Article #9

Why Do Most Marketing Videos Suck?

One of the most potent forms of punishment I ever inflicted on myself involved a time when I intentionally sought out and searched for all the marketing videos on YouTube. Believe me, it was an endurance. I was basically whipping myself going through all that stuff.

I don't mean this as a joke, and I'm not exaggerating here. A lot of that stuff is really, really bad. If you think some Hollywood movies are all too forgettable cinematic disasters, well, check out a lot of the marketing videos on YouTube.

It is no surprise that they only have less than ten views. It's no surprise that a lot of these materials have basically been buried in the guts of YouTube. Some of these were actually uploaded as long as the founding of YouTube.

What's going on? Why do most of these marketing videos suck? Why do they have to suck? How can they drop the ball that badly?

Well, after I went through video after video, certain patterns started to emerge.

I'll be the first to admit, I'm not a rocket scientist, nor am I a brain surgeon, but it's very easy to spot these patterns. It's very easy to trace these patterns back to the failure of these videos.

I'm not speculating on their failures because video has failed when it only has less than 100 views. You can't escape from that conclusion. You can't dance around it. I mean, even if your video converts on a one to one level, a hundred views for an 8-year old video is failure.

Why do they suck? Here are some clues based on my very painful personal research.

Mass Quantity

It's obvious that a lot of the videos that I was going through and viewing were mass uploaded. In fact, it looked like they came off the same template. It's as if somebody took the same script, created video after video using the same script.

The results were really sloppy. It's as if this person didn't even bother to actually watch the video produced. They probably just used some sort of software to crank out one video after another. Totally weak. Totally worthless.

There they are, lying in the gutter of YouTube. No views. Not even digital rats to chew at them.

No Presence

Another common feature that I observed among these sucky videos is the fact that they did not create presence.

Now, please understand that a lot of these videos don't look like they suck. Some have clever discussions. Some even look like they spent a tremendous amount of money on high level animation.

But regardless of how slick certain elements are, and despite the fact that sometimes these elements came together to produce a really nice effect, at the end of the day, there was no presence. It felt like the video wasn't speaking to my needs.

The video didn't really go a long way in making the brand behind the video come to life. It wasn't doing any of that. It was just lying there. It was flat.

Remember, they had cute parts. Some parts may even look like it's working. But in the big scheme of things, it had no presence.

Doesn't Fit a Niche

One of the most annoying class of videos that I ran into during my painful research on YouTube involves videos that try to be all things to all people at all times. As you can already tell by my description of it, these videos are doomed to fail.

As the old saying goes, you can please all the people some of the time, but you cannot please all people all the time. That's just not going to happen. It would be foolish of you to even try.

And unfortunately, a lot of videos produced out there that are supposed to be marketing a particular product and trying to make money, don't even bother to create a tight fit between their product's niche and their video. They don't even go through the motions. It's as if they have forgotten the whole concept of niche.

Let me remind you, if you select the wrong niche, you're probably going to lose money. If you no idea what a niche is, then you're probably just taking shots in the dark and are wondering why you're not achieving any kind of success selling stuff online.

Niche is everything. And these videos just committed the cardinal sin of being clueless regarding their niche, or failing to address their niche adequately. Whatever the case may be, they missed the mark.

They Don't Build Brands

Finally, a lot of marketing videos out there suck because they don't even bother to create brands. They really don't. They just drop video after video, hoping against hope that somehow, some way, somebody would load the URL mentioned in the video.

Nobody does it. That's why there are only ten views.

You have to build a brand, otherwise, your business is a commodity. It's just another face in the crowd. It's just another cog in the machine. Totally replaceable and, unfortunately, totally forgettable.

Make no mistake, if you are serious about taking your video marketing results to the next level, you cannot take any of the factors I raised above lying down. You have to roll up your sleeves and do some hard planning and some hard work to make sure that your videos deliver the brand-building niche presence they need to truly make an impact.
