Thinking about using paid media to take your digital marketing to the next level?

Here are the 6 stages to consider before using paid advertising.

With most articles on video marketing success, there seems to be a perfect recipe on how to get the most out of your content: create a film and then use paid media. Case closed.

Sure, it’s easy to make a quick film, throw a ‘truck load’ of money behind it and then 30 days later, be high-fiving that you got a million views. After all, getting views is the easy part, if you don’t care what kind of views they are, nor how human the traffic is.

However, getting genuine, high-quality, engaged views from your audience takes a little more effort to get right. Here’s a few stages to consider before you throw your content into the paid media abyss:

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. 

Determine clearly who they are, what content they want to see, what you have done before that they liked and what they didn’t. The key here is to use your past efforts, communicate with your audience and feedback those learnings into future content.

PROVIDE VALUE. 

It’s great creating content, but are you saying something that you and your audience actually care about? Can your audience take away something after watching your content or are you just creating content for content-sake?

DISTRIBUTE ORGANICALLY. 

The biggest advocates for your content are you and those sitting beside you. If you don’t want to share the content to your personal networks, then how can you expect your audience to share it and engage with it?

CREATE HIGH-QUALITY CONTENT (where possible). 

Following on from the point above, every piece of content you create represents you and your brand. Be proud of what you are saying and how you are saying it.

However, there are two times where quality doesn’t always reign supreme in the content creation process, and that is if the topic is either time sensitive or if the value of the message is so overwhelming and needs to take centre stage.

GET STRAIGHT TO THE POINT. 

Avoid long introductions that rely on your audience waiting more than 6 seconds to find out why they should be watching. Tell your audience where you are going to take them, explain the journey and the destination, so that they can make a conscious decision to keep watching. 

NO PLATFORM IS OFF LIMITS. 

Consider all the channels you have available and use them, even if that requires making bespoke edits. In particular, think about:

• Social media: don’t just share your content once. Promote on multiple occasions and encourage a conversation with your followers.

• Website: place the content on key, but relevant pages, and at the top, not below the fold or at the bottom of a page of text.

• Internal channels: as mentioned above, your biggest advocates are in your company. They should be watching your content, at the very least, and sharing it to their own networks. You should consider how you can encourage their engagement.

• Newsletters and existing customers: don’t forget about the audience you already have. Nurture them and engage with them.

Only after these stages should you begin considering putting some money behind it in order to expand your reach. However, I would encourage you to think past the usual Facebook and pre-roll ads to different formats, ones that will enable your audience to actively choose to watch your content. Of course, this might be more expensive, but in terms of building meaningful relationships with your customers, it’s definitely more valuable in the long-term.

The final, and potentially one of the most important and overlooked aspects of any video strategy, is measurement. Look beyond the metrics of a view and start analysing how your audience has engaged with your content and what they did as a result of watching it. 

Video content can be incredibly expensive and takes a lot of effort to get right. It’s worth, therefore, taking the time to make great quality, engaging and purposeful content that you would want to shout about, and do not let media budgets justify its existence and value.

The 9-minute documentary follows heavyweight world champion Anthony Joshua as he surprises a 19-year old volunteer coach from B Active with a training session.

WHAT CAN BRANDS TAKEAWAY?

• Give your audience something to take away beyond their fandom.

When using a celebrity as part of your content strategy, it’s essential not to be lazy and simply expect people to watch because their favourite sportsperson is involved. You want people to not only watch but enjoy your content, remember it and come back for more.

In this documentary, Lucozade goes beyond creating a simple sales pitch video: they really collaborate with Joshua to achieve a much bigger, more wholesome aim: to inspire people to be active.

• Decide whether you want to establish a long-term or one-off partnership.

It’s crucial before you start a partnership to determine whether it is going to be solely for one piece of content or if it’s a long-term investment that you want to nurture and incorporate into your brand’s personality. Lucozade Sport partnered with Joshua in 2016 and have not looked back since, with the boxer becoming an official brand ambassador and fronting their new FitWater launch as well as the on-going ‘Made to Move’ campaign.

Need help?

We are YouTube experts who will help manage, integrate, optimise, amplify and evaluate your YouTube content and channel, ensuring you reach the right audience and drive high quality engagement and action rates. Get in touch to find out how we can help with your YouTube marketing strategy: stuart@navigatevideo.com