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Video marketing used to be an expensive and lengthy business, but with the advances in professional video production equipment, smartphone technology and the ease of use of platforms such YouTube, almost anyone can become a video marketer.  As a result, this has led to an astonishing 87 percent of online marketers currently using video content in their marketing according to Outbrain.  

Related: By 2019, Video Marketing Will Be Everything. You’ve Got to Get in on the Trend — Now.

Faster, easier and cheaper does not always mean superior, but there are a few simple steps that you can take to ensure you create quality videos.According to Juan Rutz and Martin Borer of RutzRoberts Productions, the following represent eight common mistakes aspiring video marketers make and how to avoid them:

1. Excessive « hard selling »

When you apply the « hard sell » it is much like asking your first date to marry you.

Yes, there is a very remote possibility, but you more likely be successful building a relationship step by step. By creating teaser videos, you will intrigue potential clients, further sharing your content and inspiring a continued relationship.

2. Videos are not part of a campaign

You may only get one chance to make a first impression, and as a result, many companies tend to « overload » their costumer base with info and pandering about themselves. Pace your message and leave something to the imagination and curiosity without exhausting the rather short attention span of your viewer.

Juan and Martin say that campaigns are the way to go every single time. Rather than creating a single five-minute video, companies should focus on a multi-faceted approach to creating a two-minute video in concert with six 30-second segments still adding up to a total of five minutes. However, it multiplies and concentrates the intended purpose in what they call the « marinating effect. » More than ever the attention span of viewers have been condensed, hence the need to be short, informative, entertaining and to the point. 

Make an emotional connection, inspire and leave them wanting for more.

3. Poor title and SEO

Content is one thing — lead in title is entirely a different animal. Interesting titles and effective tagging are essential in maximizing your SEO and harnessing your views.

Having a great video no one can find defeats that purpose entirely and renders all production efforts useless.

4. Disharmonized content

Video marketing is not just about visual images. Effective videos all harmonize the images with the best use of voice and text. All of these components need to be taken into consideration when producing your video. Everything needs to be deliberate and intentionally  planned.

Use of words, tone of voice, sectional use of the screen and content all add to the appeal of your overall production package.

5. Focus on products not people

If facts tell and stories sell, then don’t make your video a list of facts about your products. Focus on telling stories about people using your products and the benefits that they derive from using them. If your story is well told, then people will seek out more information.

Related: The 4 Pillars of Stellar Video Marketing

6. Not harnessing the power of video 

If a  picture paints 1,000 words just imagine how much a well-crafted video — even one that’s only 30 seconds long — can communicate. But you need to make sure that your videos portray the right content and in the right essence. Juan and Martin say that videos are all about style. In fact, contrary to what you might think, style is actually more important than content. You need to have the appropriate style, one which is authentic to your brand and which will elevate your message and make it resonate with your target audience.

7. Under-using available social media platforms 

YouTube is great, but it is not the only game in town. Maximize not only your reach but also your SEO by publishing your videos on all platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. This doesn’t mean load it into YouTube, then copy and paste the link on the other platforms. When you load your video into platforms natively, such as Facebook, you get twice as many views as you would if you had just put a link to the YouTube video.

And don’t forget email. According to established research, including a video in your emails will increase click-through rates by 200 to 300 percent.

8. Videos are too long

We live in a world of immediate gratification and small attention span. Therein lies the magic formula to capture your audience in a comprehensive, entertaining, yet limited stage. That has become the hallmark of video marketing.

Related: Why You Need to Start Video Marketing Now

By avoiding these common mistakes, it will help you to create a video marketing strategy that will connect, resonate and engage with your target audience which will help drive traffic to your website and increase sales.

Related:

Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved

This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com

You may start to see some Switch marketing materials at your local Gamestop very soon. In a new video released by GoNintendo, Gamestop locations were sent an email saying that Switch advertising is scheduled to arrive next week.

As it’s been the case with previous marketing campaigns, consumers should expect to see a swath of Switch-related items like posters, stands, and some display boxes. No hard date was disclosed when the marketing will be approved to go live, especially since Nintendo’s presentation is still several weeks out.

The email also mentions that Zelda: The Breath of the Wild would be available for pre-order soon, which suggests its debut on the Switch may be happening sooner than expected. Could it end up as a launch title? If so, that title alone could definitely drive more interest. Toss in a new Mario adventure, and I’d be set for weeks. 

The video goes on to speculate that some GameStop stores may be consolidating their Nintendo sections to more prominently display the Switch. This would make sense seeing as Nintendo would want to make sure its latest console gets a proper spot, front-and-center, to entice consumers upon entering the store.

Un effort de plus pour régler les défis liés à Phénix

MONTRÉAL — Le Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales (DPCP) n’ira pas en appel concernant la décision d’un tribunal qui avait rejeté une preuve obtenue à l’aide d’un radar photo.

Le porte-parole de la Couronne, Me Jean-Pascal Boucher, a indiqué mercredi que le DPCP se concentrera maintenant à rassembler de meilleures preuves lorsqu’il prépare ses causes contre de présumés contrevenants de la route.

En novembre dernier,le juge Serge Cimon, de la Cour du Québec, avait exonéré une femme qui contestait une amende de 1160 $. Il a statué que la preuve des radars photo était déficiente et qu’elle ne pouvait donc pas être admissible en cour.

Dans sa décision, le magistrat soulignait notamment que l’agent de la paix qui a remis le constat n’avait pas personnellement été témoin du comportement de la femme et qu’il était incapable de certifier le calibrage de l’appareil.

«Le DPCP n’ira pas en appel dans les jugements qui ont été rendus à la fin novembre», a dit Me Boucher, ajoutant que l’organisation allait, à l’avenir, «prendre les dispositions nécessaires afin que la preuve soit admissible devant les tribunaux et (qu’elle) respecte la règle de droit».

Il n’a toutefois pas fourni davantage d’explications sur ce qui pourra être considéré comme des éléments valides, mais a tout de même avancé que «de la documentation et des preuves testimoniales» pourraient être jugées recevables.

Me Boucher a assuré que la loi actuelle permettant l’utilisation de cette technologie est valide et qu’elle demeurera en vigueur.

En novembre, le ministre des Transports, Laurent Lessard, a fait valoir que les radars photos sont utiles pour assurer la sécurité sur les routes et les autoroutes de la province.

La ministre de la Justice, Stéphanie Vallée, a rappelé que la loi permettant l’installation de radars photo sur les routes a été avalisée par l’Assemblée nationale en 2012.

Les plans d’un programme d’expansion avaient été dévoilés en 2015.

Jean-François Dionne, président de l’Association des travailleurs en signalisation routière du Québec — qui installent les panneaux de signalisation sur les autoroutes du Québec — estime que les policiers devraient être plus présents sur la route pour épingler les contrevenants.

M. Dionne, qui représente quelque 3500 travailleurs, dit que ses membres sont en danger parce que les automobilistes ne respectent pas les limites de vitesse sur les chantiers de construction.

«On demande que la loi qui englobe le radar photo soit mieux faite (…) qu’elle soit claire et nette», a-t-il affirmé.

La tempête risque de balayer la région de Québec, la Mauricie, l’Estrie, le Bas-Saint-Laurent, la Côte-Nord, le Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean et la Gaspésie.

La neige commencera à tomber jeudi matin avec des accumulations allant de 20 à 35 cm. De la poudrerie est également attendue dans plusieurs régions qui longent le Saint-Laurent, ce qui risque d’affecter la visibilité sur les routes.

Le météorologue Bruno Marquis, d’Environnement Canada, parle d’une véritable « bombe météorologique ».

C’est un système qui se développe très rapidement, qui s’intensifie rapidement et qui cause des conditions extrêmes.

Cette dépression, qui remonte la côte est américaine et qui se dirige vers les Maritimes, risque de perturber les conditions routières jusqu’à vendredi matin.

En Atlantique aussi

Au Nouveau-Brunswick, jusqu’à 20 cm de neige sont prévus dans le centre et le nord de la province, au cours de la nuit de jeudi à vendredi.

De forts vents avec des rafales à 90 km/h sont à prévoir en Nouvelle-Écosse et à l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard.

Des conditions météorologiques difficiles sont attendues durant la nuit de jeudi à vendredi, selon le météorologue. « Vendredi, le système [remontera] vers le nord, donc les conditions devraient s’améliorer graduellement, surtout en après-midi », précise-t-il.

Là aussi, la visibilité pourrait être gravement altérée par moment. Ces perturbations pourraient entraîner des retards sur le réseau routier.

2016 has been a year of shifts in social media, technology and digital marketing. Influencer marketing went mainstream, the internet became all about video and every digital marketer is looking for a way to connect business outcomes to their social media efforts.

So what’s in store for 2017? We queried a panel of digital marketing and technology experts about their predictions for the future of influencer marketing, digital customer service and more. Here’s what they had to say.

Video:

According to Five9 chief marketing officer Kevin Gavin, video customer service will go mainstream:

As the modern customer increasingly feels empowered to communicate with brands via various channels like phone calls, texts, social media and more, the rise in video communication will become more mainstream. Just as social media brought on a new way to communicate with consumers, video will be a powerful tool to ease pain points in an easy and efficient manner. In 2017, more businesses will move to adopt video as the new normal in customer service or risk getting left behind.

AdRoll CMO and president Adam Berke says marketing technology will bring even more democratization for video:

Advances in marketing tech that have made tools cheaper, more effective and more accurate give small and midsized marketers access to sophisticated, powerful technology without requiring the budget of their Fortune 500 counterparts. This will be especially true for video advertising: Many marketers who never would have previously considered TV advertising can now easily integrate an online video strategy as offerings become better and more ubiquitous.

Attribution:

Joe Zawadzki, CEO and founder of MediaMath, believes 2017 will be the age of attribution:

Marketers are signing up for outcomes, not inputs, inside of their own organizations, and they are increasingly asking the question of who watches the watchers, who grades the homework of a dynamic and diverse supply chain? Programmatic done right is attributed based on impact on true business goals, and it lets marketers see through channels and partners to the consumer behind all of those screens.

Berke also believes attribution will be super-important in 2017:

When marketers see increased spend that doesn’t correlate to faster growth rates, they want to know why. This is because a lot of clicks are from people who would’ve converted anyway. For the next 50 percent of offline ad spend to move to digital, marketers need to be able to measure efficacy beyond last-click measurement. Major players like Google and Facebook need to demonstrate how non-direct-response formats like video drive business results, and that inherently means better attribution.

Predictive analytics:

Gavin believes analytics will help bring about predictive customer service:

With the rise of analytics, businesses will reap the benefits of things like seeing a customer’s history immediately when they contact customer service and providing personalized experiences for consumers based on likes and preferences. This technology will also predict what consumers need based on patterns in their customer journey, allowing for agents to proactively reach out to consumers before the problem is even realized.

But predictive analytics will be more than a customer service tool, says Leanplum CEO Momchil Kyurkchiev:

Smart applications will proactively anticipate user desires to satisfy the moment. Predictive analytics won’t just be an add-on for brands; it will become a must-have to understand and retain users.

According to Xomad CEO Rob Perry, 2017 will bring about a re-evaluation of traditional qualitative metrics and analytics:

Cost-per-engagement models instead of potential impressions will provide more accurate pricing and greater return on investment for influencer strategies. New standards will allow reach and engagement to be meaningfully compared across Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.

Influencer marketing:

Perry says live and real-world initiatives will combat the lack of authenticity, and brands will turn to micro-influencers to build authenticity.

Brands will rely on real-world influencer events and activations to build more organic, nonscripted content with higher engagement, while agencies gravitate toward livestreaming and real-time social media platforms. At the same time, brands will become increasingly dependent on micro-influencers with high engagement in niche verticals, which will be utilized in mass quantities (thousands per campaign) to generate more organic and engaging content.

Marketing technology:

Kyurkchiev believes mobile teams need more intelligent marketing automation:

Mobile teams will invest heavily in automation campaigns that contain personalized parameters to move users toward conversions, save acquisition costs and drive more ROI on every new user. For example, travel experiences will draw from travel history, price trends, seasonality and more, with smarter travel apps tailoring each and every piece of your trip.

And Perry says marketing tech will combine influencer authenticity with target precision:

With improvements in influencer marketing tech, agencies will be able to hit precise target demographics, verticals, locations, etc. Smaller agencies will need to adopt the use of marketing tech platforms in order to compete, especially as the industry looks toward using mass numbers of micro-influencers.  

Readers: What do you think 2017 has in store for digital marketers?

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.