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10 min
Video marketing is one of the best ways to get your brand message across to the modern audience, as it transcends almost all forms of popular media consumption. Primarily that’s because it’s popular with customers, with up to 90% of individuals surveyed reporting that product videos help them make purchasing decisions, and 54% preferred video content to other forms of advertising.
Video content is efficient and cost-effective, and can be used by almost any business as long as the creative team responsible focuses on the fundamentals. These factors are varied in nature, but if you can master them, then the video advertising campaigns you run will likely prove highly effective.
It’s crucial that you have a clear understanding of what you want your video advertising to achieve before launching a campaign. Are you looking to increase brand visibility, for example, or to engage with a new audience or demographic? Also, how long do you intend to run your campaign?
Make sure that your team has a full understanding of its budget and campaign duration, as otherwise it will be difficult to set achievable goals. It’s also a good idea not to get too bogged down in detail, either, by making the goals your team sets clear and simple. You can also layer extra targets and ideas as you build up your plan later on.
There are three different methods by which you can define your audience, namely demographics, interests, and intent. Choosing the first means your campaign is based on appealing to socio-economic factors like age, income, ethnicity, etc. Interests is fairly self-explanatory and is based on targeting similar consumer interests, such as selling cat food to people who like cats. Intent on the other hand is aimed at active consumers already looking for products like those you’re advertising for.
Consider creating a “buyer persona” before launching your campaign to understand the kind of people you’re targeting your content at. A buyer persona needs to be as detailed as possible to be successful and should include information like demographic background, interests, and pain points, and be based on the data you’ve gathered on your customers. For a full, well-rounded buyer persona, include information not only on demographics but interests and intent as well.
Everyone likes a story, and the same maxim holds true in video marketing. In fact, according to one study, 80% of consumers were more likely to prefer a brand that told a story in its ad content. Coffee companies, for example, often don’t extol the virtue of the brand’s product specifically, but rather the feeling or connection it is associated with. This typically includes stories where family members might, for example, reunite over coffee, or friends share a connection in a similar situation.
This is how some leading marketing companies can create a lasting impression that translates into sales, by using the power of storytelling to create a positive image of the brand in their audience’s mind. Even your logo design should include a story and a message to the audience. To find the right story for your audience, look back at your buyer persona and consider what themes would appeal most to them. A middle-aged woman might appreciate family stories, whereas a younger man could well prefer competitiveness and friendship. By making the advert a story, about the audience and not just your product, you’ll enjoy more success.
A call-to-action (CTA) is a message, command, or image that’s mostly included at the end of video content (or other forms of media like social media posts) designed to catch the audience’s attention and get them to do something. The actions can range from signing up to a website, to making a post comment or actually buying something.
The actual command is not as important as making sure you include CTAs as part of your video strategy, because without them, you won’t be able to maintain customer interest and momentum. Make sure they’re placed in the videos you produce, and that they’re short, concise, and easy for the viewer to act on.
SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it’s absolutely crucial to master, as it will help your video campaign appear as high as possible on Google’s search engine. To ensure your SEO is on top, it’s critical to consider your potential audience and what they’re searching for online. The keywords that people enter into search engines are what you’re aiming for, so if the product is about pet food for example, make sure it appears in a number of areas.
For starters, it should appear in the video’s description on its host platform like YouTube, in the video itself frequently, and also in its title. Using a high-quality thumbnail image helps to boost your SEO, too. Keywords, however, are key, so work with specialists if necessary and use a tool like Google Keyword Planner to ensure the terms you choose for your video are ideal.
This point really needs to be stressed, as not setting a proper budget has led to the failure of many video campaigns. You need to consider a number of factors when setting your budget, including pre-production costs, graphic design, employee hours, as well as post-production and distribution costs as well.
Your video ad strategy should be checked over by the accounting and/or finance department at your company, and make sure to notify all other relevant departments. When setting a budget, it’s better to be more conservative, and risk underspending rather than overspending.
The best video strategies work because they’ve been placed on the right media platforms that will maximize audience reach and interest. There are a number of distribution channels you can use, but we highlighted the most popular placements for your video campaign.
Different social networks appeal to different audiences, so some will be more important to you than others. Social media management tools like Hootsuite allows schedule posting from a single platform. RecurPost is among the free Hootsuite alternatives. TikTok is ideal for targeting zoomers, while you should use LinkedIn for business content, and Instagram for fashion or cultural marketing for example. Also, bear in mind, some sites are more popular than others in different geographical areas.
Any serious video marketing campaign will need to be placed on YouTube, as the Google-owned platform’s monetization power is considerable. According to the SEMrush report, YouTube has 7.57 billion users per month (stats from June 2022). Such a huge number of viewers allows marketers to be sure that they will reach their target audience on YouTube, even if it’s quite limited. There are also platforms like Vimeo and Dailymotion that can be used and while they have fewer ads than YouTube they do have some and are worth considering. There are platforms like Vimeo, Cincopa, and Dailymotion that can be used. While they have fewer ads than YouTube, they do have some and are worth considering.
Connected television (CTV) is proving to be particularly promising, and spending in this sector will reach nearly $90 billion in the U.S. this year. Video ads placed on CTV services perform far better than those on linear TV at a fraction of the price, and can significantly improve your brand’s reach at the same time, so it’s a good investment. In contrast to mobile or web advertising, which utilizes third-party cookies, CTV advertising allows you to target your audience based on device IDs and IP addresses. Ads can appear before the main content appears (pre-rolls), during (mid-rolls), or afterward (post-rolls) and they are predominantly unskippable, so you can make sure that your message will be delivered to the viewers. In addition, it’s possible to create your own dedicated channel whether yourself, for example using Roku Direct Publisher, or via channel development and video distribution services like VlogBox.
It is worth including videos on the landing pages of the website for every business. Landing pages help you collect email addresses of your clients, increase the number of subscribers, and boost SEO via keywords. It is also a sort of hub where you can lead customers to social media pages, CTV channels and so on. Placing video content helps to increase time spent on the website significantly, tell people more about your product/service, as well as increase traffic to your e-commerce landing page.
You can’t create a video campaign just once if you want to be successful, and the next step is to replicate your success and/or learn from your failings. Analyze, assess, and process as much as you can from your campaign to make the next one you run even more effective. For example, video dubbing is crucial for campaigns with global reach as it enables greater accessibility and engagement by overcoming language barriers and making the content more relatable to a wider audience.
You should also be continuously looking out for new technologies you can implement to boost your campaigns, and for new trends that you can take advantage of for the same purpose. Some of these include:
We mentioned the popularity of CTV earlier, but it’s worth mentioning again, given its huge potential. Over 5 million consumers cut the cord to conventional TV in 2021. This is where the audiences are moving, and marketers who integrate CTV to their omnichannel strategies will have an early advantage in an industry which will undoubtedly grow in the coming years. Considering the advantages it offers like precision targeting, transparency, and a much lower price compared with linear TV, this niche will become more and more competitive in years to come.
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) will dominate much of multimedia, especially with the rise of the metaverse, where consumers will interact with one another fully and immersively online as if they’re on a MMO like World of Warcraft. Ad creators will be able to create interactive content that takes viewers directly to pages in one experience to try products virtually, allowing them to actually try something before it’s shipped. The technology has been around for a while now (think Pokémon Go) and it’s popular, so expect to see more of it.
Marketers are increasingly working with live-streamers on platforms like Twitch to promote their products, but live video goes beyond that. Addressing your audience live, without filter, allows them to interact with you in real-time, building engagement and brand recognition.
By making sure you take account of all the factors outlined above, you will be able to embark on a successful advertising campaign based on video content. Start by focusing on the fundamentals and then consider how your company can learn from its experience, make improvements, and experiment with new ideas.
Concepts like live-streaming, as well as virtual and augmented reality, are the new frontiers in video ad creation and could be integrated into your future ad campaigns. Whatever new type of content you utilize in the future, remember to ace the fundamentals, and you will be more likely to succeed.
