Whether you’ve just created a fantastic video to showcase your brand, are in the process of making one or you’re just thinking about it, it’s a given that you will want your brand video to be seen, and liked, and shared and so on, all across the Internet. Otherwise, why bother?


To ensure a video receives plenty of views a brand marketer and media planner need to deploy a video activation strategy which will effectively seed and promote their video online. An effective video activation strategy focuses on increasing video views from a brand’s target audience using a combination of organic and paid techniques. In short, they are essential to driving maximum video views and ROI.


5 VIDEO ACTIVATION TIPS


If you post a video anywhere online, be it YouTube, Instagram or even your personal Facebook profile page which you rarely use these days, it’s highly likely your video will be seen by at least somebody. However, just ‘being seen’ will not do the budget or time invested in creating your video justice. Read on to discover our top 5 video activation tips to help increase video views for your brand’s next online video.


1. CREATE A STANDOUT BRAND VIDEO

Video consumption is increasing - Online video consumption is more popular than ever as 6 out of 10 people prefer online video platforms to live TV. Each of the major social media channels have a big role to play in where we watch our videos:


  • Almost 5 billions videos a day are watched on YouTube and in an average month, 8 out of 10 18-49 year-olds watch YouTube




Brand marketing strategies need video - More and more marketers are incorporating video into their brand marketing strategies, 87% of businesses are now using video as marketing tool to give users the videos they want to watch. In 2019, 87% of people said they want to see more videos from brands and 68% say they’d most prefer to learn about a new product or service by watching a short video, this has most definitely increased since then!


It’s time to incorporate video into your marketing strategy too, videos are a great way to educate and engage your brand’s target audience at scale. Looking for inspiration? Take a look at our brand video showreel to see the powerful, standout video content we are experts at producing.


2. DEFINE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

Every great marketer knows that no campaign should begin without defining clear audience personas, the same logic should be applied within your video activation strategy. Think about who is it your brand wants to talk to. What are their interests? Where do they live? Which is their favourite social media channel? How old are they? Which brands do they like? Why do they need your brand or products? How will you grab their attention? Once you’ve done this for at least two personas you can think about where to find them online and how you can help them find you.


3. MAP OUT THE MOST RELEVANT SOCIAL CHANNELS

Now that you know who your brand video is for you can decide which social media channels you are going to publish and share your brand video on in order to increase video views. Depending upon your target audience the key social media channels to publish and promote a video on are YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Snapchat. Social media platforms boast huge reach and their daily active user are in the millions, however, there are differences in the types of users that use each platform. For example, 71% of Instagram users are under 35 so great for targeting millennials, whereas on YouTube 68% are male and 53% of users aged over 35.


Format your video for each channel - The channel you choose will also effect your video content and formatting. On Facebook 85% of videos are watched without sound, so you will need to consider text overlays, and the ideal video length is 15 seconds for video ads. Whereas, on Instagram you can publish longer videos but you should incorporate vertical videos to feature in Stories as well as square for the main feed. On YouTube be aware that approximately 20% of the people who start your video will leave after the first 10 seconds, so create a damn good intro! Always choose a video production company who understands the challenges and opportunities for videos on each social media platform. And utilise organic and paid advertising for the most effective video activation strategy, the latter is discussed in step 5.


4. MASTER THE BASICS OF VIDEO SEEDING

Feature your video on your website - The first, and most obvious place to feature or seed a brand online is on your website as its great for engaging users and giving them a fantastic experience with your brand. You may find that dwell time on your website increases, especially after you’ve featured a compelling video. Google loves video, websites that feature engaging videos can benefit from better organic visibility. Videos can also be a great source of raw content for ranking on keyword searches. Always transcribe your audio into text and add that information to the metadata of your page.


Describe your video in detail - Plenty of users online are actively searching for video content so it’s important that your brand video is easy for them to find. Users discover videos by searching for brand names, topics, products, services, celebrities and so on. Therefore, whichever channel or platform you publish your video on it must be labelled accurately with a title, description and a set of tags which include the search terms you anticipate your target audience will use. Just like Google, search engines on the platforms like YouTube favour longer descriptions. You can also use Google trends to find relevant keywords that users are searching for to become video tags and increase video views even further.


Share video with your customers - We also recommend promoting your video to your email database, social media following and writing a post featuring it on your blog so that you’re existing customers can watch it and share with their friends to increase video views.

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5. INCREASE VIDEO VIEWS WITH PAID ADVERTISING

Your video activation strategy should ideally include a digital media budget so that you can purchase additional impressions (the count of how many times your video was displayed to users) and serve your video to your target audience, this is critical to the success of targeted TV and online video ads.You can purchase impressions for your brand video on any social media channel, publisher website (E.g. Buzzfeed, MailOnline etc), display network (E.g. Google), blog, or any website that features video content.


The key is to invest in video media placements that can effectively target your target audience persona at a price to suit your budget. It’s essential to apply targeting to any paid media campaign so that all media spend is focused towards the users you want to engage and increase video views from. For example, you could target men, aged 30-50, who live in London, and like DIY.


Influencer partnerships - You can also consider partnering with social media influencers who resonate authentically with your brand and target audience. Sometimes they may promote your brand for free because they like it but, often you will pay them a fee to promote your video to their social media following.


LET’S MAKE AN AWESOME VIDEO FOR YOUR BRAND


An effective video activation strategy is the best way to increase video views and ensure high visibility wherever it is published. Every video activation strategy starts with an exciting brand video brief!


Fresh Cut are a leading video production company helping brands tell their stories on TV and online since 2006. We are proud to work with brands and budgets of all sizes. Take a look inside our fantastic portfolio of creative video content and get in touch with our talented team to discuss your next video project.

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