A video with 50,000 views and zero new customers has failed, even though it looks like a win on paper. Views are the easiest metric to chase and the least connected to revenue.
Here’s the biggest mistake we see: companies chasing trendy videos, hooks, and whatever format a marketing guru told them to copy this week, when what they actually need is much simpler. Show your work. Show your product or service in a way that’s clean and easy to understand. That does more for a business than any viral trend ever will, because a viral video where nobody understands what you actually sell isn’t a win. It’s just noise with your logo on it.
Show your offer before you go after reach
If someone lands on your Instagram, your Facebook, or whatever platform, and they can’t tell right away what you do and who you serve, there’s no point being on social media at all. It doesn’t matter how many people see it if none of them understand what they’re looking at.
That’s the order this has to happen in. Show your offer clearly and professionally first. Broaden your reach and chase virality after that, not before. Don’t capture a broad audience just to confuse them the moment they show up. Capture a broad audience once you’ve already made it obvious what you have to offer the world.
One production day, a full library, not a single clip
The other mistake we see constantly is treating video as a one-off project: shoot a single homepage video, use it for a year, repeat the whole expensive process from scratch when it goes stale. A better approach treats a single, well-planned production day as raw material for months of content: a homepage video, a handful of social cuts, testimonial clips, and behind-the-scenes footage, all from one shoot. That’s exactly what turned around Uptown Drapes, whose viewership tripled after we replaced almost no video presence with highlight films and install tutorials shot in real homes.
Distribution matters as much as production
A great video sitting unwatched on a homepage isn’t doing much. The same content, cut into the right formats and placed where your actual audience spends time, whether that’s Instagram Reels, YouTube, or embedded directly in a service page, performs completely differently. Distribution planning should happen before production, not after.
Match the format to the buying stage
Someone seeing your business for the first time on social media needs something different than someone already on your website comparing you to a competitor. Short, high-energy content works for the first case. Slower, detail-focused content, like a full walkthrough or a real client explaining their results, works better for the second. Using the same video for both stages usually underperforms at both.
What this looks like in practice
We build video strategy around the outcome first: show the offer clearly, in a professional light, before chasing broad reach or a viral format. Then production and distribution follow from that plan instead of the other way around. It’s the same approach behind every video content marketing project we run for Utah County clients.
If your current video strategy is “post more and see what happens,” start by making sure anyone who lands on your page can tell what you sell in the first three seconds. Everything else follows from there.
