How Not to Suck at Video Marketing

By Native Advertising Institute on July 19, 2018
  • 343
  • 0

“One of the biggest mistakes that content creators are making when doing video is that they think that quality matters,” says Chris Kubby, CEO & Founder of the digital agency Kubb&co when we asked him about video marketing.

“I know that sounds strange, but the fact is that quality is not how we think quality as an expensive camera. In actuality, when we look at content quality, we’re looking at content that works. And a lot of times brand are afraid of pulling out their phones and just shooting and capturing the moment. We are walking around with a 4K camera that shoots really nice stuff but we forget that sometimes.”

Press publish sooner

“Another big mistake is when marketers are not looking at producing more video content. They need to understand that it doesn’t have to be super fancy, it just has to be something. They need to press publish and find out what works. Because you won’t know what works until you’ve tried it.

RELATED: 5 Great Branded Videos Over 90 Seconds

I’ve seen people spend months on campaigns and when it finally comes out it didn’t do as well as they thought it would have. Well, maybe they should have published it earlier to find out what works.

I think that’s the biggest mistake: not just pressing publish.”

NAP_soundcloud_bannerHow to suck at video

“How to suck at video? One thing is not doing it at all. Another thing is not doing it enough. You have to publish enough to learn enough. You won’t find out what works or what the audience want until you’ve tried it enough. So you need to publish more!

Another way to suck at video is spending way too much money on it and the last thing is not having a strategy. A lot of brands are running social video like they’re running televisions commercials. But that won’t work on YouTube. On YouTube, we need personality and people who do real things.

So you have to get out of the television mindset and publish more to find out what works on each platform.”

The myth of one video to each platform

“There’s a myth in the industry that you can’t take one video and make it work for all channels. That you have to produce something for each channel. And that’s just not true.

RELATED: Native Advertising on Snapchat? Here's How

The truth is that you can take video content and do a ton of stuff with it. For example, we often pull the audio out from a video piece and make it a podcast. We cut it into 15 seconds to Instagram stories and Snapchat, AND we put it into square to Facebook, etc.

If you wanna make a video for each channel, it’s gonna kill you. So I say: find out what works for each channel, but then take the video you already have and cut it up. Milk it for all it’s worth.”

NAP_soundcloud_banner

Know the platforms

“And when we’re talking about cutting stuff up or making stuff work for different channels, we’re talking about format.

One thing is a technological limitation of a platform, you have to know the limitations of for example Instagram and Snapchat.

Another thing is figuring out what mood people are in. Facebook is a lot about family and friends and Instagram is more about dreaming and inspiration. Think about how you can angle the creative a little bit for those things.

RELATED: IGTV: Thoughts on Instagram's Direct Hit on YouTube

Also, when you look at Facebook versus Instagram you can kind of use the same thing for both. They are both setup for really short video formats, they don’t necessarily have audio, and therefore you typically need colors and bold text, if you want to grab the attention of the viewers. 

I often look at what other brands are doing and think ‘If you haven’t drawn me in during the first 3 seconds you're done. Then you don’t deserve my attention’. You have to find out how to get the audience’s attention, knowing that their sound is off, knowing that they’re scrolling super fast and then tailor the content for those things.”

Making a video shareable and clickable

“You also have to make your video shareable and clickable.

It’s shareable if it gives somebody value. We tend to share something that we know people get value from, either enjoyment or entertaining or knowledge that will also make us look good.

Being clickable is about making it super bold. Really grabbing the eye and using colors, because you have to stop the user in their scroll and grab them in the first three seconds.

RELATED: As the Shift to Mobile Continues, Look to Video to Drive Growth

People don’t have time anymore. We don’t spend time watching a video. I mean, I put YouTube on the two times speed so I can get through a video faster. And I think a lot of people are doing these things so to make it clickable, you have to make it really bold and colorful.

We have seen that if we put a timer on something, actually showing the user how long the video is, then people more likely to click on it. Because they can see how much time they should invest in watching the video. That also comes down to shareability. If someone can see the video immediately in the feed, not having to click somewhere else to get the knowledge, they are more likely to share, because they can vouch for it.”

NAP_facebook_opengraph