Starting off a new marketing campaign can be difficult.
Some of you will have marketing budgets, some of you won’t. My thought on marketing budgets is that if your marketing is working, and if it is driving sales and profit, surely the budget shouldn’t be limited. If it is working, it should be ramped up to drive more sales and more profit. Ideally, your video strategy this year will be about testing, every day, to find a campaign that works. Then ramping it up. Then you start the process again.
So I would start by setting some tangible goals.
To do that, consider these questions:
- what do I hope – and need – to achieve this year with my videos?
- what platforms am I going to use? and
- how can I target potential, new customers?
Measuring success
When you’ve firmed up on your goals, you will need to work out how you are going to assess your results. How will you measure success? And how will you work out if you are likely to reach your goals, or perhaps already have?
If you can’t measure it, then don’t do it. You won’t be able to show your bosses how it all went and how much of a success it was – or wasn’t! – if you don’t have the numbers to back you up. So, are you just looking for views or are you looking for actual sales? Just interest in your product or service, or action by customers that flowed from that interest? Find a way to measure everything you want to know.
Presumably, by this point, you know who your company’s customers are but, importantly, do you know how to connect with them? Are those customers on Facebook, or are they on Snapchat? Do they primarily use Twitter or do they like Instagram stories? If they do like Facebook, where do they go on Facebook? Where can you get your video in front of them and make them stop scrolling, even for just a moment?
If you have to ask customers where they hang out, do it. Research done before you press RECORD on your camera is much easier and potentially much more effective than after.
Do you know what your audience wants? You know where they hang out, but what questions do they want answered, what do they want to know about?
That important factor – a story to tell
How are you going to tell your story? When you are sitting down with your team, or discussing ideas with your husband or wife, remember that — at this stage of the process — no idea should be treated as ridiculous. Make a safe space where people can throw in ideas, any ideas, where they won’t be ridiculed. An idea that sounds ridiculous might just be the one that is different enough that people will stop and watch. Also, the more ideas you have, good and bad, the more that can be adjusted and adapted to suit your needs. Remember, your plan should never be to bore your audience to buy something; they need to be engaged, they need to feel something when they watch, and you need to interrupt their scrolling. How will you grab their attention in two or three seconds so that they stop and hang around.
Campaign ‘hooks’
Get a calendar out and start to look at things that are happening in your part of the world on particular days. Can you tie your campaigns into certain events that are happening? Will you have a Chinese New Year campaign, a May Day campaign or something to work around the footy finals in your area. Be aware of what is going on and plan ahead, this will help with engagement and will make your content more relevant.
Go viral? Now there’s a good idea, but this one you can’t plan for, so don’t. If it happens it happens; don’t sweat it.
In a few words, then: get the right content in front of the right people and you’ll get the results you want. Measure the right numbers and research why certain campaigns worked better than others, then discard the bad and keep refining the good. Treat video campaigns like you would any other and tweak small changes and refinements to get the results you want. Great campaigns will lead to more campaigns, so test, test, and test. If you do this, you will make sure that you get the best return on investment possible.
My last thought is to not get stuck in old ideas. It is a New Year, after all, and for that I wish you well: for that as well as for the success of your marketing efforts!
Whatever you hope to create, you can be sure we will be able to help you out. Give us a call on our new phone number, 1800 JASPER or, if you need some more ideas on what we can do, feel free to check out our work on Vimeo or read our past blogs.