For marketers who walk the walk

Big brands are realising that with so much web noise and the sheer amount of marketing material hitting their customers online and through social media, they need to find ways to make their communications meaningful and targeted. ‘Relevance’ is key for 2012.

Honda says it is developing its strategy with ‘personalised offers and campaigns’. Churchill is seeking differentiation in the crowded insurance market by relying not only on price, but with a new focus on the personal service it offers individual customers. If you’re including video into the marketing mix, how do you make that aspect of your communications more relevant to audiences?

Video is a great way to connect and build relationships by telling your brand’s stories and bringing them to life for customers. But while it’s easy to simply put a video on your website and hope that it pulls viewers in, or post it on You Tube and hope that it gets spotted, that’s simply not enough any more.

If you want produce successful, targeted campaigns and talk to the people you most want to engage with, where they’ll be most receptive, then you need a more solid video strategy. This has to take into account all distribution options available online. By using cross platform video marketing and a mix of strategies, you’ll not only reach a large audience, but a targeted and differentiated one too; one which you can analyse and collate data on. And within the right context, people will want to watch your videos, share them and tweet about them with other like-minded friends. 

Furthermore, video needs to be delivered in a way that works for your audience – not only technically, so it’s optimised for mobiles and tablets for example, but also holistically, so you capture the right audience in the right frame of mind; for example by using real time location data to send videos via e mail, or within a more controlled social media campaign, so you’re set up to respond.

And specific technologies can also help make video more relevant, useful and appealing to your customers. With video hot spots, consumers can hover over images and gain further product info or click to buy. Dynamic video allows viewers to type in their name and other details before they view a film and find that they’re the star of the show. And new personal video technology means that brands can now use their data to create bespoke, personalised videos for their customers, with special offers, billing or delivery information based on customers’ unique profiles, histories and actual requirements.

With over half of all web traffic now consisting of online video, making it relevant has to be a priority.  Both the content itself and the way it’s distributed. The rewards will be more watched videos and more meaningful and relevant customer engagement with your brand.

Hear more from Debra on the IDM’s Video Marketing Tools and Strategies course

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