Top 10 Video Marketing Challenges and How to Solve Them

At a rapid pace, video content is taking over the digital marketing space. As an expert rightly put it, people are reading less and watching more. Surely, the rise of video content isn’t surprising to anyone.

As always, the search engines and social media platforms were quick to spot the trend. Now they serve more videos to quench the insatiable demand of the users.

None can predict the challenges of a new marketing trend. It’s only when a marketing strategy is adopted en masse that the challenges that the marketers face come to light.

So, if you’re new to video marketing or trying to improve your marketing game then this is the blog post to read.

Today, let’s discuss the 10 challenges that are preventing marketers from adopting and succeeding in video marketing.

Challenge #1: Getting Started

Don’t be surprised. Venturing into a new field is always challenging, particularly in the case of video production and marketing.

There are too many places to start and the fear of beginning with a false move can deter even the most talented.

At the start, video marketing might appear like an insurmountable mountain, but with proper planning, you can make a positive start that’ll yield rich results.

Solution: Ease into video marketing by developing a series of simple steps that’ll help you create and promote your first video.

Step 1: Determine why you’re creating the video and what you plan to achieve with it. Defining your goals will help you narrow down the type of content you need to create.

Step 2: With goals in mind, try to figure out the content type that’ll increase the chances of achieving those goals. You have several options to choose from: educational videos, case studies, company culture videos, how-to videos, interviews, webinars, testimonials, and more.

Step 3: If creating video content appears a herculean task, delegate part or the whole process to video editing services. Then again, if you decide to produce the content in-house, you have to work on the script, production, and editing.

Step 4: Finally, you decide how the video content will reach the audience and the metrics to track the performance of your content.

Challenge #2: Developing Content That Resonates with the Audience

For every engaging and persuasive video, there is tons of mediocre content. Most video marketing campaigns fail because the content is not informative or engaging enough.

Video content that’s engaging to you might not impress the viewers. A video will succeed only if the audience is interested in it.

Solution: Research your audience to find their likes, dislikes, and pain points. Prepare an audience persona and use it as a guide to add those little elements that endear the video content to its viewers.

Those little elements could be anything from ‘common problems faced and solutions’ to ‘wit, tone, and style of the content that your target demographic likes’.

If you’re risk averse, unwilling to try a new topic for your first video, then convert a blog post into a video. Blog posts that found favor with your target audience could be made into videos to expand their reach.

Challenge #3: Starved for Time

Creating videos takes time is an understatement. Video production is a process that involves many steps. It’s a task that demands time, resources, hard work, focus, and creativity.

Naturally, marketers who have a million things to do, find it difficult to turn their attention to video production. Unfortunately, even for a video marketer, creating videos might not be a priority task.

Oftentimes seeing the enormity of the process many marketers aim for other marketing strategies that produce quick results, instead of investing time in video production. 

Solution: There are two solutions anybody can adopt. One will save you time on video production. You still have to spend some time creating the video, there is no workaround.

This solution involves repurposing old videos, preferably large ones, into short clips that would be a good fit for social media platforms. A video editor is all you need to accomplish the job.

The second idea is the same we discussed in the earlier section. Use a video creation and editing service. 

Challenge #4: Publishing Videos Consistently

To establish your presence among the target audience you need to publish videos consistently on YouTube or other social media platforms. Occasional video might not generate loyal viewers who would later turn into leads and paying customers.

With millions of videos uploaded every day, your target audience is bound to get hundreds of video recommendations on their timelines. They’ll easily forget your brand if you don’t engage with them regularly via video content.

As much as marketers want to supply the growing demand of their audience, publishing videos consistently is a back-breaking task.

Solution: Focus on select marketing platforms that promise the best results. Suppose the bulk of your target audience is found on TikTok, then there is no point in investing in Facebook videos.

Don’t cover all the media platforms. Concentrate your efforts on channels (in our example, TikTok) that host your target audience.

Use email marketing to stay in touch with the audience. Don’t wait for the viewers to come to you. Take the videos through them using email marketing platforms.

Instead of publishing an hour-long video once every three months, you can break them up into short clips and create a video series with a new release every week. 

Challenge #5: Camera Shy and Tongue-Tied

Even highly social people get tongue-tied in front of the camera. Many marketers who are quite creative do everything possible to stay away from the camera.

Such behavior is quite common and most marketers turn to actors and voice-over artists for their creations. Hiring outside talent is bound to increase the cost of video production.

Solution: Businesses with sizable marketing budgets can afford outside talent. Marketers working on a shoe-string budget have no other option but to use in-house talent as narrators and on-screen actors.

To be frank, only a few are born with natural screen presence and voice talent. Others can acquire that talent by mastering a few techniques and improving through experience.

There are many webinars online that show how people can improve their camera presence and express the message clearly and effectively.

Challenge #6: How to Create Compelling Content

The target audience is defined, the goals are set, and the message is carefully considered and crafted. Next comes the most challenging part: how to make the information compelling and present it effectively.

It’s how the message is showcased that distinguishes the best from the rest. Viewers spend time on the video only if it’s useful, engaging, and compelling. Engagement is one of the metrics that video search engines consider while evaluating content.

Solution: Creating video content is an art. Each element – the lighting, text, font, music, etc. – is carefully planned before the filming begins.

To reduce errors, retakes, and reshoots, use a storyboard to organize and direct the flow of the video.

Don’t tell the audience how you’ll solve a problem. Instead, show them how you’ll do it. Finally, the information presented in the form of a story that appeals emotionally will have more takers.

Challenge #7: Lack of Engagement from the Viewers

Earlier ‘number of views’ was the most important metric used to judge the impact of video content. Now we know that it’s just one among the many vital metrics to monitor.

Top on the list of video key performance indicators (KPIs) is the engagement rate. This metric will reveal whether the audience is a passive viewer or is engaging with the video.

For search engine crawlers videos with a higher engagement rate signify content that’s relevant, informative, and compelling. Lack of engagement has drowned many video marketing campaigns. 

Solution: Some of the techniques used to make blog posts more engaging can be applied to videos too. Make the viewers think by asking questions and encouraging them to share their queries and ideas in the comment section.

The audience feedback could later serve as topics for new videos. Perhaps the most effective engagement technique is to add a call to action.

Think about what you want the viewers to do during or after watching the video. Don’t hesitate to add one or more CTA because they produce results. The CTA could be anything from scheduling an appointment, buying the product now, filling a form for a newsletter, or attending an event.

Research shows that live videos have a better engagement rate than standard videos. This is because the audience considers live videos more authentic as they are unscripted and unrehearsed. 

Challenge #8: Poor Marketing Strategy

An ‘n’ number of things go into the making of a successful video marketing strategy. No one knows whether a marketing strategy would succeed or not until it’s implemented, monitored, and tweaked if necessary.

For the novice, the enormity of the task of developing a video marketing strategy could be intimidating. They might not know where to start, the channels to focus on, the types of videos to share, etc., etc. 

Solution: We have all been there. We have all faced the jitters handling the first video marketing project. Even experienced marketers feel nervous creating a strategy for a new project.

Bear in mind there is no standard formula to follow. Devise a strategy with the content you have or are about to produce.

Determine your goals, places to post, time to publish, and metrics to monitor. If you’re not sure where to start then begin by creating videos for blog posts and develop a strategy for promoting the same. 

Challenge #9: Video Marketing Tools to Use

Once you have a strategy in place, advising what to do and how to do it, video marketing is smooth sailing from there. That’s what most marketers think. Well, the reality is something different.

In marketing in general and video marketing in particular you need assistance to perform even the most basic tasks.

From customer research and keyword research to video scheduling and performance tracking, you need SEO tools, marketing tools, and various other tools to make your job easier.

The challenge most marketers face in this regard is the problem of plenty. 

Solution: The equipment and tools you choose impact the budget and even the success of the campaign.

Make a list of tools for various marketing tasks. For video production, a smartphone with a high-resolution camera is adequate.

You’ll have no trouble with keyword research, competitive research, backlink analysis, etc., with tools like Semrush.

There are many free and paid marketing tools. Research thoroughly before you select tools for your campaigns.

Challenge #10: Not Optimizing the Video

Similar to written content, videos not optimized for the search engines will lose out on valuable traffic.

Whatever the niche or topic, there are thousands of videos, like yours, uploaded on YouTube and social media platforms every day.

Your content will be buried under the crowd if it’s not properly optimized. It’s also important to note that well-optimized videos improve the SEO performance of the brand’s website.

Solution: Your video marketing plan must include a section dealing with the SEO techniques to boost your content’s ranking. Remember to use SEO techniques that appeal to the search engines and your target audience.

Several simple tips will have a great impact on your content’s performance. This includes adding title and description, including keywords, adding tags, using compelling thumbnail, and adding an effective call to action.

Final Thoughts

As more and more businesses adopt video marketing, its importance and challenges are bound to increase. But the benefits are too many to ignore.

Don’t let these challenges deter you from adopting or succeeding in video marketing. Use our list of top 10 video marketing challenges and solutions to speed up your campaign and claim an edge over your competition.

 Author bio:

Cristian Stanciu is a freelance video editor, owner and post-production coordinator of Veedyou Media – a company offering video animation services to marketing agencies, video production studios or brands all over the globe. I can catch up with him on his blog or on LinkedIn