If you’ve spent a good amount of time in marketing, you know what it’s like creating killer marketing material only to watch it do nothing, have zero impact. No ROI.
In my former life as a promotions producer for local TV news stations, this was a daily struggle. I’d bust my hump writing and producing what I felt were compelling video marketing campaigns for TV, radio & web. As with all marketing, the intent was to drive demand. But after looking at the Nielsen overnights, I could see that I did not increase demand whatsoever.
The problem wasn’t the promotion (the message). The problem was that our message wasn’t very relevant to the targets. The targets didn’t care. Didn’t catch them at the right moment or context. We were putting our promotional content in a situation where it couldn’t win.
As marketers, we all face this. Are we reaching our target market effectively? Is our message welcome? Are we reaching our target market effectively? Is our message welcome?
Are we putting our marketing content in a place where it can win?
Over the years, we’ve seen some pretty awful cases of outright awful video integration. $10k videos buried in the depths of old index pages or uploaded to YouTube and forgotten. No strategy was present. Oh boy.
Here are a few integration questions they should have been asking themselves:
- What do we do with our finished video content?
- Where do we put it on our website?
- Do we 3rd party host(Vidyard, Wistia, Vimeo, etc) or embed thru YouTube?
- Where in our sales funnel should it live?
These questions are great… IF they come before the video content is created.
Why? Because videos are great, but a video strategy is better. Too often, video marketing content(low & high end) is thrown into an existing marketing program like it’s the exact same as a white paper, blog post or eBook, etc. It’s not, and to spend marketing dollars or bandwidth without knowing exactly how you plan to integrate said video content is highly problematic.
Other tips for integrating video into your marketing program:
- If you are forcing your message in front of your target without their permission (pre roll ads), make sure it’s a message that will be welcome. Don’t just sell. Engage. Entertain. Really, this tip can be applied to almost every opportunity.
- If it’s on your owned or earned media…. Don’t make people work hard to find it.
- On your own website, you have a lot more control over this so consult your web team BEFORE you begin the video creation process. Talk to a User-Experience expert.
- Then, put the video where it will enhance the user experience, accomplish the goal or both.
Stephanie Silver of Envision Creative Group, a digital design and marketing firm sums it up pretty well:
“People are being overwhelmed with media of all types. It’s great that they are consuming video and images more than ever before but that just confirms that they won’t take the time to read between the lines. They want a message that clearly and quickly appeals to them on a personal level by solving their problem, making them more money, or getting them closer to their social community. You just can’t throw something up online and expect results. Remember, you’re trying to connect with a specific individual.”
Put your video content where your video content can win.