Can you quantify the impact of your video content on your digital marketing goals?
The most common answer:
“No”.
If you do not understand the performance of your video resources, you’ll You will miss opportunities to do more of what works and less of what does not work.
After being immersed in online video before YouTube, I do not think have pushed this wonderful medium as hard as they could in the last few years.
Out of concern for the marketing budget, public. commitment and experience, and return on investment, go forward.
Let me qualify that. I’m not talking about tactics (for example, interactive, personalized and social videos are growing fast) or quality (there is a lot of amazing work).
I’m talking about something more fundamental – something that can help this good video work to have the impact that every distributor and every brand want on their investment.
I am talking about rethinking the very model of video marketing.
As an agency owner, I analyzed hundreds of YouTube channels and thousands of videos. over the years using the old model.
Old Video Marketing Model
A brand wants to produce piece of video content. If he does not have internal capabilities, he hires an agency to manufacture and deliver it. This video is shown on YouTube and sometimes embedded in a webpage.
Video promotion tactics include e-mailing and promoting via a social media activity. Many videos are simply downloaded without deliberate promotion.
If this old model seems familiar to you, it is very likely that your investment in video is not optimal and will not be easily measurable, if at all.
The failure of the old video marketing model
Let’s examine the main weaknesses of the old model and examine their impact on a video marketing project. and the brand itself.
No Strategic Approach
In the old model, there was no built-in mechanism to guide the production of the appropriate content type for a given purpose. A good video strategy provides guidance and a framework for creating and distributing powerful content. This will also make it easier to measure the impact of this video.
Goals like “educating our audience” or “raising awareness” seem valid. But the lack of specificity is prejudicial because these objectives are almost impossible to measure accurately.
If you can not measure accurately, you will not know if the video was successful. A poorly designed strategy can not be a strategy either. I have seen creative notebooks that give little detail about the audience or, worse, indicate that the video is intended for multiple audiences. On the surface, this may seem efficient, but the reality is that if you create a piece of content for multiple audiences, it will not engage anyone.
Excessive Confidence in YouTube
Another Gap from the old video marketing model is the lack of consideration of the context.
Context is the environment from which a content element exists. It is absolutely essential to succeed in the context. When a video is uploaded to YouTube, the context is often not optimal.
On YouTube, viewers can not immediately purchase a product, subscribe to a newsletter, or receive coded pixels for retargeting. To perform an action, they must click the button to exit YouTube and access your site – only about 1% of viewers do so on average. Do not forget that YouTube wants users to stay on their platform, but you probably want the traffic on your website to grow.
Even if you use the built-in YouTube code on your website, you still have problems. Take a look at this screenshot:
The YouTube result is different from the video results, which will probably get 30% more clicks than the results surrounding it. It would be great if it was driving traffic to your site, but it is not.
I’m not saying that you will never use YouTube. It has fantastic potential to meet your needs, especially if your goal is SEO, but only if the context is correct.
Insufficient promotion
The old model sees videos uploaded with little or no coordinated promotional activity
Without launch nor Strategic promotion makes it unlikely that a video will gain a critical mass of viewpoints. Although the number of views is not a measure of success, you need viewers with whom you associate your story, your brand. Without a critical mass of points of view, it is difficult to use analysis to learn useful lessons about the content of your video.
Failed to integrate a regular analysis
The old video marketing model pdf does not do much support regular metric tracking, key to long-term success. The model often forgoes the proactive inclusion of key performance indicators and regularly scheduled analyzes.
Although videos can be viewed on YouTube, the number of views is not a measure of success. What matters is whether the right people watch your video content for the right reasons and then take the desired action (ie, a viable minimum conversion).
The continuation of the last point is that, without proper measures, I can not know exactly how a video behaves. I speak of performance in depth. Parts such as the engagement rate (ie, the amount of video viewed), read rate, shares, clicks, and conversions are further useful steps you can take to better inform your strategy. video marketing.
5 rules for video marketing
After considering how the old model Video marketing does not not serve your interests, but you need a clear solution.
A new model should address the weaknesses of the old model and help you get the success you expect from your video investment. I propose as a starting point five rules
1. Using Design Thinking
Design thinking is a process that allows you to understand an audience and define a customized solution. By answering a few powerful questions, you can create something that will resonate powerfully – put under the skin of those who matter most to you.
Ask these three powerful questions:
What’s the point?
Or, to put it another way, what is the fundamental purpose of your video? Do not say “commitment” or “brand awareness“, it’s a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Get inspired by the developing areas of business – or your brand goals. Here are some answers:
Whatever your answer, remember: precision is the starting point for creating impact with video.
For whom?
At first glance, you might think that it is an issue of audience or demographics. On the surface, that’s it. But if you want to create a video that is really powerful for an audience, go further.
Psychography is a good starting point, as is the view of your audience. What do they think about your brand, your product, your service, your content?
Be precise and narrow. If you can understand your audience’s point of view in relation to what you do, you are more likely to do something that means something to them.
Good marketing creates change. You seek to change an attitude or behavior to achieve your goal. Looking at your answer to the question “what’s the point”, it will help you. You can only answer this question correctly if you know what the purpose of the video project is.
As Seth Godin says, all too often people wait to see what a thing does before meeting its purpose.
2. Perform a video content gap analysis
Perform an early gap analysis of video content to help you truly differentiate the videos you publish.
Differentiation allows you to put the market on the market. Your videos will look fresh. If you analyze the three questions in Rule 1, the content of your video is likely to create deep connections with your audience.
Analyze the video content your audience is watching. What are the trends? What is successful (watch the engagement in the videos posted on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter)? Then, review your video project and think about how you could position it so that it stands out and gets closer to your audience.
For example, suppose you were working in an engineering industry. You find that your audience watches videos with a very technical style. Do you want to publish videos that are similar or whose content is immediately distinguishable?
Be specific in designing a video so that she has the best chance to seduce and connect with those who matter most to you
3. Use the correct context
Now that your video has been created, where do you put it for maximum impact? Options include YouTube, your website, and social media. It is essential to know the context or purpose of the video to make the best decision.
Although I wrote earlier about how YouTube can hurt a brand’s video marketing efforts, I want to reiterate that YouTube is not automatically bad. There is an excessive dependence on this. This poses a lot of problems.
If you plan to use YouTube, use it correctly. For example, ASOS uses video content expertly. Its YouTube channel is regularly updated with content focused on the lifestyle elements of the brand – content that broadcasts brand values in a way that is convenient and useful for viewers.
ASOS also uses many carefully selected video and channel tags to help its content fit well in the search. This high-end content adds value to the brand, giving it a clear identity.
Now, let’s look at a product page on the brand’s website:
This video is selling pure products. It makes sense when you think about the context – a product page whose purpose is to make a sale.
You will not find a pure product video on ASOS ‘YouTube channel or social media marketing. Each context is related to the answer to the question “what is it for?”
4. Campaigns
OK, the video has been made and you now know the best context. And now?
I’ve already worked in the film industry as a distributor. If there was one thing that was perfectly clear, it was the following: there was no well-designed and effective promotional campaign to support the release of the film, this one would have a quick and painful death.
Would people know if there was no promotion? No posters, no interviews, no trailer?
Each of these promotional elements is intrinsically linked to the main content. Each piece helps to tell the story and expand the themes.
The goal of each promotional content element is to educate the public about the main movie released – to motivate people to watch it. 19659002] Your videos should not be treated differently.
A coordinated campaign, in which all the different elements feed the main video, will facilitate your awareness work.
You create a video for a case study. It’s juicy – there are so many good things to incorporate into a story. If you include everything, the video will end after five minutes. However, if you choose 90 seconds slimmer, you worry that too much powerful information will be omitted.
What are you doing?
The answer is a campaign. In addition to the video of the case study, you create native social content, an infographic, a white paper and a microsite to tell the story as you please.
You cut your canvas and place it at strategic locations. on the journey of your customers – while raising awareness of basic video content as a real emotional asset (ie persuasive).
Finally, this activity will probably attract you a lot more attention (ie, a critical mass of viewers). your video
This brings us to the last piece of the new model.
5. Maximizing Performance
Too many marketers consider a published video to be immutable. Viewing videos this way can be dangerous because you can only view a video as a success or a failure.
Think of videos more like landing pages that you monitor and optimize regularly. For example, create two versions of the video and perform A / B tests. You publish the different versions on your sales page. The goal is to convert viewers for sale. Version A converts to 2.4%, while version B converts to 2.1%. You’re moving with version A.
But are you just going to stop there?
With a critical mass of viewpoints (typically, at least 1,000 views or published at least three months) on a professional video hosting platform, you can go further in the way your viewers are . watch the content of your video.
TIP: YouTube analytics does not help you understand which parts of your video are disengaging your audience. Wistia (free and paid versions), Brightcove (paid) and Vidyard (paid) are some of the professional hosting sites with excellent analysis.
View Points Maps:
You can see granularly how people view your video and use that data to improve its performance.
For example, if people drop a game or replay a section, you now understand where you should adjust the video. keep your viewers.
It’s all a problem
The old model of video marketing makes what a lot of brands think they need – it only provides video. But this reflection creates problems of strategy, promotion, measurement and, basically, impact that this video will have on the public (and finally on the brand).
Following the new rules allows you to practice video marketing with a more holistic approach that can achieve your business and the goals of your audience.
These new rules are not gospel, but I invite you to try them. Separate them and experiment. If you are successful, share it and develop together this media that connects, entertain and move people like no other.
Videos are also a great way to watch what you can not attend at the event. the person. Subscribe to the video on demand to hear the experts’ insights, tips and tricks presented at Content Marketing World 2018.