Make room for video content in your marketing strategy (part 2)
presented the initial steps on how to make room for video content on an already established marketing campaign. This article is the continuation on how to ensure that the marketing team creates video materials that are organic and cohesive to the brand’s message.
• Step Five: Study each video channel
The online world offers hundreds of platforms to present video content. Each channel will show different results based on the platform’s specific goals and priorities. Therefore, it’s important to learn and understand what each channel can offer.
Below are two of the most popular video channels used for video marketing:
1. YouTube
The prominence and magnitude of YouTube can’t be denied. YouTube offers a variety of services for different kinds of video content, but the most used services today are YouTube Trueview and Google Preferred.
Ads presented on Trueview are displayed on the premise that a marketer will only have to pay for the ad if the users choose to watch his video. This means the audience is more concentrated and qualified because they opted to look at the video.
Trueview ads are typically created to capture the attention of mid-to-low funnel visitors who’re still undecided about the brand. The videos can accurately touch on the elements that trigger an emotional and reactive response from a skeptical audience.
Google Preferred, on the other hand, presents a package of categories to marketers. There are 12 types to choose from. Each class enables the marketer to share the brand’s message alongside some of the most popular and engaging YouTube content. With this service, the brand is given access to the top 5% of content found on YouTube.
2. Facebook
Facebook Video is arguably YouTube’s toughest competition. Thanks to the social networking cost-per-mille (CPM) video ad model, more and more companies opt to advertise on Facebook.
The CPM model is grounded on impressions. It means the company pays for the ad when Facebook has shown it a thousand times. The video starts to play as soon as the Facebook user scrolls to it. Assuming the video has a compelling first five seconds, this is a massive opportunity to catch the attention of potential leads and new customers.
The cost-per-click (CPC) model means the company pays for the ad if a Facebook user actually clicks on the video content. This is more parallel to YouTube’s Trueview users where the video audience is more qualified and focused on the brand, product or service. This also means that a conversion is likely to happen.
• Step Six: Define the target market.
YouTube and Facebook video services provide sophisticated targeting for marketers. YouTube offers everything Google has to offer when it comes to consumer data. Facebook has a massive volume of interest-based information.
Defining the brand’s target market is important in delivering the video content to those who need it. On YouTube, the marketing team can target the audience based on demographics, topics, keywords, and interests. On Facebook, the team can target the market based on age, gender, location, and interests. To further put a bull’s eye to the right audience, the team can also break the target market into segments and do a test on which video content works best.
Establishing the target market also requires in-depth research on the market’s viewing behavior. The marketing team can learn a lot about their audience with the latter’s viewing patterns. Lucky for marketers today, videos present an enormous amount of data.
During (and after) the initial video tests, they can easily monitor the number of viewers that watch a particular video, which parts the audience skipped the most (if there’s any), and the videos that are most re-watched. This way, the team understands which topics their target market enjoys the most and which elements need improvement.
• Step Seven: Establish competitive but fair metrics for success.
As with any marketing campaign, measuring the success of video content is crucial towards the overall growth of the business. With video marketing, the team needs to weigh more than just the video views to come up with a better Return of Investment. Using the goals established on Step One, the Key Performance Indicators develop the metrics that can be measured for success.
With these steps, the marketing team can define and refine ways on how to properly incorporate video content into the brand’s marketing strategy.