Mistake #1 – Lack of Clear Objectives
Setting an Objective
As a creative director, I frequently review client video requests that sound exciting, but lack a clear objective. Everyone wants to create the next epic video (myself included), but an investment in video should be approached no differently than any other marketing investment.
Rather than starting with an awesome video concept, it’s critical to begin with an objective that’s focused on business results. The sexy, creative part will come next, after the objective has been identified.
The great thing is, these objectives are already at the core of your existing marketing strategy. We just need to apply them to video.
Do you need to increase lead gen, build brand credibility, help close deals further down the funnel, or even close a specific account? There are many stages of your customer’s journey where video can provide a significant boost to your marketing efforts.
Let’s take a generic goal, to increase conversions, and create a specific video objective: increase the conversion rate (CVR) of our lead gen landing page by the end of Q2.
Once you have an objective, I recommend that you engage your video agency to pitch you creative ideas based on your goal. This shift in mindset will produce higher-quality videos that are custom-tailored to meet your goals. It’s the first step in transforming video from ‘icing on the cake’ to a marketing force multiplier with measurable results.
Measuring Results with KPIs
If you don’t have a clear objective, it will be impossible to accurately measure performance down the road. After deciding on a primary objective for your video, you’ll need to determine the relevant KPI you’ll use to assess the performance of your video.
As with objectives, you already use these KPI’s in your daily marketing life – you just may not be using them when it comes to video.
Warning – it’s easy to get sucked into the most obvious video metrics: number of views, likes, comments, and shares. But as B2B marketers looking to drive real business results (not Instagram influencers trying to get brand sponsorships), engagement metrics should almost never serve as KPI’s for our video initiatives.
Of course we want and need people to see our videos (traffic is vital), but engagement metrics are not typically linked to the business results we care about. Just because someone watches or likes your video does not mean that they are more likely to become a customer, or even a qualified lead.
Instead of focusing excessively on video engagement metrics, we need to measure a KPI that aligns with our objective.
For example, let’s consider the objective to increase the conversion rate of a lead gen landing page. As a solution, we’ll implement a creative 60-second landing page video at the top of the page, rather than relying on written copy alone. For the sake of the example, we’ll assume that there is already sufficient traffic being driven to this landing page from an existing campaign.
For the lead gen objective, our primary KPI will be conversion rate (CVR). At the end of the quarter, we can evaluate CVR with the new video compared to CVR without the landing page video.
The list of opportunities for the use of creative video goes on, but the key takeaway is that as a marketer, you can and should use data to demonstrate how video is actively contributing to business goals.
Parting Thoughts
When you start setting clear objectives for video, asking your video agency to pitch you creative ideas based on those objectives, and measuring relevant KPI’s, you’ll start tapping into the real power of video to generate results.
In the next article, we’ll discuss specific areas of your sales funnel where video can work as a force multiplier to make your campaigns even more successful.

Bio: Jason has over a decade of experience working with marketers in the B2B tech space to bring products and brands to life with powerful storytelling and engaging visuals. He is a Meta Certified Marketing Science Professional and Creative Strategy Professional, and has a Hubspot Digital Advertising Certification.