People see internet differently but I believe that most online marketers see it as a war zone. Since the very beginning of human existence our kind has always been in wars because we have continually desired things we didn’t have. First, we were going to war with sticks and rocks, then with swords and shields and then with guns and heavy artillery. In those wars people were mostly fighting for land, beliefs or ideals. But the war of marketers I’m talking about goes on every day; we get up in the morning, turn on the computer and there we are in the middle of the fight. From aside it looks like nothing is going on, but I can assure you that this is one of the severest wars in the human history. Why? Because here, everyone fights against each other with no mercy.
What exactly do we fight for? The answer is: ATTENTION. Yes, attention of our audience is what we fight for. And the weapon we use in this fight is advertisement. It comes in many different shapes and forms but here, we are going to discuss only one of the most effective advertisement types, which is the video.
At the beginning of this war video ads were new to our audience, therefore, the companies that were first to put themselves out there gained the most. But now the amount of advertisements around is so large that people got used to it. If in the beginning, simply making a video ad would get people’s attention, because that was something new, nowadays they have all the tools and immunity to avoid ads. Videos have so far been one of the most effective ad types. However, people seem to have some immunity for it as well.
Everyone knows how to make and engaging, bright and colourful video but how to make those videos convertible and successful? That’s where the little things matter. Let’s just go over those little things and understand which are the most important ones.
Pick the correct tone and language to talk
Choosing the correct voice and tone has to do with 2 factors.
First, you have to consider who are you talking to. Imagine if you had to give presentation about physics for scientists, for university students and for primary school students. Your presentation may be on the same topic but you can’t use the same tone or the same language to talk about physics with all of these 3 groups. Each of them needs different approach. The same is with advertisements; first you need to figure out who exactly is your audience, who are you going to address with your video to be able to pick the tone of voice correctly.
Second, you need to consider your product. Being engaging and fun in your videos is certainly good, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to joke about everything. Sometimes being funny in your videos can bring you more harm than benefit; it might diminish the perceived level of seriousness of your product.
Keep it short and to the point
Making short videos ads is crucial. As the length of the video grows the chances of people getting bored also grow. If your video is short it’ll end right before your audience’s attention shifts to something else. In this way you will be able to fully deliver your message before they move on. And if they have a chance to hear you out then you just need to do your best. After having a chance to hear you, they might as well be interested in what you are saying.
However, keeping it short isn’t the only important thing. While delivering short video messages to your audience you also need to make sure that each video contains only 1 message, because if you try to deliver a few messages in that short time you will only confuse your audience and drive them away.
Include CTA
The major purpose of any advertisement is bringing in new customers or simply raising awareness which hopefully will also lead to more customers. If your ad fails to do that, it means you did something wrong. There are millions of things that could go wrong but as now we can’t talk about everything that may go wrong let’s talk about one of the major problems: call to action.
It is very important to include call-to-action in your video. Sometimes we watch videos that are informative, engaging and captivating but they don’t have the call-to-action part in it. As a result, people watch it, get excited, they love it and when it ends they think “Well, that was great! I will definitely visit their website later”. And yes, at that point they actually think that they are going to visit your website. But guess what? They forget. So if you don’t add call-to-action you miss the best moment to get new leads, when people are excited and pleased to watch your video.
Be consistent
When we talk about video ads we all do understand that companies constantly produce those. This is a great opportunity for brands to put themselves out there. Companies mostly do understand that and they at least show their name during the video. The most important thing to getting this one right is consistency in brand representation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that all of your videos should be similar. It’s just important to have a little element in each video that is always the same; it can be a color, logo, name, character, etc. This will help you leave your mark in people’s brains while raising brand awareness. After all, isn’t that what branding is about?
Studies have estimated that by 2020 videos will drive over 75% of traffic on the internet. If videos are now so popular, I believe by then the internet will overly be loaded with video content to go up against. So, if you really want to beat your competitors and have your audience’s attention all to yourself, you need to consider every little detail while making your video ads.
Roman Daneghyan is the Chief Marketing Officer of Renderforest an online broadcast quality video production platform. He is a content marketing specialist and an expert in SEO, Social Media Marketing, and Link Building.
