This blog post is part of our Lessons from SMSS15 series. Legendary Social Media is taking part in Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Success Summit, which is the world’s largest online social media marketing conference. This blog series covers the points and ideas we’ve taken from the course that we’ve deemed to be eye-opening and highly useful for other marketers and for small- and medium-sized businesses. To discuss any of the ideas in these blogs or other ideas about social marketing, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
It’s interesting that last night in the Social Media Success Summit 2015, one of the really great talks was about video ads. The reason was that earlier yesterday, I had filed three vlogs that I meant to post on my blog in the near future, and to my Facebook page.
Instead, the talk by Amy Porterfield explained why video ads are so effective at grabbing people’s attention, and how to make them work for you on a shoestring budget.
The main point is that virtually anyone can create video ads for almost no money. In fact, all you need is a personality and an iPhone. Porterfield’s example was of an Instagram queen who filmed her hugely effective video ad with an iPhone in phone hand and a coffee in the other, while walking down the street. Just like that.
Porterfield explained that there are five crucial elements that must be in your video ad to make it effective (her presentation focused on video ads, but I’d say that these ring true no matter which platform you’re advertising on with video):
- Start the ad with an obvious “yes” question – a question your audience will definitely say “yes” to.
- Then, tell people who you are, and why they should care who you are.
- Now, make a promise about what you’re going to give them.
- Include a “so that” statement. This statement should solve a pain point or a problem for your audience.
- Finish off with a call to action. This could be to subscribe, download, click a link, call or buy.
Then, it’s on to the nitty gritty of how to publish the ad properly. Porterfield recommends using Facebook’s Power Editor for Facebook video ads. Set your objective as either Video Views or Conversions, and have the ad appear in users’ mobile news feed.
She also recommends clicking on the “Create audience from people who view the video” button to save people who watch 10 or more seconds of your video into a custom audience. You can market to this “warm” audience again in the near future!
Want to know more about creating video ads, or any type of social ads for your business? Get in touch today!
