All the internet marketing gurus have told you that you need video on your website to get sales, right? But did they bother to tell you HOW to create a sales video that will grab and hold your visitors' attentions, not bore them to tears within the first 30 seconds of clicking PLAY?
Thought not...
Especially considering how many horrible marketing videos there are out there.
You may have noticed in your hit logs that visitors are MOVING ON to your competitors' sites after only remaining briefly on yours.
Yes, CHEAP, amateur videos, are CHASING your visitors AWAY before you ever get to the important parts, by not holding their interest long enough to get the cash that is in their hands away from them that they WERE thinking of spending on your site, before you ran them off with that $5 video purchased from a popular slave labor site.
You see, just like you, when you have the TV remote in your hand flipping rapidly through the channels for a good TV show to watch, most people will not watch past the first 30 seconds of a long, boring, talking head, cheap webcam video with cluttered background and poor sound quality!
Especially when they have NO IDEA how long the video will run, and are prevented from "cutting to the chase" and fast forwarding past all the doctored shots of checks and faked "live" affiliate account logins (yes, live can be faked!) with blurred areas hiding where the money REALLY came from that they have all seen before and that take up WAY too much brag time...past all the time-consuming fluff to get to the MEAT of the program being offered, because your video is wasting their time.
On top of those issues, the quality and style of your video tells the world exactly how much you are making with the program you are promoting! And people won't buy into your program if the video quality and style is cheaply filmed and and more cheaply edited.
If you shot your video with a webcam or a cheap camera using amateur, ambient room or outdoor lighting, without paying attention to shadows, windscreens and cluttered backgrounds, your visitors are going to know it is nothing more than a "home movie" and they will know you aren't making a dime with your program.
If it is nothing more than a talking head sitting in front of a webcam or even a professional camera, or driving a car (complete with distracting road noise because it is in a cheap car), visitors are going to be very bored, because that is all they are going to see and they are aren't going to wait around very long for the scene to change. And if you aren't particularly attractive, then you might as well have made an MP3 audio instead of an MP4 video, because it may be simply unpleasant to look at you, and others may be distracted by your garish or unkempt hair style or your choice of attire.
Additionally, "face readers", such as myself, can tell a lot more about YOU by not only watching your body language as you talk, but by the actual physical characteristics of your face. It's downright spooky how a stranger pegged a very personal part of my life just by the way my eyebrows are shaped!. Google it, it's extremely revealing what your face says about you, moreso than the words you are speaking that often contradict what your face is actually saying.
Now, do you still want people to see your face after THAT revelation?
And please, please PLEASE stop using miles of simple plain text on a plain white background without borders that make it hard for a viewer to actually FIND the video they are hearing.
And please stop reading it verbatim to your customers as if they are illiterate! It is extremely offensive to insult your viewers' intelligence like that. If you want them to READ it, put it in your sales page or sales letter. If you want them to HEAR it, make an MP3 audio that they can click or download if they want, after reading compelling ad copy on why they need to listen to it.
Oh, and videos that start playing as soon as the web page is opened, not only startle your visitors who were peacefully surfing quiet pages for hours, perhaps listening to their own music or TV, and who are now scrambling to find the MUTE switch or the STOP button, but they annoy most people who are trying to READ your three-mile-long sales page hype without someone babbling more useless nonsense into their ear at the same time.
And finally, a webpage with video and audio that a visitor cannot control themselves, is a frustrating experience for your visitor and potential customer, and they will move on. Trust me, I move on a LOT on these marketing sites, but I move faster, about 10 seconds, because I can tell immediately that there is no money to be made from your program.
Ok, enough of what NOT to do.
Here's how you can fix the problem:
You need to give your videos a PROFESSIONAL look, so that you can create the ILLUSION that you actually ARE making money online.
Without the professional touch, people will KNOW that you are really NOT making a single dime, or you would be able to afford a videographer who understands lighting and interesting and varied camera angles, and a video editor who can add the pizzazz to the entire shoot. Better yet, stay out of the video yourself, except for your voice. But if you are not a trained voice talent, your video will still lack that necessary professional quality that also comes from having a proper sound studio rather than a PC mic on your webcam.
The best approach is just to check out the video styles of the sites that already have professionally created videos, such as Ashmax, GDI, IBS, and others, that have no people in them, just stock footage, sound effects, graphics and music, and that have creative titling that is not ever read verbatim by the voice talent. They are also less than 2 minutes long, 1 minute is best, action-filled and packed with just enough info to get your veiwers begging for more information! Not 11 minutes of here's my Clickbank check, and my Paypal account that I have never taken any money out of (ask yourself why??) and other info that just bogs your viewer down if they last that long in PLAY mode...
Now, remember, these site affiliates may actually not be making the money their video style implies they are making, and that is whole point. Use video as the ILLUSION that you are successful, rather than as the PROOF that you are not...
Even if you are NOT making enough money with your promotion to afford a professional quality video that can actually HOLD their attention and interest in your program enough to buy into it, you can find semi-professional video editors for a little less who would love to take your footage and give you the best creative and entertaining video they can from it. Stock footage sites abound, where you can purchase single 10-20 second clips for $30 - $100 and there are also FREE SOLUTIONS, such as free footage collections of clips that are available for the price of shipping. or sign up for 7 days of free downloads. Add some free royalty-free music from either site, or get a free song here, and you are rocking and rolling!
Yes, professionally shot footage and creative video editing CAN make a HUGE difference in whether people watch your video or not, or think your program is making money, or not...
And that is how to make your marketing video more enjoyable to watch to the end ..so that you can realize better conversion rates.
About Crystal Eikanger
Crystal Eikanger is a video editor and voice talent working as Ei-Kan Productions on www.elance.com as well as other freelance sites. The Footage Firm is an online provider of FREE royalty-free licensed stock video footage, sound effects and royalty-free music for professionals
