Content Marketing Tactic Round Up

Got a minute? We’ve put together some quick tips of content marketing efforts that are converting viewers. Sometimes it can be difficult to determine what’s working for marketers since we’re all time-starved, audiences differ, channels are changing so fast and companies can be secretive about their data. That’s why we rounded up these tips for you.

Shoot Video Content All At Once

Spend time planning different versions of your video content so you can shoot it all over 1-2 days and release different versions to your audiences at once. Hollywood and channels have this down. We recently shot video promotions for the Universal movie, Blockers–where we filmed 80+ pieces of content in 2 days. Using the stars of the movie, John Cena, Leslie Mann, and Ike Barinholtz, the pieces ranged from skits, interviews, games, and shout-outs, depending on what outlets such as Comedy Central or Tastemade needed.

Your brand probably has different audiences and outlets, each of which deserves a tweak of your message. We shot all of our work for “Blockers” in a blank, white studio where we could move in different props and simple sets, depending on the skit. Find a similar flexible space to create your versions. The ability to push out this much material at once will help your conversion analytics because your content will find energy in numbers.

Re-marketing campaigns

Use re-targeting to convert people who already have taken positive steps in your brand’s direction. A comScore study with ValueClick Media revealed that re-targeting tactics generated the highest lift in search behavior at 1,046%, compared to other targeting strategies.

Even though people often mention re-targeting when it comes to Google and Facebook, Instagram, within the year began allowing marketers to re-target. Create a custom audience of people who have:

• Watched at least part of your Instagram video
• Have opened or completed a lead form
• Interacted with your Instagram business profile

If your Instagram re-targeting audience is smaller than you desire, start running a video for awareness. Those people who watch all or a large part of that video will yield a re-targeting audience gold mine.

Even with its issues, Facebook is one of the largest platforms to delight and entertain an audience–especially one that’s older than millennials. One of our clients, a B2C service provider, used re-marketing on Facebook to target people who had taken some sort of action with their company but hadn’t bought. Their campaign targeted about 165,000 people with an entertaining video. A whopping 62% who clicked to watch the video asked for a quote from the company. What! 62%?

Use Call-to-Action Buttons

The hosting and results tracking platform, Wistia is seeing 13% click-through rates on images as buttons embedded in videos as a call to action. Text links are slightly less popular, but they register more than a 10% response.

E-mails

Often we see clients running video on their social, but not carrying through video assets into their e-mail. It’s a lost opportunity. E-mails with video thumbnails produce 200% higher click rates! Be sure to put the word VIDEO in your subject line. It greatly increases open rates.

Live streaming

For content marketing, live streaming content is a great way to interact with your audience, drop the corporate outer shell and show your humanity. Providing valuable content and connecting with the audience in a down-to-earth way is the most important reason to create live-streamed events. However, their very nature of being live gives them a sense of urgency that can help with conversion and deepen the relationship.

Experian uses live video for chatting about credit, debt, student loans, and ways to manage and improve your scores, using the hashtag #creditchat. The company has more than 100 previous live chats on its site.

When thinking about what conversion mechanisms to use, think about where people are in the buying process. Do they fall into the Awareness, Consideration, or Action bucket? A goal for Consideration may be increasing the watch time of your videos, while a click, sign-up, or, of course, a sales goal would fall into a KPI for customers in that Action bucket.

Hope you take this minute to absorb some new tips to make your content marketing even more successful! If you have questions about content strategy plans and the ways to make your content most effective, e-mail lizdenning@gammablast.com.