Did you know that a high-quality branded online video experience results in consumers being 39% more likely to research a featured brand or product and 36% more likely to tell friends and family about the brand? The key phrase is “high quality”, which in the world where the amount of video content is growing exponentially is getting harder and harder to achieve. Today, we attempt to offer you a few practical tips on boosting the performance of your video ads and the entire video advertising strategy in general.
1. Create videos specific to different stages of the buyer’s journey
In layman’s terms, you’ve got to cover all types of your consumers – from potential ones who are at the very start of the buyer’s journey to those ready to make the purchase or already did with specific ads. Let’s look at the typical types of videos in more details.
Branding videos (start of the customer’s lifecycle)
Their key purpose is to attract customer attention and be memorable, so companies benefit from creating entertaining creative commercials that have the potential to drive social shares. Ultimately, they should have extensive reach, nevertheless, sticking to the target consumer profile on numerous channels, like Facebook (paid ads), YouTube (pre-roll), Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat etc.
Product education videos (mid-way on the buyer’s journey)
Once you’ve captured the attention of the right people, the task of your video ads would be to build trust to your product and stay top of mind by “reminding” of your product or service.
The best fit for this stage of the customer lifecycle would be explainer videos, interviews with the top managers, company history/production videos etc. The target audience would be people who already expressed their interest in your company, like followers on social media, prospects, leads from your website/CRM etc.
Such nurturing videos should be placed on your website and distributed through less channels than the branding ads – for instance, your YouTube channel, Facebook page, Vimeo.
Conversion videos (final stages of the buyer’s journey)
Clearly, the key aim of the conversion videos is to foster the purchase decision through creating anticipation, dealing with possible objections and providing a call-to-action.
Typically, the types of videos that work for this purpose are customer testimonials, case studies/success stories, demo videos and limited time promo offers. This specific video content should be best placed on the company website and product pages.
2. Track video performance
There is no better way to learn what works best for your specific product than try. In other words, unless you closely watch your videos progress by tracking the right metrics, the road to improved video ads performance will be blocked. So what should you watch for in the first place?
In order to discover how many users have actually made it till the end of the video, pay attention to completion rate. Tracking level of engagement can be indicative of how well the buttons and CTAs placed in the video work. Watch time metrics shows for how long users are watching your videos and when most of them drop off. This will give you a clue as to how long your videos should be and at which point to place your CTA to ensure it is seen.
3. Tips to improve video perfomance and watch time
Watch time is an important factor that search engines take into account when ranking your video. The longer the watch time – the higher quality your video would be considered. So, what can you do about it?
- Add captions to your videos – combined with subtitles in different languages, it can give a boost of 40% to the video viewing time, according to a research. The whole point is, most of the time users watch videos on their mobiles, and more often than not, without sound. Therefore, it is crucial to concentrate on great visuals and making your video clear even without audio.
- Create a great thumbnail – instead of choosing from a set of automatically provided thumbnails, create one that drives attention and upload it to your video.
- Include relevant keywords – do your research and make sure the best keywords and phrases are present in the video title and description.
- Show viewers what to do next – let them visit your website, follow the link to a landing page, sign up or share the video easily by placing CTA or links in the right places and ensuring their excellent visibility.
Clearly, launching and running a video advertising campaign require much efforts, but they are sure to bring great results if you follow all the essential steps and don’t leave off halfway down the road.
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