There is no doubt that ecommerce marketing plays a vital role in growing your sales. While a multi-channel approach almost always delivers the best chance of driving sales, video is a channel that continues to grow at a rapid rate. This channel can be a powerful tool not only for increasing profits but also for boosting engagement, helping your store to stand out in a way that gains recognition and ultimately helps you grow your reputation.
While many etailers might be using video within their ecommerce marketing strategies, simply adding on video without following best practices or understanding how best to use this tool can end up doing more harm than good. Done right, video can work alongside your product descriptions and images to give customers more information on your products. Video can also showcase products in a way that descriptions alone are unable to do, providing more detail and helping the purchasing decision greatly. Done wrong, on the other hand, videos can put shoppers off, costing you potential sales and increasing the risk of abandoned carts. Poorly made, overly long, confusing or badly thought-out videos can end up going viral for all the wrong reasons. In this guide, we take a closer look at some of the mistakes that can end up causing a great deal of damage to your marketing efforts.
Avoid These Ecommerce Marketing Video Mistakes
If you are trying to integrate video into your ecommerce marketing strategy, the first step is to know what to avoid. Here are some of the biggest mistakes to avoid when using video for ecommerce.
Having no clear goals
Are your videos purely promotional, to showcase products and feature on product pages? Are they informative, to explain how to use your products or provide useful tips for customers who use your products? Many stores are so focused on creating video – any type of video – that they forget to consider the primary goal of the video. Simply adding video will not do much for your sales. Adding the right type of video, which is created with a specific goal in mind, will have far more impact. Think very carefully about your target audience and the type of video content that this shopper would find valuable. Consider your product pages, your informational pages such as your FAQ, demonstration pages, store history page or any other areas of your store that would benefit from video. Think about the type of questions that your customers ask as well as the typical challenges that your products address.
Having no clear message
That brings us to our next mistake – failing to convey a clear message. A video that is vague, with no point or easy to understand message can do plenty of damage to your brand. Viewers should never have to wonder what is meant to happen next after watching a video on your store. The message should be clear and also to the point. Posting rambling videos that do not relate to your products or trying to use your store as a platform to share messages unrelated to your products can all affect your sales. This ties closely in with defining your goals. When you have a clear goal, it will become far easier to have a clear message.
Uninspiring, dull videos
Another problem with videos that lack a goal and message is that they often end up being extremely dull to watch. It would be better to not use video at all than to use a boring video, purely for the sake of including video within your ecommerce marketing campaign. The entire purpose of video is to educate, inspire, amuse, entertain or provoke a reaction. In ecommerce, videos help to add depth to product pages. As customers cannot feel or see products as they would in a brick and mortar store, videos and images help to provide a virtual experience. When videos are hard to watch, customers are very quickly put off by the video and by association, your products. You can add entertainment and humour or use personal stories from customers, store owners or manufacturers. You could showcase products in fun ways without making videos full of industrial jargon and corporate-speak.
Using only a single video
Don’t think that producing one single video is enough, either. Although one well-made video is definitely a good start, you can make multiple videos that can be even more beneficial. That does not mean you have to add a video to every single page. Adding too many videos can slow down your website. Not all pages require video, either. A good strategy is to start with your top selling products that drive the most traffic, as well as pages that also rank well. Adding video to key pages will help increase views. You can then carefully begin to plan a video strategy that incorporates video within your blog, key product pages, and selected pages on your store.
Getting video length wrong
Adding long, involved videos to your store is another mistake to avoid. Ecommerce videos should ideally be short and simple, getting to the point without taking up too much time. Remember, customers do not have patience or time to sit through a long video presentation. In the age of online video, most consumers have gotten used to short clips that can be watched in two minutes or less. The longer the video drags on, the higher the chance of views closing the video or leaving the page (or even your website) completely.
Placing videos incorrectly
Videos should be placed very carefully. As we mentioned earlier, this applies to the pages on your store. It also applies to the position on product pages. Rather than hiding videos far down the page where they may not be seen easily, try to place them somewhere visible so that they can work alongside your product description and images. This gives an overall insight into your product, giving customers all the information they need on your product features, benefits and specifications.
Not making use of social media
Along with making videos hard to share from your blog and store, another thing to avoid is not making use of social media to promote your videos. Facebook and Twitter are both excellent tools for sharing a video. You can either share from your store or use features such as Facebook Live to create once-off live videos. With these, you can interact directly with customers. These tools are great for product launches, helping to build excitement and drive traffic to your store. YouTube is another powerful tool for video. Just make sure that you optimise your YouTube videos to get the most from this channel. Include descriptions, keep titles simple and interesting, and consider investing in a YouTube strategy to get the most from this channel.
Improve Your Ecommerce Marketing Sales
Once you begin to develop your video marketing strategy, you will start to see just how much value this channel offers to your broader ecommerce strategies. Used as part of a multi-channel strategy, video helps you increase your store’s visibility, driving sales, attracting customers, and driving traffic organically. Stay clear of these mistakes and you should start to notice a big improvement in your ecommerce marketing results.
