board with video marketing.

But here’s the bad news: that’s going to leave us with a lot of oversaturation. We’re going to see videos reaching smaller and smaller audiences – unless, of course, they’re genuinely good.

Because believe it or not, people are currently loving video so much that even bad videos are getting lots of attention. But the days of that happening are numbered, and posts about the “death of video marketing” might be right around the corner as a result.

But that’s only relevant for the people who put out bad or average videos. Soon, we’ll have more choices about what we watch online, and we’ll only settle for the good stuff.

Your videos can fall in that category. The category that will actually continue to see high engagement on video content. Here’s how.

Put Creative People in Charge

If you have to choose between a skilled production person and a creative storyteller, pick the storyteller every time.

Think of this like a website-building scenario. A designer is essential and they’ll make your website look beautiful. But if that website isn’t filled with valuable content, it’s essentially useless.

In this case, it would actually be better to have just the content. Force a skilled copywriter to figure out Squarespace and go from there. Your site will outperform the beautiful empty void that someone else put out.

Video works the same way. Preference the people with creative ideas. This could be someone from your own team or a professional creative.  That decision ultimately comes down to the scope and budget of the project.

Hint: Typically a good creative agency and many production companies offer access to both. Just be sure you’re not getting a “production-only” team.

Don’t Waste a Second

Contrary to popular belief, you actually can post long-form video content with great success. Believe it or not, Facebook even recommends that videos be at least 3-minutes long.

But people continue to believe that short-form videos are more effective. Why? Because the longer the video, the easier it is to waste your audience’s time with nonsense.

We’ve all seen a meandering video or two somewhere online. They tell jokes that are just annoying and not at all relevant to the point, they dive into unnecessary details, etcetera.

Just because you’re allowing your video to be 5 or even 10-minutes doesn’t mean you’re allowed to waste a single second. In fact, your goal should be to make your video so short that you’d actually be delivering less value if it was even a second shorter.

That doesn’t mean you have to smash all of your lines together and sprint through everything. You can still allow time to breathe, but you have to be smart about how you’re using everything in your video – even the deadspace.

Hint: Typically people who are just getting started with video put way too much emphasis on figuring out camera work and not enough on learning the art of editing. You’d often be better off having a professionally edited video than one that was professionally shot and edited by an amateur… Seriously.