I had a great discussion with a local business owner recently. She wanted to do more in social media, but could barely keep up with Facebook posts, let alone get to Pinterest or, in an ideal world, create videos. She wasn’t sure how to translate marketing through social media into conversions without doing some form of coupon promotions, and discounting was not part of her overall strategy. As the conversation evolved, I suggested that perhaps she needed to rethink what constituted a “conversion.” I then suggested that just creating a solid lead list would be a good start but how then, could she prompt people to share their email addresses?
My client is a dynamic, personable young lady that everyone likes…you can’t help but admire her knowledge and passion for her business. This is something I thought would translate well into a shareable social video. If done right, it could be set up so that it could drive opt-ins…a way to build her email list of local prospective customers and, as importantly, further establish her reputation as being an authority in her business.
The process was a simple one, but could prove powerful in her efforts
Starting with the Video’s Goals…and never lose sight of those.
Having fans and “likes” from your social media platforms is fine, but we set out to create a stronger email list. This meant getting people to “convert” by getting them away from social media and onto a landing page wherein we’d place the opt-in tool.
With that simple goal, our next task was develop a short, simple video, something under three minutes and to develop a message or story that could be told in that time. Then it was time to issue a powerful call to action. To do this, we developed plan of attack:
- Establish who you are. We wanted to make sure that her personality shone through, as well as her knowledge. To do this, we had her answer a simple, basic question that she received often. In her case, her company is a retail wine store and so naturally, answering questions about wine pairings with foods was a good start.
- Develop a reason to watch Tantalizing viewers with a bit of information will serve your call to action better. In this case, I counseled her to just offer snippets of information with the promise of a more substantial payoff in the call to action. I suggested that a series of videos would allow the promotion to continue for a period long enough to gather momentum and, if done correctly, would continue to draw users to her social media efforts while simultaneously creating an image and brand awareness for her.
- The juice is worth the squeeze. Hooking the viewers is important. The information presented should be considered valuable in its own right without the hard-sell promotion we often see in videos…in other words, don’t make it a commercial.
- The call to action is everything. In this case, I suggested a free wine pairing list as a giveaway for people who opt-in. As such, she’d be able to soft-sell wines that she offered in her retail store organically rather than overtly selling a particular. I then suggested she use this offer across all of her social media platforms.
Part Two of this process now began
She next needed to develop a campaign on social media to promote the call to action, all timed to coincide with the release of the video. This of course, started with a landing page with the opt-in tool in place which was then shared across her social media platforms. As new videos were released, she shared those and they all drove people to the landing page.
This was all planned out on a calendar…when the video would be released, the specific topic, and all using two types of supporting content:
1. Indirect Content (i.e. “barrier-free” content)
Indirect content was integral to building trust so that when you do ask for a name and an email on your opt-in page, fans have already had a good experience with your free content and still want more. This indirect content is largely comprised of what you’re probably doing already…things like blogging, Facebooking, pinning on Pinterest, etc.
2. Premium or Direct Content
Generating leads through the video is next. To do this, she’d need to use her videos as the teasers to get people to the landing page.
Examples: Images, status updates and tweets work best when thematically tied together and implemented over a short time period. Fourteen days works great!
Cross Promotion is Key
The video does you little good if it languishes in obscurity, so to prevent this, it needs to be aggressively shared across different platforms.
Focus on the big four platforms, starting with Youtube. once the video was loaded, she needed to optimize it with a URL (in the description), a great title and a clear call to action. Also, consider adding a video overlay that links to your landing page for extra traction. These are basically clickable banner ads.
Make sure to include a call to action and link in the description box.Facebook was next. By sharing her video in a FB status update, she could’ve opted to use “Promoted Posts” in her geographic area. Even if one is working on a tight ad budget, there’s still a way to focus on ads in mobile devices which, given the nature of her business, might be a good option. Since 60% of Facebook users do so from a mobile device, that’s still a huge audience.
Twitter is the forgotten video platform, so posting on Twitter using a YouTube link is certainly a no-brainer, but be sure to add a link for the opt-in page, lest your efforts be diluted. Bonus: YouTube videos display right on Twitter.com; no click-through is needed.
To stand out from all of the noise, take advantage of the video capabilities on Twitter.The same holds true for Pinterest…most people think of it as a phot share site. Whenever someone comes across your pinned video, the PLAY button is featured over the image, so it stands apart from all of the static images around it. Adding YouTube videos to Pinterest
Remember: Fill in your pin’s description with a URL and call to action.
Measuring the campaign
I offered several solutions to measurement, but the obvious one was the email list before and after the campaign ran. She started with a 380 person list, largely comprised of current customers over her three years doing business to a list populated by 3,900 after 45 days. The campaign is still running, so we’ll revisit this topic later.
So what did it all cost?
The number one concern I get from my prospective clients is that video “costs too much to produce.” My answer to this is simply that it depends on who you hire and how grandiose your vision is. In my client’s case, I set it up so that I could film 5 videos in one day because we had a script set up. Doing so reduced her costs to just one day of filming, then editing each video using what was basically a templated format. The intro, the outtro, the “talking head” (aka interviewee talking) and some additional footage shot inside her store was all I needed to produce 5 quality videos. If she knew how to edit video, she could’ve saved herself the editing costs, but all totaled, she was still under $2,000 for five full videos, each of which has a nearly indefinite shelf life.
Compare those costs with a Groupon offer (a topic I’ll cover soon) or an ad in the Yellow pages, Yelp ads, or other similar local promotions and video looks like a stellar bargain.