Hi! Lauren Kaye, here, with this week’s Content and Coffee with Brafton. Marketers know online videos are a huge trend and want to find ways to cash in. But they also know you can’t just produce a promotional video and hope that it goes viral. Click play to watch, or read the full text below.
That isn’t to say it’s out of reach for brands to create popular clips. It just means they need to think outside the standard web marketing box and come up with concepts that will actually entertain viewers – not just sell to them.
A recent study from Unruly Media revealed surprising data – that brands were responsible for creating some of the most popular video clips on Instagram. Forty percent of the videos that received the most shares between September and October were posted by companies. Some of these were your usual suspects like MTV, HBO and Disney – brands built on entertainment. However, Nike, Samsung and General Electric were some of the other businesses that created users’ favorite clips.
Because those brands are household names, it might seem natural that their clips are popular with audiences. But the teams behind these marketing campaigns had to bring their products and services to life, telling a compelling story that inspires viewers to keep watching.
There’s a big payoff for marketers who bridge the gap between entertaining audiences and conveying messages that are true to their brand identities. The Pew Internet & American Life Project found that consumers now post and share twice as many videos as they did in 2009. If brands can capture their audiences’ attention and deliver content
worth sharing, their video marketing campaigns will take on lives of their own. And isn’t it that viral effect we’re all chasing?
The point is that with some formats like video, marketers can’t always go with a hard-sell: To be effective, they also need to generate messages that amuse, educate and cater to consumers’ interests. There’s return on influence.
Catch you next week, and happy content marketing!
