Here’s a few quick tips to maximise the effectiveness of your Viral video campaign.

Bigger isn’t always better.

People have a short attention span online, so keeping your video short is the best tactic. By all means have a long version of the Viral that the most engaged viewers can seek out, but use a concise version to take to the masses. We reckon a minute is a good target to aim for.

Be entertaining / interesting

If your content interests people, they’re far more likely to keep watching and ultimately engage with your brand. Seems obvious, but it’s amazing how many people will create a ‘viral’ that is actually just a dry sales message. Whilst this approach can work for TV advertising, online viewers will just stop watching if they aren’t engaged. Online video campaigns generally work better for branding campaigns rather than explaining your newest product’s features.

Start with a BANG!

Get your key message across in the first 10 seconds of the video. People will make up their mind pretty quickly if they are gonna keep watching, so its key to grab their attention from the start. You should also plan for a drop out towards the end of the video.

Leverage the Love

If people have enjoyed your video they will be more open to engaging with other marketing content. Include a call to action at the end of your video – drive traffic to your FB page, YT channel or website. You can also offer a click through link in the video description (or as part of the VAN viral player)

(image via http://thingsthataretotallyawesome.wordpress.com/)

As grime took over, the mainstays of the UK hip hop scene must have hit hard times. Here is a video posted back in February of someone who was convinced that Jehst was their postman!

Click here to view the embedded video.

But like every (sometimes embarassing) trend it will almost certainly have a come back, and maybe Jehst is onto something. He seems to have embraced the internet and launched his own viral campaign for the launch of his new album, and to be fair the response so far on Youtube seems to have been quite good…

Here’s the follow up video, the scallywag:

Click here to view the embedded video.

When planning a viral video campaign and associated seeding activity, we think YouTube provides the perfect home for content. Don’t just take our word for it – 94 of Advertising Age’s top 100 agencies have run YouTube based campaigns.

Here’s what we feel makes YouTube the perfect platform:

- People are familiar and comfortable with it. Whether on YouTube.com itself, or viewing an embedded video elsewhere, people know what to expect when they click “play”. Removing any element of doubt should increase willingness to engage with the content.

- It’s easy to share. YouTube make it very simple for people to share links or embed the content on their own sites. This promotes natural sharing and spreading of content which is key to viral success.

- It allows discussion. The ability to easily comment means you’re able to gauge audience sentiment (good or bad).

- There’s a strong link with social media. Being able to quickly tweet or share to Facebook maximises the reach of the content. It’s worth noting that on average, 46.2 years of YouTube video is watched on Facebook per day, and a single tweet sharing the video results in an average of 7 new YouTube.com sessions.

- Content is viewable on a variety of devices, including mobile (crucially on iPhones and iPads).

- You can track campaign performance easily. Not only with the obvious increases in view count, but with the insight YouTube provides.

- Channels allow you to build a branded experience, building loyal subscribers over time.

- Even when bought media (seeding) promotion ends, the content remains on YouTube for people to search and view with no hosting costs, increasing long term value of the activity.

By using a version of YouTube’s syndicated player, the Viral Ad Network is able to harness the advantages of the platform to add real value to advertiser campaigns. Check out our example ad units here to get a better idea of how it works.

Facts and figures from Website Monitoring.

So you have a following of people who have engaged with your brand and are happy to listen to what you are saying and enter conversation. The next step is to try and develop these relationships to sales. How to nudge your brands digital following (e.g. Facebook fans, Twitter followers) from friends to customers is currently the million dollar question in social media.

The best approach depends a lot on the sort of brand you are, and the purchase frequency of your customers. For example, for luxury brands, such as car firms, even committed customers may very rarely be in a position to actually buy your product. In this case, you can either try and increase the frequency of purchase or make sure you are front of mind when people are looking to buy.

- How can you increase purchase frequency?

Much like sending out an email newsletter, adding prompts to your Facebook page is one way of increasing purchase frequency. For example, Crooked Tongues (an online trainer store) will announce each new product that comes in, tempting their fans to increase their purchase frequency (trust me, my empty wallet proves this works!). They also do this on Twitter, mixing industry news with their own shop launches.

- How do you stay front of mind

A good way to stay front of mind is to keep creating interesting content for your fans. Try to not make all of your communication sales based – mix it up with entertainment like viral videos, alongside opinion and discussion on your industry. This will enable you to connect more with your followers as it shows more of a passion for your industry and not just for your sales.

There are also other ways of bridging the gap between Friendship and purchase, for example Easyjet now let you buy flights straight from their Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/#!/easyJet), cutting down the number of steps between Facebook (a space for friendship) and point of sale.

A good rule is, make it as easy as you can for your friends to become your customers – keep them entertained so they remain your friends, then make it easy to purchase your product/service and easy to justify that purchase.

I’d like to show how social media can complement Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing strategy. I’ll break it into the same four stages of:

1. Making friends
2. Changing your friends to customers
3. Maintaining customers
4. Changing customers to brand ambassadors

image by TracerBullet999 on Flickr

Part 1 – Making Friends

At the Viral Ad Network, we often find ourselves helping brands try to make friends. Making friends can be quite literal and measurable (i.e. adding to a brand’s Twitter / Facebook following) or can be a more abstract objective to develop a willingness in someone to engage with a brand’s content and conversation.

Much like in real (offline) life you need a reason to engage with people you don’t know. But first you need to decide who you are trying to reach?

You should research and determine what groups and niches are valuable to your brand. Where do you want to interact with them? Do they have any awareness or preconceptions that you need to consider? You can monitor the buzz around your brand using online tools.

Next, you must consider what is it that you want from this group?

You are (at this stage) just trying to make friends with your target audience, however you must think about your long term relationship. How do you intend to change these new friends to customers? What sort of voice is your brand going to use with these friends? There’s no use in approaching people on a comical, lighthearted level, only to ditch that as soon as you have their attention and ‘friendship’.

So, what does your marketing offer them?

You need to have a reason for people to listen or participate in your social marketing campaign. Your brilliantly shot and well edited infomercial may sum up your brand perfectly but if people don’t want to seek out this info, it will not be of interest to them. For them to engage with you there needs to be some benefit to them for listening. This can be in many forms:

- You can entertain them (for example, creating a viral video) ;
- You can solve a problem they have (for example the excellent myskystatus.com); or,
- You can offer them something of value (like Groupon).

You should also consider how will you quantify success of your campaign? Are you after a number of views on YouTube, Twitter followers, Facebook likes or another metric?

]]> http://www.viraladnetwork.net/blog/2011/how-can-social-media-be-a-part-of-your-permission-marketing-pt-1-making-friends/feed/ 2 http://www.viraladnetwork.net/blog/2011/always-coca-cola/ http://www.viraladnetwork.net/blog/2011/always-coca-cola/#comments Mon, 07 Feb 2011 13:30:32 +0000 Ally Stuart http://www.viraladnetwork.net/blog/?p=2374 The Superbowl (#brandbowl) always provides a nice assortment of ads.

I was forced to attempt to watch the online versions of the ads due to the UK coverage of the Superbowl being on the BBC, but I still managed to catch a diverse spread of videos varying between the brilliant and a little dry. I’m not gonna go through them all here as there’s lots of other places to see them, but I thought I’d give W+K’s coke ads a quick shout out – it’s always nice to see something positive and uplifting!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Following on from part 1, in which we looked at online video as a medium, this post concentrates on online games. Games are an attractive medium as there’s a large and dedicated free game audience online. It’s a common misconception that the audience mostly consists of teenage boys – instead, it’s a mixed demographic (with a large proportion of adult females). To help you decide whether or not an online game would be suitable for your strategy, here’s some pros and cons:

Pros:

- They’re very engaging. If the game is really playable, it locks the user in. With your branding integrated into the gameplay, you won’t find a more receptive audience.

- There’s a dedicated audience (of online game players). If your campaign is suitable, you can target niche groups easily.

- There’s (slightly) less game material when compared to video, so it should be easier to cut through the noise. According to Dan Efergen of Aardman Digital, the first 48 hours are crucial. Push the game as hard as you can in this time.

Cons:

- It’s expensive. Developing a (good) game takes time, skill, and of course, money. You can’t rush the process if you want it to succeed (unless you’re very lucky).

- It’s less portable. Games aren’t quite as easy to embed when compared to video, and therefore aren’t as easy to share.

- It’s more difficult to buy plays for. If you need a “boost”, it’s more difficult to get people to play your game when compared to buying views for a video.

- Die hard flash gamers are cynical of branded content. It certainly helps to have these guys on side to share your game within their community, which leads to sharing outside too.

We’ll be posting some game case studies in the near future. In the meantime, if you’d like to know more about seeding your online game, please get in touch.

British Red Crossʼs Youtube channel has 490 subscribers and 127 friends and is currently 4th most viewed Non-Profit channel in the UK. They have over 100 videos on the channel, including recruitment drives, fundraising and informative pieces. They produce a variety of content, from celebrity-endorsed information videos, to entertaining but thought provoking viral content.

They are also very tactical in the way they promote this content. Although they produce a lot of content, they have focused media spend on the most shareable videos, maximising exposure and getting people to view the other content on their channel as a result of the videos’ successes.

Example Campaign – Konnie Huq: If I had HIV would you kiss me?

Click here to view the embedded video.

One of our first campaigns working with British Red Cross intended to draw attention to World Aids Day 2009. They made this thought-provoking video featuring Konnie Huq. The content is quite challenging and therefore quite shareable, but BRC wanted to maximise its impact online by giving it an initial boost with a media spend.

They bought 18k views across the Viral Ad Network in the run up to World Aids Day, with the video appearing on over 50 sites. Now a year on, the video has over 60k views and more than 60 people commenting on the film.

Billy Cometti, Digital Producer at British Red Cross, said: “Working with the Viral Ad Network enables us to ensure that our video communications reach the broadest audience possible, and to be able to measure the impact of our work. We’ve greatly increased our reach and effectiveness with their help.”

You can find out more about the great work that the British Red Cross is doing with HIV here.

Or, if you’d like more information on video seeding, please get in touch, and check out our recent post on charity marketing and online video here.

There are many formats available to the online marketer. At VAN, the most common channels we deal with are video, games, and micro sites. To reach your audience, you may need to use a multi-format approach, although sometimes a one channel strategy will be suitable to meet your campaign goals. What is certain however is each medium has distinct advantages and disadvantages. From our own experience dealing with these kinds of campaigns on a daily basis, we’ve outlined the pros and cons of each medium to help you make the right decision.

This first part concentrates on online video.

Online video is essentially our “bread and butter”. Our sister agency Rubber Republic specialise in producing viral films, whilst VAN deal with video seeding every day. We like to think we know what makes a great video, and also how to best go about making one.

Pros:

- Can be made to fit your budget. Production doesn’t necessarily need to be highly polished. Some of the best viral videos have a “user generated” feel.

- It’s easy to guarantee exposure by buying views. Using a seeding service such as VAN’s, you can ensure your video is seen. Just sit back, and watch the views rack up. If you have struck the right chord with your audience, the initial push from using a seeding service will kick-start the viral effect.

- Online video is a very portable medium. There are countless platforms for you to upload the video to. By using popular sites such as Youtube, users can embed the video on their own sites, promoting sharing (which is vital to viral success).

- By hosting your video on Youtube or other video sharing sites, you enable an additional communication channel to reach your target audience. This works not only through the content itself, but through activating your channel profile and making friends/chatting to people who comment on the videos.

Cons:

- Like most advertising you’ve got to cut through the noise, and video is a noisy place to be. Hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded every day – 24 hours of video every minute on Youtube alone. How will you make yours stand out?

- The audience is cynical. Users see branded videos every day, so you’ve got to work extra hard to persuade them to watch yours.

- The audience can be cynical, especially with branded videos. Don’t be offended by negative comments and be aware of the parody. The internet is rife with videos being “mashed up” and remixed into something else. Sometimes, this can be great for your brand – other times, it can be damaging.

If you’d like to know more about using online video, please get in touch. In the mean time, see how Cadbury used online video successfully as part of their digital advertising strategy.

What’s often more difficult is seeing how value is added to a wider campaign – and whether online activity “makes the cash register ring”.

Recently, we worked on a seeding campaign for Cadbury. The graph below shows how VAN sparked the natural viral effect by seeding the video across our network. With the right content, this initial push is ideal for giving campaigns a boost, and in this case leads to natural sharing (and therefore views).

What’s particularly interesting is how this activity, as part of wider strategy, helped Cadbury at the cash register – generating £3 for every £1 spent on digital advertising, according to New Media Age.

The campaign is a great demonstration of how seeding can help generate massive natural exposure for relatively little spend – and how online advertising can really provide return on investment.