These are breakfast-style events, hosted at our offices and broadcasted for modern marketers, like yourself. The latest took place at our new San Diego headquarters, where our panel of experts discussed how to leverage video in your marketing mix to deliver impactful results.
You can watch the full session below, or continue reading to learn more about the highlights to optimize your video strategy.
How does video impact the customer journey?
Video is a good way to target users who haven't been introduced to a brand before.
Digital streaming allows for specific targeting compared to traditional. Video allows us to work on the bottom of the funnel so we can re-market, something you cannot typically do on traditional TV. Remarketing audiences, despite privacy regulations evolving, is still possible through the targeting of users who have either visited our website before or potentially added a cart if we're doing e-commerce type of client. For instance, YouTube offers a helpful targeting tool called custom intent on YouTube, which targets users who are searching for specific keywords on Google search, this intent signal can then be used to target them in YouTube. Video metrics allow marketers to identify what kind of users we are engaging with, which ads are working well, and if we're quick, we can change our video content and adapt it to the different audiences that we're targeting to ultimately hit our goals.
How can you reach users beyond the awareness phase using connected TV?
Traditionally speaking, TV has always been more of a brand awareness play, the focus of video was to reach as many users as possible. Connected TV has transformed TV from the upper funnel channel it once was to more of a conversion tool. Users are served ads relevant to them based on the behaviors that they are taking on a regular basis. If you see an ad for a product that you're in market for, you're more likely to take action as a result.
In the linear space, it's difficult to measure the effectiveness of the channel. With connected TV you can directly connect the dots between an impression that was served in a household and the user’s action and customer journey looked like along the way. The last component that really has evolved this industry and shifted TV to a low funnel direct response channel is the level of optimization that can be done. This optimization is automated to ensure that based on the available data we target the right people on the right networks at the right time.
What are some of the emerging trends more on the organic social side for video and technology that people are using there?
User-generated content (UGC) is one of the biggest trends on the rise. UGC refers to people that make the content for you. The first form of UGC is people sharing content related to your product or service on their own accounts. Businesses can then get the permissions necessary to re-post it to their own profile while giving credit to content creators. The second form of UGC refers to hiring people to make that content for you so you can post natively on your account. This content is usually a lot more authentic and lifestyle looking. It's a lot more relatable to people, which is definitely where social is moving.
Accessibility is also a social trend on the rise. Adding close captioning to your videos will help you keep people longer on your videos and connect with what you're saying.
What would be the difference between a typical video you would see on old school YouTube versus now what you would see on TikTok?
The fast-paced trend is the bigger difference. YouTube used to have people watch 20 minute to 45 minute videos, people now want that information summarized in 30 seconds. Which is why the first second and a half is crucial to stop them from scrolling. As a brand, how do you play in that field and make sure that you are doing something that's going to make them want to pay attention to you? Take Hilton on TikTok as an example. A marketing campaign used Paris Hilton as the hook, but they kept people around for 10 minutes with the promise of a chance to win 10 million Hilton points.
How if at all, is generative AI changing the way that marketers can execute on video?
Leveraging this type of technology to create video scripts can help reduce production costs. AI can quickly generate a script. Likewise, creative is a pain point for a lot of brands in terms of producing video for their video ads. AI is a simple and quick way to start refreshing content with a lower level of effort. The lifeblood of any video campaign is constantly refreshed creative. AI technology can help close creative gaps for brands who can't afford or don’t have the time for “big branded” type of videos.
How can you measure the success of a video?
Taking a step back to look at different points of the funnel, we typically have different ways to measure the success and the effectiveness of those efforts. Starting at the top of the funnel, we look at things like how many households are we reaching, how many people, how many users in these households are completing the full video. As we work our way down mid-funnel, looking at typical website analytics, what type of insight traffic did we drive? What was the cost per site visit and data points like that, and even take it one step further to look at the behavioral changes as a result of these efforts. And then of course, low funnel, we're looking at what was the return on grad spend, the cost of acquiring a customer. But I think the biggest and most effective way when it comes to measuring connected TV alongside all of those metrics is the halo impact that this channel has on all of the other channels that an advertiser is running in their marketing mix. At Mountain specifically, and we've heard these stats directly from our customers that when they turned on Mountain Connected TV, they saw a 22% lift in their paid search results and a 9% lift in their social results.
What are some of the ways that you find most effective to measure video success?
Measuring brand awareness is a difficult concept to wrap around. We can drive impressions and views all day, but it is important to analyze video impact in the long them. We want to make sure we build that brand awareness over a course of time, especially for lead generation. We want to look at our top of funnel awareness campaigns through engagement, video views, video completion rates. For instance, you can test users actual engagement by running several skippable ads. This method is effective because if a user doesn't want to engage with the video, they skip it, it doesn't cost companies anything. But if they actually keep watching the video, it shows actual engagement. If they're watching the full thing, they're actually engaging with the video. This method is also useful for creative testing. You can test several versions of a video to see which one has a longer view rate. For lower funnel, you should test or measure conversions, to take your strategy to a new level, add micro conversions for those lower funnel tactics: email signups, time onsite, pages per session. This will feed you a little bit more information users and their engagement.
On the organic side, what kind of insights should you look for to drive the creative for social?
Based on the performance of past videos you can determine the best creative for your brand. Look at the content pillar of your best performing posts, meaning what was the overall content theme related to the brand of that video. Once you determine those insights you can duplicate them to test again. As for actual data, for reels, what their goal really is is to reach new people on the platform. I'll look at that individually on each video and see which had a higher non follower reach, which means that the real did its job, we reached a different audience.
What are some common mistakes from a production perspective that marketers are making?
Not repurposing assets is a common mistake or thinking that it needs to be super differentiated across different platforms. You can leverage a video multiple times by editing the video to fit platform specific requirements. Know that everything you create, whether you might not think it's specific to a certain channel, you can carve it up to repurpose it for different channels or even videos. Plan accordingly to shoot creative that can be repurposed across different platforms.