Back in 2015, I was just starting my Marketing degree at the University of Lethbridge.
I was killing time on Facebook before a lecture when I came across a video that caught my attention immediately.
It was a simple, emotion-packed video about a man finding his soulmate puppy, Chloe. The main subject learns all about what it means to be a dog dad, showcased by dancing around with her, teaching her about the piano, and telling her all about his record collection. To say the video is heartwarming is an understatement (it may have taken a few years, but I own a dog now).
The reason this video caught my attention was because it didn’t feel like I was being advertised to. When I first watched it, I didn’t see “marketing”; although, there was subtle product placement from Purina Puppy Chow dog food. It’s one of those clever videos that you’d share with a friend because they’re an animal lover. It’s the definition of ‘relatable viral content’ — relatable, attractive, and tempting.
This type of video is called sponsored content which ActiveCampaign describes as:
“...premium content that a sponsor pays a publisher to create and distribute. It’s a type of native advertising that is consistent with the surrounding content on a webpage.”
If you’ve ever scrolled through a Facebook feed, you’ve most likely ran into content created by Buzzfeed, a digital news and media company. They create viral articles, videos, and quizzes. Puppyhood was a six-part short series created by Buzzfeed in partnership with the Purina Puppy Chow brand.
I found the video as a fresh-faced university student; five years later I’m the dog-dad from that same video, showing his puppy his record collection. That’s the power of video marketing.
Should You Be Using Video Marketing?
One of the most effective ways to communicate what makes your brand unique is through video content.
But what videos could you make that will help your business? The answer isn’t so simple. It’s dependent on who your viewer is, what stage of the customer journey they’re on, and how your content will help them.
Let’s look at the customer journey and why it’s so important before spending your marketing dollars on a video campaign.
Understanding Your Customers
Customers interact with businesses in different ways, and it depends on where they are in that business's customer journey. If you’re familiar with ACCLA (Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Loyalty, & Advocacy) you can jump ahead.
For those of you who need a refresher (no, not a Starbucks Refresher),let’s look at how an individual goes through the different stages.
1. Is someone just learning about your business and the products or services you offer? This is the awareness stage; you need to make them aware of your business and what you offer.
2. Are they starting to show interest in your products or services? This usually signals that someone is ready to buy from you or look elsewhere to another brand. This is the consideration stage and you need to focus on conveying to your potential customer why your business best meets their needs.
3. You just made a sale! Rad. This is the conversion stage, where the only thing that happens is the sale. The first two stages are responsible for getting them to this point.
4. After someone becomes a customer it’s important to keep them around. It’s quite a bit cheaper to keep your existing customers than it is to go get new ones. This is the loyalty stage and you need to provide value to your customers to keep them coming back.
5. Once your customers recommend your products or services to others, they’ve reached the final stage of the journey. This is the advocacy stage where you should focus on giving customers outlets to promote your brand, like by requesting reviews.
Different strategies are used throughout the various stages of the journey to maximize your marketing spend. Using specific types of content at the right time can have a huge impact on the success of your campaign.
3 Types of Marketing Videos (and when to use them)
We’re going to cover three types of videos: branded testimonials, branded entertainment, and skyscraper content. Each category has an example to help you understand how they’re used in the real world, by real businesses.
Branded Testimonials
This type of video is a piece of content that uses customer reviews from the advocacy stage to help boost the validity of the business.
Airtech Heating & AC: Testimonials Advertisement
Our first example features employees of a well-known local HVAC company reading reviews written by real customers about their service.
What makes this particular video awesome is the raw reactions we were able to capture from the employees because this was their first time reading these testimonials. All we had to do was set up a camera, light the scene, and sit back.
Presenting this video across multiple channels (Facebook Ads, & YouTube Pre-Roll) allowed Airtech to communicate their strengths along multiple points on the journey. Anyone in the awareness stage who stumbles across this video will learn who Airtech is, how they’ve previously served customers, and why it might be the right solution for them.
It especially benefits people in the consideration stage who already know about the brand, but are contemplating other options. Real experiences from customers help sway their decision towards the brand with more credibility. That’s why customer reviews are so important and need to be taken seriously.
Did we mention Airtech has over 600 5-star testimonials?
The Takeaway: branded testimonials create trust in your brand with a little help from social proof and advocate customers.
Branded Entertainment
This type of video is content created to entertain and bring additional value to current customers and the target audience as a whole.
Hilgersom Landscaping: This Landscape Campaign
We were approached by a client to create a series of videos that follow their landscaping crew through a project from start to finish. They chose a beautiful in-fill home in the Victoria Park neighborhood with a blank canvas for landscaping. If you haven’t seen the series yet we recommend you check it out.
If you’re a fan of DIY TV shows and yelling “move that bus!” — you’ll enjoy watching This Landscape.
Hilgersom wanted to provide value to their current customers by giving them a step-by-step walkthrough on ways they can improve their own landscaping. Sure, hiring a landscaping company is no doubt the easier option. But the world is full of “do-it-yourselfers” and this series is here to support that. Product recommendations are featured throughout the series to keep loyal customers coming back to Hilgersom for supplies even though they’re taking on the project alone.
The episodes were posted in succession organically on Facebook & YouTube, however, the main audience was Hilgersom’s Facebook followers. This falls into the loyalty & advocacy stages of the customer journey.
A follower of Hilgersom will already be well aware of the services offered, so it was key to focus on providing additional value. The episodes are jam packed with awesome tips, techniques, industry knowledge, and product recommendations. Creating buzz around the videos through likes, comments, and shares helps the content reach an audience that may not be following the business. It’s great for advocacy.
The Takeaway: keeping an audience engaged with your brand is important to ensure they stick around for future business and one of the best ways to do that is by providing additional value.
Skyscraper Content
This type of content is long-form, like a case study, taking the form of a blog post, web page, or video that contains videos, pictures, or infographics to provide information to a target audience.
London Road Marketing: Italian Table Case Study
Italian Table became a client after a single meeting between Michael Marcotte (owner of Italian Table & Prime Catering) and Lane Anderson (owner & CEO of London Road Marketing) because, and I quote:
“Lane showed up and he had a crushed velvet jacket on, and a hat on backwards, and some tight khaki pants, and a big beard, and I was like, okay. This guy clearly knows something I don’t know.” - Michael Marcotte
We were hired on the spot.
The case study revolves around the central theme of marketing a brand new restaurant through their first year of business. The process involved a four-phased social media strategy executed by London Road Marketing leading to a strong brand identity, an award for Best New Restaurant, and a very successful year of business.
But why was this the right type of content for us to make? Think about how a freelance graphic designer or photographer would go about marketing themselves. They would most likely create a portfolio filled with all their best work — giving potential clients a glimpse into what they're capable of.
That’s exactly what we did with this case study.
What usually motivates others to try a product or service is social proof because no one wants to be the first. The psychology of following what other peers are doing has a big effect on how we operate as humans.
For us, having an example of how we helped a new business gives anyone in the consideration stage more reason to trust that the services we’re providing could potentially help them. Not only that, the content helps establish London Road Marketing as an industry-leader by giving away the exact strategy we created for this business.
The Takeaway: skyscraper content can help position a business as thought-leading giving them an edge over the competition when a consumer is choosing between multiple options.
Strategy Comes First
The next time you’re brainstorming creative videos for your business, slow yourself down and think about the viewer.
Where are they on the customer journey? What style of video would provide the most value? How are we going to deliver the content?
Think back on the three types of marketing videos we mentioned here. Branded testimonials and skyscraper content are best used in the awareness & consideration stages, while branded entertainment will be the most beneficial in the loyalty & advocacy stages.
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