5 Secrets to Succeed at Video Advertising

Video, if done right, is one of the most powerful storytelling formats in the world. Indeed, sight, sound and motion elicit great emotion. It has the power to make us laugh, to cry, to contemplate big ideas and call people to action. With video advertising expected to grow 21 percent annually, it has never been a better time to be a content creator.  

Whether the intent is to entertain, inform or persuade, there are many things to consider before setting out to create your next video campaign.

Here are five ways to maximize a video initiative in order to make your video advertisement go further.

1. Go beyond the 15- and 30-second spots.

Everyone knows that consumers are migrating to a multi-screen world. As people spend more of their leisure time on digital devices, advertising dollars should follow the eyeballs. For marketers, you are no longer constrained to the formats of old standards that TV once held firm. By thinking outside the 15- and 30-second box, you can create rich and compelling stories for viewers that are emotional, memorable and impactful.

Digital browsing is usually done at leisure, which means that consumers have more time to engage with longer form videos that can be up to three minutes in length.

2. Compel your audience to an action.

Your video may be the bait but the call-to-action is the bite. When activating your video campaign, it’s important to identify how you want your audience to react for maximum ROI. Include a call to action at the end of your video that reminds the viewer to visit your site or subscribe to your channel. For a relatively low cost, you can also use companies like my business Virool to create custom banners and video overlays with one-click social sharing buttons.

3. Retarget in order to re-engage.

One of the biggest mistakes that marketers make is assuming that people will immediately make a purchase after watching their video. Think about it: When was the last time you did that yourself? Customers need a reminder across multiple touch points before they make a buying decision. Retargeting companies like AdRoll or Criteo can help re-engage your viewers by targeting them with banner ads down the line. Your video is the hook to get people excited about your product, but it will take a few reminders before they return to your site and make a purchase.

4. Use data to find an audience and place it programmatically.

There is an amazing amount of consumer data available on the web that can be leveraged to find your ideal audience. Make the most of your budget by combining three different types of data parties:

• First party: Also known as your data or the CRM data that you own
• Second party: Is someone else’s data, whether it is publisher data or data from the distribution platform that you partner with.
• Third party: These are like BlueKai or Nielsen, the behemoths of the data world.

If you package these together, you’ll be able to effectively target an audience with little to no waste. If you can understand who reacts to messages and under what circumstances, you can optimize your campaign and replicate your success with other like-minded consumers.

5. Video is hard but it is not impossible.

What good is a video if no one is seeing it? Be smart about your video and activate your campaign by partnering with a trusted company that can help you reach your audience across multiple publishers and platforms. Always identify your KPIs before you begin. Do you want more views, social engagement, a high click-through rate?  Once your video is up and running, keep a close eye on the performance and pause it if you’re not happy with the results.  There are many small adjustments that can be made to optimize the results and give you the most bang for your buck.

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To Have Your Video-Content Marketing Be Successful in 2015, Follow These 5 Rules

Some things just belong together. Shoes and socks. Bees and honey. Peanut butter and jelly. Videos and advertising. Whether they’re instructional, informational, or simply for fun, videos are an important part of today’s marketing strategy.

According to a recent report sponsored by Demand Metric and VidYard, almost 70 percent of marketers use video as part of their marketing strategy and 82 percent say they’ve seen success with video content marketing initiatives. If you’re planning to give video a larger place in your content marketing strategy for the coming year, here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Define your goals. 

Videos within the context of content marketing mean different things to different people. If the marketing team whips together a video highlighting features of a new product while the CEO is expecting something that depicts a day in the life of a company employee, that’s an expensive lesson to learn. Make sure everyone is on the same page before the cameras roll.

Part of clarifying the goals of your video content marketing strategy should be to determine how your team defines successful metrics. By the number of viewers? How often it’s shared? How many leads it generates? If it goes viral? And, what constitutes “viral?” Figuring out these kinds of things ahead of time helps you spot what’s working and what need to be tweaked.

2. Star or supporting cast? 

Give some thought to what kind of role you want your videos to have as part of your overall marketing strategy: central or peripheral.

For some organizations, casting video in the starring role makes the most sense. The majority of camera manufacturer GoPro’s marketing content revolves around videos, with social media content, blog posts, and other types of advertising serving as support or collateral content. The company now boasts 2.5 million subscribers to its YouTube channel and was the platform’s top brand channel from January to March of this year.

Some products or services simply don’t lend themselves to that much of a focus on video marketing, but that’s okay. Videos that supplement a company’s primary marketing content are still important and useful. Even a collection of videos showing how to repair or troubleshoot a product can be positioned to customers as a value added benefit.

3. Remember to include a CTA. 

Obviously, you’ll want each video you create to feature your logo and brand but it should also include a clear call to action (CTA). Written copy allows content creators to easily incorporate clickable buttons or URLs but videos present a bit more of a challenge. Incorporate your CTA directly into the video both visually and audibly for the best impact.

If you share your videos on YouTube make sure to use the platform’s Annotation feature to add pop-up messages that automatically play whenever your video is viewed. Don’t rely on it exclusively for your calls to action, however, because YouTube allows its users to disable pop-ups if they choose.

4. Paid or organic distribution? 

There are two ways to get your videos noticed: pay to have them distributed or let customers find it themselves. What’s the best approach? A mix of both.

Organic reach on Facebook has been taking a nosedive for a while now. Facebook VP Brian Boland says it’s due to a combination of factors including the way its algorithms are structured and that there’s simply “far more content being made than there is time to absorb it.”

Facebook hasn’t reported any plans to increase organic reach and now Twitter is hinting at taking a similar approach to how they serve content to users. All the major social media platforms offer tools to help brands boost their signal — in exchange for fee, of course.

If you want a fighting chance at getting your videos seen on social media, you’ll need to spend a portion of your marketing budget on buying promoted or boosted ad space. It’s money well spent, though, and you’ll be in good company, to boot. A 2012 Nielsen survey revealed that 65 percent of marketers increased their social media ad budgets for 2013.

Of course, paying for reach doesn’t mean you can take the rest of the week off. You still need to promote your video content via your own social networking channels and email campaigns.. Videos are the perfect medium for cross-channel distribution so don’t forget to use them at trade shows, as part of your online user support tools, or in mobile apps you create.

5. Find a parking spot. 

Your videos need a permanent home on your website so you’ll want to find the best place to put them. Vimeo, Brightcove, YouTube, and other video hosting sites are an option. However, they might not be your best choice if you want to retain complete control over your content and what ads (if any) are shown alongside it. Housing your video in an on-site content management system is a better bet. From there you can set up on other distribution channels and add your videos there as well.

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Here Is How to Get Your Branded Video Watched - Part 2

Continued from Part 1.....................

Add to these videos the fact that Tumblr enables brands to disseminate content throughout the Yahoo family and a powerful communication mechanism emerges. Other media companies are identifying powerful social media storylines on platforms such as YouTube and selling robust media packages around them. In an interview with Streaming Media, Danny Fishman of digital entertainment company Believe Entertainment Group describes the keys to successful video branding.
“For us, it’s more about going to where the current fan base exists versus trying to bring them elsewhere,” Fishman explains.

On a final note, Instagram also has tested the waters of the branded video space—specifically for mobile devices. The concept: create a series of 15-second video episodes around product reviews and other actionable information, the media and events company Tech Cocktail notes.

These creative solutions are just some of the ideas your brand might try to get social and achieve measurable returns. (Hey, if banks are already doing it, you should probably get in the director’s chair sooner rather than later.)

Explore the up-and-comers

Up till now, we’ve touched on mostly familiar channels. Yet the startup community is buzzing with interesting ideas surrounding branded video, from interactive elements to adjustable native ad displays. Consider the following two examples:

Rockabox creates a website-style experience that is anchored by video, explains an article from VideoAdNews.com. Interactive elements are key, with clickable content online visitors can use to navigate to additional information and social sharing, among other features. Yet the system isn’t simply about grinding out yet another painful video ad. “Consumer engagement won’t start to happen unless the right creative idea is delivered,” CEO James Booth tells the news website.

Sharethrough is built around an in-feed exchange of content including videos, which are used to generate revenue. “Whereas Facebook’s exchange (FBX) is built for in-feed, native ads just on Facebook, Sharethrough’s Exchange (STX) is built to scale native ads in the feeds of content publishers across the rest of the Web,” explains CEO Dan Greenberg in an interview with AdExchanger.

There are plenty of other great resources for tracking emerging channels for branded video, including this cost-per-click breakdown by Contently.

Do your homework

The final point we’ll make here is to keep reading and learning. Branded video distribution goes beyond content creation and interaction to more profound issues such as copyright protection. That’s why companies such as Adobe have developed specialized products that essentially help you protect ownership in the original artwork and messaging you’ve invested in.

Clearly, we’re awash in an ocean of online video, and the tide is rising. Branded content is popular, and the best original ideas can find an enormous audience. Whether your creative rises to the surface will depend on whether you are nimble enough to ride these waves of change.

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Here Is How to Get Your Branded Video Watched - Part 1

If the Internet is an ocean, video is what keeps the currents flowing. Although the web has more text-based content than you can shake a stick at, the reality is that video has built its own online empire.
Statistics show as much. For example, Cisco reports that by 2018, IP video traffic will represent 79% of consumer Internet traffic—a 13-point increase from just five years earlier.

For brands, video creation is an essential component of existing in the virtual ecosystem. The challenge is to identify which platforms are the best at distributing and elevating your message in a noisy space.

In this post, we’ll explore just a few best practices for ensuring branded video is seen and identify why this form of earned media can go a long way toward achieving financial as well as educational goals. ?

Aim for conversions

Video should be a crucial part of your content strategy because it can actually yield conversions. Whether you want clients to buy a piece of merchandise or share a few pieces of information for lead gen, video can help you achieve those goals.

For example, a recent study of B2B marketers sponsored by Vidyard found video added to a landing page boosted conversions up to 80%.

Although there are probably many reasons video tends to yield conversions, one key is probably the fact that a video adds context in a way few other media can, notes WideFunnel, a marketing optimization company. A product that might be difficult to explain in writing or photos can instantly be demonstrated in a short clip, helping to “make a product more tangible and reduce the perceived risk of buying.”

One example of this marketing approach? WideFunnel points to Airbnb, which has put together a series of attractive online video spots and also enables users to create their own video tours:

Capitalize on Social Media

In addition to hosting branded video on owned media such as a company website or an e-newsletter, earned media such as social media are a must.

Although video can be found across multiple social channels, several frontrunners have emerged in 2015 and are worth watching. Among them is Tumblr, part of the Yahoo family of brands. In a January post, Brandchannel.com notes tourism programs such as Travel Alberta of Canada are adding video to their Tumblr pages for a content-rich presentation:

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How You Can Embrace the Holy Grail of Online Marketing

Unless you’ve been sitting in front of a cathode-ray tube TV for the past few years, you’ve seen how important video has become as a marketing tactic. 

In fact, paid advertising on YouTube converts more customers than any other online platform, according to AOL Platforms. The number of digital video viewers in the U.S. is expected to increasen by more than 22 million between 2013 and 2017, according to eMarketer.

“Ultimately, video is so effective for business marketing because it works,” says Bettina Hein, founder and CEO of Pixability, a Boston advertising and video marketing platform for YouTube. “As the star power—and business pull—of video-content creators only grows, we’ll see more brands effectively leveraging their industry’s independent creators to cross-promote and co-create.” 

The beauty of online video is the fact that interactions and conversions can be tracked and measured—something brands could never do with precision on TV. According to the latest data available from the National Venture Capital Association, of the 4,041 VC deals struck in the last year, more than 10 percent (455) were for media and entertainment startups like those that help businesses and brands generate awareness and sales online. 

As evidence of interest in the online video space, Disney this year acquired YouTube video supplier Maker Studios for a reported $500 million, while Otter Media—a joint venture between AT&T and The Chernin Group—has taken a majority stake in Fullscreen, the largest independent YouTube network. Not to be left out, AwesomenessTV, one of the most-subscribed-to teen networks on YouTube, was acquired by DreamWorks Animation SKG, which went on to purchase Big Frame, a multichannel network that connects YouTube creators and advertisers, for $15 million.

So what’s next for online video, and how can entrepreneurs take advantage? 

Crowdsourcing platforms are promoting independent filmmakers and producers to small companies that want to leverage user-generated video. By partnering with the likes of Tongal.com, Poptent.com or Zooppa.com, a company can have its video marketing assignment seen by thousands of filmmakers across the world, many with built-in followings. The results can be used to help a business tell its story, engage its audience and drive awareness and traffic. 

Additionally, companies are turning to online native advertising (aka product placement)—no longer a tactic used exclusively in television or the movies. By aligning your business or brand with a YouTube creator whose following matches your target demographic, you can knock off multiple birds—content creation, audience alignment and a high-profile endorsement—with one stone. Branded Entertainment Network, Sponsify, MediaSpike and Brandertainer are among the companies that facilitate native advertising in online video.

Finally, there are the networks, which affiliate themselves with multiple online video channels. For businesses that possess the in-house talent and creativity to launch a YouTube channel, these networks can offer assistance with programming, funding, digital rights management, audience development and product placement under one roof. Among such networks are Collective Digital Studio, StyleHaul and ChannelFlip. 

As it turns out, the means for effective storytelling no longer resides exclusively within your four walls. Outsourcing for the creativity, production value and distribution you need to compete in the age of video makes sense now more than ever before. 

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