If you use Facebook frequently, you’ve no doubt noticed a lot more videos appearing in your feed over the past few years.
Video has added a dynamic element to the Facebook feed that’s hard for marketers and consumers alike to ignore.
According to Adobe, shoppers that view videos are 1.81x more likely to purchase than non-video viewers. According to TechCrunch, 1.5 million small and medium-sized businesses shared videos on Facebook in September 2015.
“Some likely paid to turn those videos into ads to get more views. And considering average ad revenue per user in the US shot up 50% this year, the video ad strategy is working.”
According to a joint report from Hubspot and Social Bakers, budget allocation for video ads has increased by 150% over the last year in North America. Though video ads are becoming increasingly popular with advertisers, currently the CPC the advertisers see is not increasing.
Which makes now a good time to take advantage of the rising trend in video ads.
For businesses targeting millennials, video is critical for your advertising campaign. According to a report by Animoto, almost half of millennials are only consuming video on their phone.
Using Facebook videos to build brand awareness
Video is a better medium for the phone because you can share so much more information in a short time compared to text. The mobile screen has never been good for reading, but it’s perfect for a quick glance at a video.
If you’re ignoring video, you may be missing out on a huge portion of your audience.
Image: Source
If you need any more proof of the emerging power of video, take a look at the growth of video-based social media platforms like Snapchat. Snapchat is growing twice as quickly as other platforms like Twitter, and in a few short years, has become the second most used social media app in the United States.
Source: Convince and Convert
Facebook has been aware of this trend toward video and is taking steps to make sure it maintains its dominance in the social media arena. In the last year, Facebook has made a major push toward video by allowing video ads and making videos play automatically in the news feed.
Videos have proven to have the greatest organic reach on Facebook.
According to Social Bakers, videos have nearly twice the organic reach as other forms of content on Facebook, and Facebook is surpassing YouTube for the total number of videos uploaded.
Facebook vs. YouTube
Until very recently, YouTube dominated video content online. But in late 2014, Facebook overtook them in videos uploaded each month. Both of these companies are locked in a rivalry to increase their share of video content.
(source)
It’s important to understand this rivalry and how each company is incentivizing users to upload content onto their platforms.
A strong video marketing strategy cannot ignore YouTube. Even if you plan to primarily focus on Facebook for your video content, it’s possible to use both these platforms simultaneously and enjoy the advantages that both offer.
Use Facebook for:
Relative to YouTube, Facebook has just barely entered the video scene. It’s doing everything it can to attract content and advertisers to the platform.
To give their videos an edge, native videos on Facebook get a larger thumbnail, autoplay (if the user has it enabled) and stick in the feed longer. Social Bakers reports that Facebook videos achieve 40% higher Engagement Rate than YouTube (source).
Facebook videos are great for telling a story that nobody is searching for. Things like brand videos that communicate your values and aim to create an emotional connection with your viewers.
Videos on Facebook rely on shareability and virality to spread. This usually leads to big traffic spikes, but it can be difficult to get consistent traffic organically.
In short, you should use Facebook video to:
Tell a story that nobody is searching for
Promote your brand
Facebook native videos perform better on the newsfeed than a YouTube link
Facebook videos have a larger thumbnail
Use YouTube for:
Youtube is owned by Google, and Google likes to take care of its own. So anytime you have a video that targets a certain keyword with high search volume, you’ll want to upload a copy of your video to YouTube to lock in the search engines of both Google and YouTube.
Also generally, YouTube videos are easier to share and embed. That, combined with the extra power in search, makes them perfect for embedding into blog content or on landing pages.
YouTube videos also have the potential to go viral but have the added benefit of consistent search traffic. If you can rank well for a keyword, you’ll enjoy a steady stream of traffic from your content.
In short, you’ll want to use Youtube for:
Better search rankings
Leverage Google and YouTube search engines
Youtube videos can be shared anywhere
Why Not Both?
There’s nothing preventing you from uploading the same video to both platforms.
This also gives you the ability to test what platform your videos perform better on. A video that’s a hit on Facebook may be a dud on YouTube or vice versa.
Using both of these platforms for your videos is a good strategy to get benefits from both platforms.
The main purpose of Facebook videos
By now you can recognize the power of video and the potential reach, so let’s talk about how you can break into video with your brand.
To understand how we can make the most impact with our videos on Facebook, we must first understand why people are logging onto Facebook.
Compared to a platform like AdWords, buying intent is quite low on Facebook. Nobody logs onto Facebook hoping to see an ad for something they want to buy. People log on to connect with friends, get a sense of belonging, present themselves and their ideas. People want to share their interests, ideas and lifestyles with their friends. If you want successful videos on Facebook, you need to help users with these desires.
The New York Times did an incredible study on why we share content.
Here are 4 of the highlights from the report:
To build relationships with each other: Sharing content helps us stay connected with people both near and far.
To define ourselves: Most of us use Facebook as a personal brand. We share the content that helps others get a better sense of what we care about.
To inform and entertain: We share to let our friends know about products they may care about, change their opinions, encourage action or simply share a laugh.
To be a part of something bigger: We share information that we care about because it makes us feel more involved in our communities and the world, and to support causes and issues we care about
Your videos should aim for these results. In the next section, I’ll share examples for a few different video strategies. Take a look at each of the videos and see if you can identify how each video appeals to these actions.
Conversely, take a look at why people avoid liking a brand’s page according to an eMarketer poll. People are very sensitive to advertising; they don’t want to see annoying ads in their feed and they don’t want to expose their friends to ads either.
Choosing your video strategy:
Depending on your goals, you’ll want to use some different styles of video for your ads. Some will work better for different audiences and their level of awareness. Below is a list of a few good approaches you can use to create your videos.
Some strategies work better for cold traffic (people that don’t yet know your brand) or warm traffic (people who are familiar with your brand and are maybe on your list).
Branding
Branding videos are meant to build awareness with your audience and introduce you to new followers. Branding videos are best used to tell a story and create a good impression with your audience.
A good branding video targets an idea that resonates with their target customer and builds a compelling story around it. They focus more on the story and the feeling while subtly associating their brand with the idea. Branding videos can be inspirational, controversial or both.
A great example of this is Thrillist’s video of a grandpa at muscle beach. This is a long-form ad for Smith and Forge hard cider, but you only see the actual brand mentioned at the beginning and end of the video.
You may think this is crazy to have a 3-minute video with maybe only 5 seconds of talking about the product. But with nearly half a million shares, the gamble seems to have paid off!
Click here to go to the Facebook page
*Note that though we discuss most of these videos and their presence on Facebook, we’ll be using the YouTube version of the videos to embed on this post and make it easy for you to watch them. We’ll include pics/links to the videos on Facebook as well so you can see the engagement.
So why is this video so successful?
It tells a funny story that people can identify with.
People can share the video without feeling like they are promoting something. Since the portion of the video dedicated to the ad is so small, people don’t feel like they’re sharing an ad, it’s just a funny video.
The video serves as a conversation starter; people begin to tag their friends in comments and discuss the video. The video leaves plenty of openings for opinions and interpretations regarding our respect for our elders, or being upset that it was not really a grandpa, or suggesting that their friends try the gag themselves. No matter if they’re outraged or entertained, they are sharing the ad with their friends.
Behind the scenes
If you are in the process of creating a new product or service, a “behind the scenes” video of the product development can be a great way to start to build buzz for the product.
These videos can show the process of creating the product (especially a physical product) or tell a story of the brand or individuals within the brand. These videos should put faces to a brand and showcase the people that make it happen.
RevoLights has a great behind-the-scenes video to tell the story of their road trip / tour visiting different bike shops and other locations. They show footage on the road and clips from many of their events. The music keeps the energy of the video high and meshes well with scenes of people spinning their bikes as their friends shout with excitement.
Click here to watch the video on Revolights Facebook page
Teach something
Educational videos are very powerful for targeting cold traffic and for organic reach. Create videos that help your target customers improve themselves and develop their interests. Educational videos are particularly powerful and effective for brands that focus on food and nutrition, fitness, crafts and DIY projects.
These videos are not only good for engaging content, but also demonstrate your expertise in an area and work to build trust with your visitors.
The Fit For Real Life Facebook page is filled with good examples of short educational videos on mobility. They focus on one simple movement or exercise, explain common misconceptions, and then demonstrate the exercises while giving cues on what to expect to feel and experience while practicing.
Click here to watch the video on FitForRealLife Facebook page
The Buzzfeed brand “Tasty” has mastered the educational video strategy with their recipe videos. The videos are almost always under a minute long and have a simple camera setup that quickly show the overview of the cooking process. Then a link for the full recipe is provided in the description to drive people to Buzzfeed.
Click here to watch the video on Tasty Facebook page
The comments in these videos are filled with pictures of people sharing their results on the recipes. Consider ways that you can encourage your viewers to share their results on your educational videos.
Introduction / Manifesto
Manifesto videos are emotive and passionate videos made to build an emotional connection with your audience. They are similar to a branding video, but instead of subtly positioning their brand in the video, the brand is up front and with who they are an a value they embody.
Manifestos should make your viewer the hero and give them an storyline or challenge to put themselves in. You want to communicate your values and your passions that resonate with your audience.
These videos are excellent for retargeting. They remind your audience about your brand without being overly invasive. They also are great for reinforcing a relationship with someone that already has some awareness of your brand.
A great example of a strong branding video is the Mod Notebook. The video narration discusses the process of developing an idea, from simple notes on a page to a collection of ideas that shape your future. It captures the excitement of the creation process, and then presents the product as the tool to start that process.
Click here to watch modnotebooks video on Facebook
The video is strong because it only openly discusses the product in the final third of the video. It spends most of its time building an emotional connection. Only the most engaged and interested viewers will get the messaging about the product itself.
Holstee is a brand that offers subscription based inspiration by delivering prints and checklists to their clients on a monthly basis. They created their manifesto to both inspire people to improve their lives and showcase how their products can be used as a tool to inspire others as well.
Re-Engagement
You can set up your targeting to only target people who have visited your site, but not returned in a while. It’s easier to re-engage visitors who know your brand than to acquire new visitors. So creating a video that is designed specifically to bring people back to your site may be worthwhile.
Point them to some of your best recent content, new downloads or lead magnets.
User generated content
User generated content in many ways is the holy grail of engagement online. Your audience takes it upon themselves to create content for you and promote your brand or cause. To have a successful user generated content campaign, you must have a very strong incentive to encourage the time investment necessary for your audience to start creating. You’ll need to have a mix of a good cause, something entertaining to share with your friends, or an opportunity to do something interesting or make an impact.
User generated content is usually a part of a contest or a challenge where there is a prize for the person who gets the most attention or some kind of penalty if someone does not participate when challenged.
Nike’s The Chance campaign is one of the greatest examples of how to encourage user generated content.
Nike used “The Chance” to give youth around the world an opportunity to participate in “Nike Academy,” an elite training camp for soccer players. Many of their recruits create tryout videos to send to Nike. Nike uses these videos to create montages and other content. At the end of the campaign in 2010, participants had created over 17,000 Facebook pages, and 2,000 user generated videos.
Even kids who don’t qualify for their different campaigns make successful videos, like this young Brazilian who was too young to participate created a video of him juggling for the brand.
Conclusion Which strategy will work best for you?
Before you start spending with Facebook ads, it’s better to create content and see what videos are getting organic traction. Run your videos on multiple channels, send the content to your list, and see how your current customers respond.
The content that succeeds organically will likely perform better in paid traffic. If you don’t have a large following established, it may be difficult to get enough organic reach to get a clear idea what content is going well. If that’s the case, start with a very small budget and split test the performance of your videos. Target different audiences, test different messages, use different video strategies.
In the next post in this series we’ll take a deep dive into how you can make a great video on a shoestring budget as well as how you can use the Facebook Ads platform to expand the reach of your videos.
“Kyle Gray is the founder of Conversion Cake, where he helps small businesses and startups with content marketing strategy and sales funnels. He is also the author of “The College Entrepreneur” a guide that teaches students how to build an entrepreneurial skillset while in school and use their university’s resources to help them build something amazing”.