Facebook

Facebook Advertising

With over 500 million people watching Facebook videos every day, you are neglecting an exponentially growing audience if you are still only creating traditional text and image-based ads. Facebook gives you the ability to get video views at a very minimal cost, meaning you’ll have more money to spend in other marketing avenues.

Facebook video ads work well for both conversion and branding-based campaigns. The most recent example I can give is, in the month of July, we ran a video campaign that was targeted to Page Likes. We were able to acquire just shy of 400 page likes with a $99 spend. That comes out to $0.25 per Page Like – real humans interacting with your business page who would like to learn more about what you do and stay updated with everything going on in your business.

Facebook video ads work exceptionally well for those of you in a service-based industry. Imagine owning a local restaurant, and you want to drive more customers in the door this fall. Create a short, 30-60 second video that eloquently visualizes some seasonal specials as well as classic favorites, and make the call-to-action something that entices people to come by – maybe a free pumpkin drink if you say you came from Facebook or 15% off your order in between the times of 4-6pm Monday-Thursday. You can also add in quick, 5-second clips of customers describing their pleasurable experience and them saying they can’t wait to come back.

Something to also keep in mind is that 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound. Whether you are at the office, at home trying not to wake up your baby, or quickly scrolling through your feed, believe it or not, sound can be an inconvenience. Crazy, right? Luckily for you, Facebook will automatically add subtitles to your video, meaning you don’t have to spend any time or money hiring a professional to do so.

The power of video on Facebook doesn’t stop with ads. Going “Live” on social media is becoming more popular than ever. Don’t think just because you don’t have a 10,000+ audience you shouldn’t strive to engage the audience you do have. Even if you have 5 people join your Facebook Live, you can encourage those 5 people to share your post, which is then seen by their Facebook audience, which can then get organically shared again and again. Not to say this will happen every time, but consistency is key, especially if you are a small business who is new to the whole social media/video content creation game.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is still a very powerful tool when used strategically. Building an email list full of past and potential customers is one of the most important things you can do as a business owner. Incorporating video into your emails is perfect for blog posts and linking out to content on another platform such as YouTube or Facebook.

What we like to do is whenever we push out a video blog through email (Mailchimp), we write a one-paragraph excerpt touching on the key points of the video, then creating a thumbnail image for the video which is linked to full version of the video.

This approach will give your email list just enough curiosity to want to click out to watch the video and see what you have to say. The reason why this is effective is because the people who have purchased from you in the past, or have opted-in to receive your newsletters in some capacity, are mostly warm to hot leads, meaning they are genuinely interested in your product or service and will be more inclined than anyone else to care about what you are saying and ultimately purchase from you again in the future.

YouTube

If anyone ever tells you they haven’t watched at least one YouTube video in their life, they are lying. A lot of people are surprised to find out that YouTube is the second biggest search engine behind Google. You can find video tutorials, reviews, commentary, how-to’s, and just about anything you need help with on this video behemoth.

Every video that you produce for your business from this moment forward should be posted to YouTube, and yes, SEO’d the proper way. You never know who will be searching for something, even if it’s the most niche, uncommon topic imaginable.

In addition to attracting more eyes to your content, uploading your videos to YouTube has some administrative advantages. YouTube is essentially a free, online video storage system. If you don’t want to keep all of your videos on your computer or external hard drives, simply upload them to YouTube and they will be accessible to you 24/7 (internet-access required).

Uploading videos to your website causes major page-speed issues, which is a monumental SEO disaster. Similar to large image files which can be compressed, videos can be toned down as well, although most times at the expense of quality. This is why if you have any video over 45-60 seconds, it’s better to upload and embed your video via YouTube so that it is hosted on their servers, and not yours.

Finally, any video uploaded to YouTube is eligible to be an ad. Pre-roll video ads appear before other videos on YouTube. Other video ads appear beside playing videos and in search results. Best of all, you can highly target your ads and you only pay when someone engages with your ad (meaning, if someone skips before the 30 seconds are over, you don’t pay anything). Using YouTube is a great video marketing strategy when trying to reach a lot more people organically who are searching online.

Instagram

Many people think of Instagram is a place only for sharing, liking, and commenting on photos (and the occasional DM, of course). What they don’t realize is that you can advertise videos in stream, post videos to your story, and even go live (similar to Facebook).

What makes video effective on Instagram is the length, flexibility, user engagement, and exclusivity. Attention spans are shorter than ever, meaning being constricted to keeping your videos short will help guide you to create videos that get straight to the point. Since the videos are so short, you are able to repurpose them for just about any other marketing platform or use. Users will engage, like and comment, on things they find interesting. Create a short clip of puppies running in a field, or beachgoers drinking a cold beverage on a hot summer day, and people will connect with your message and engage accordingly. Videos are exclusive, or unique, in the sense that Instagram is still largely image-reliant, meaning videos will stick out on this social media platform more than others.

You can also link your Facebook Ad videos to Instagram if you desire, giving you a wider reach and increased engagement.

Snapchat

Snapchat is not just for friends and family. Many online influencers and brands are taking to Snapchat to both advertise and promote themselves. Snapchat video ads are popping up more than ever before (luckily for users, at this time, most can be skipped). Even though Snapchat doesn’t require you to watch most of these ads, there are plenty of companies that are making very unique and intriguing “commercials” that are often just as entertaining as some of the stories you are watching. Snapchat news does a great job at “clickbaiting”, meaning they often over-exaggerate titles to get you to view the content. Whether you agree with this method or not, at the end of the day, it results into more viewers, which means more people potentially watching your advertisement.

Social influencers such as Gary Vaynerchuk and Tai Lopez do an exceptional job at documenting their daily lives and keep you coming back for more by showcasing all of the rewards that can be achieved as entrepreneurs. These are obviously extreme examples of two universally recognized names, but you can apply the same tactics to your own brand.

Whether you are a local digital marketing agency, a gym owner, restaurateur, or real estate investor, if you have a cool story that inspires people and are able to expand upon that and offer value on a daily basis, people will start noticing and more and more people will watch your stories each and every day.

The one downside at the moment is unlike Instagram and Twitter, there is no functionality to switch between Snapchat accounts, meaning you’ll have to keep your crazy partying snaps to a minimum if you want to build a reputable and respected Snap profile for yourself or your business. A lot of agencies are now mixing in a Snapchat video marketing strategy to market bigger brands.

Google Remarketing

Google Adwords Retargeting and Dynamic Remarketing yield some of the best ROI results. Instead of following people around with generic products or services from a website they’ve shown interest in, or specific products they’ve looked at but abandoned before checkout, you can hit someone on the next YouTube video they watch.

As I mentioned earlier, someone watches a YouTube video to do exactly that, watch it. There’s a really good chance you’ll have someone’s full attention (or, as close to it as possible) by remarketing inside of a YouTube video. They will either have to click out of the ad or keep it there until it goes away on its own, meaning even if they don’t actually click out to your website, you are keeping your product or service at the top of their mind, and they will be much more likely to go back and purchase at a later date.

Virtual Reality / Google 360 Virtual Tours

What if your customers could explore your retail space, restaurant, or property listing before ever visiting in person? 360 Video is the next sleeping giant in the worlds of tech and online marketing, and if you aren’t aware of this rapidly growing trend, you are already behind.

360 Virtual Tours offer an all-encompassing user experience for potential customers. They are a series of high quality images that are stitched together to create 360 panoramas. The multiple panoramas are then connected together to allow the potential customer to virtually ‘walk through’ your store, without ever leaving the comfort of their own home. Once completed, the Tour is uploaded to your Google My Business page and can be embedded on your website.

The value of uploading this tour to your Google My Business page is multi-faceted. First off, your competitors most likely aren’t taking advantage of this technology, and if they are, they definitely aren’t using it to its full potential. Secondly, customers will inherently be curious about virtually exploring a location that relates to their search, and it’s up to you to make sure they like what they see. Lastly, embedding this tour on your website and then driving traffic to your location page will help facilitate more phone calls, form submissions, and in-store visits.

Cross-Platform Strategizing

It’s crucial to create content that is relevant to the specific social platform you are using. Each channel has its own criteria for best practices. For example, what works on YouTube won’t necessarily be optimal for Instagram.

Let’s say you recorded a live webinar and want to push that out through all your social channels. What’s a good way to accomplish this?

• Upload the full-length webinar on Youtube. Send email newsletter that links to YouTube.
• Assemble the key points into short clips for Facebook. Share one clip each day the following week.
• Share the best moments from the Webinar in short, 10-15 second videos on Instagram.
• Don’t forget to link to the main youtube video in the Instagram and Facebook shares!

Don’t just post to post. Always have some meaning behind what you are saying. Your customers aren’t dumb; they can usually tell if you are posting just for the hell of it. Be passionate about your industry, and make sure to always encourage people to like, comment, and subscribe for more videos.

Whether you like it or not, videos are becoming (and in many cases, has already become) the most popular way people consume information. If you only producing written content and white papers, you are far behind the times and missing out on an ocean of potential customers.

Of course, video shooting and editing isn’t something you can wake up one morning and know how to do, or even where to get started. Speaking of videos, there is endless video content out there to help you get started, but if you want to save your time, your most valuable asset, you can always reach out to our content creation team here at Momentum to learn more about how we can set you up for long-term digital growth and success!