As with any PPC/Display advertising campaign, there are no magic bullets to guarantee success. The best ad-campaigns are crafted through strategic audience targeting, identifying KPIs and objectives up front and tracking/testing performance analytics.
These are the keys to effectively *tweak* social marketing campaigns to see favorable results. Creating a successful video ad campaign is, in many ways, an even loftier task than a traditional static image ad. But the pay-off in audience engagement and viewership is well worth the creative commitment to video.
Define Budget Pacing and Bid Types that Match Your Marketing Goals
Once you’ve identified your campaign goals, split-test your target audience and run multiple versions of creative, copy and calls-to-action to determine which versions are achieving your campaign goals.
Ex: If your campaign goals are focused on strictly driving site traffic – then low CPC campaigns, with a variety of different creative (video and static) targeted towards a broad audience will be the most likely to show positive results.
Ex If your goal is to educate, inform and drive on-site conversion – then a mix of static image and video content can help achieve these goals, running simultaneously and reaching your desired audience through multiple touch points/mediums.
Consider Audience Devices and Creative Implications
A significant portion of your video views are happening on mobile, 65% globally1, which will continue to rise with more smart-phone penetration and faster wireless and Wi-Fi providers.
When developing video content, assume that 2/3+ of your viewers will be on mobile. If your campaign needs to be mobile specific, (as in the case of an iOS or Android only App) then make sure that your ads are targeting only the appropriate mobile or iOS/Android users.
Another important consideration for mobile viewers is that they may be viewing your content without sound (i.e. Facebook/Twitter auto-play features). This is why the most effective videos are able to tell the story with and without sound. Consider Including graphics and text to assist in drawing viewers in.
Optimize your creative for all possible screens and devices (smartphones, desktop, tablets, etc.) As with static image ads, video ads are not “one-size fits all” and they shouldn’t be treated as such. Make sure that you are optimizing your ads in the most compelling and effective way possible.
Your Creative Hook Needs to be Immediate
The consumer value and utility of your videos needs to be established immediately. To maximize on short consumer attention span, high-impact creative is imperative from the first video frame on. The initial video thumbnail needs to be clear and your message needs to be delivered in the first three-seconds of the video. When consumers are scrolling through their news feed, your goal should be to catch their attention first and foremost; otherwise you’ve missed your window in one short “scroll of the thumb” by your desired consumer.
"Cisco Systems estimates that mobile video will increase 14-fold between 2013 and 2018, accounting for 69% of total mobile data traffic by the end of the forecast period."
While snack-size 15-second video ads have been the industry benchmark for years, Facebook has since lengthened the maximum promoted video length up to 40 minutes! Video Ad brevity is still a solid rule to abide by, but impactful content and stories told over a longer run-time can perform just as well as under 30-second videos.
Shorter video ads do have a much higher likelihood to be viewed all the way through; however, if the content and story are compelling, entertaining and informative, longer videos provide even more value in establishing ad recall, brand awareness and purchase intent.
At the following link, you can read more on how to best leverage the Video View Percentage Filter to monitor what percentage of your videos are being watched by your audience. This is another excellent tool to help analyze your viewership data fix “retention dips”, the points where users quit watching your videos.
In addition to the metrics already covered, there are countless other methodologies and tools to assist in analyzing and maximizing your performance data – just remember to research, monitor your campaigns and test, test and test again! Good luck in your video endeavors and remember to reach out to an emfluence Account Manager or Social Strategy representative to help get the most out of your campaigns. Subscribe to the emfluence emsights newsletter to get information like this delivered to your inbox.
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Sources:
[1] http://insights.fb.com/tag/video/
