By Brian Cox, president and CEO, FlickFusion

The power of video marketing can’t be denied, but not every dealership has instant success when they launch a video marketing initiative. If you don’t see significant improvement in website engagement and lead conversions from your videos, you could be making one of the following common video marketing mistakes.

1. Lack of Distribution

Many dealerships post vehicle inventory videos only on their website Vehicle Detail Pages (VDPs). This is a mistake because your website probably isn’t the first place that active car shoppers think to visit. Car shoppers visit many websites during their research phase, including third-party automotive shopping sites, social media platforms and YouTube.

To engage these potential customers, expand your reach by expanding the distribution of your videos. Include inventory videos in your email campaigns, post them on your social media pages and feature them in video advertising campaigns. Most people spend hours a day on the Internet. Be aggressive about pushing your inventory videos out to where they are, instead of waiting for them to find your website.

2. Don’t Leverage Customer Data & Viewing Behavior

Many dealers use YouTube as their primary hosting platform, which is a mistake. Although YouTube is a great place to post your dealership’s videos, it’s better to upload your original videos onto a smart hosting platform.

The main problem with YouTube is that it doesn’t offer in-depth analytics or share critical data about video viewers. The ability to collect and leverage video viewer data is important if you want to create a relevant, personalized video viewing experience for every prospect.

Imagine there are two car shoppers looking at inventory videos on your website. Mary is looking for a mini-van. John is looking for a truck. Based on Mary’s consumer data and previous browsing behavior, the incentives she sees displayed in a video are different than the incentives that John sees displayed in a video. Content that’s relevant to each buyer is proven to increase time spent on your website, boost search engine rankings, improve CTRs and other metrics, and produce higher quality leads.

Consumers’ video viewing behavior can also be linked to customer profiles in your CRM. This allows you to set up alerts so your sales team is notified when a customer is viewing one of your videos; whether that video is being viewed on your website, a third-party auto shopping website, social media platform or in an email.

3. Not Enough Video Content

Many dealerships have video inventory videos, but not much other video content on their website. This is a mistake because video is the absolute best medium for engaging customers, sharing information, creating emotional connections and influencing purchase behavior.

According to Google, the video content that auto shoppers search for most are test drive videos, video walkarounds and videos that highlight vehicle feature and benefits. Showcase these videos in a virtual showroom on your website for maximum impact. Additionally, create a series of “why buy” videos highlighting your dealership’s unique value propositions, as well as customer testimonial videos.

Creating video content doesn’t have to be time consuming or expensive. Many video marketing platforms automate much of the creation and distribution process.

Another tip is to avoid using a single-purpose video marketing strategy. Often dealers spend a lot of money to create a video for a single marketing campaign or as a pre-roll in video ads, then fail to use that video again. Maximize the value of all your videos by including them in email campaigns and retargeting campaigns. Post them on your website and social media pages. Videos can be re-purposed many times across many channels. Get creative!

Avoiding these common video marketing mistakes should boost the return on investment from your video marketing strategy, leading to increased website engagement, lead conversions and sales.