The complex and uncertain environment of a growing pandemic crisis has forced the global economy to dramatically shift online for survival. Most companies are continuously sensing the changes and redrafting strategies to look at priorities and investments for the coming months and into 2021. A critical focus area for many is in understanding how they can provide a better customer experience with a personalized, empathetic approach that can make it easy to get the customers attention, loyalty, and wallet share.
This is where videos are playing an important role in promoting brands and influencing the digitally-adept customers of today. Videos are the only digital avenue for people to see, hear, and even get to know a brand. It gives an opportunity for businesses to make connections even when they cannot offer the in-person experience. Videos have become the most powerful business assets to help brands gain and retain consumer attention, as is evident from the fact that almost 80% of all consumer traffic on the internet is video-based.
Here are some additional statistics to prove the influence of video on social media:
- According to the Web Marketing Video Council’s recent study, 60% of brands are currently using video on social networks.
- According to Social Media Today, at least 1/3rd of our time is spent watching videos online
- 45% watch Facebook or YouTube videos for at least an hour per week as per Hubspot
- BigCommerce reported that about 64% of the consumers are influenced by watching a marketing video on Facebook that leads them to a purchase
- Buffer recorded 27% higher CTAs and 34% higher conversions of companies that marketed their video on social media
Twitter, Facebook, and even LinkedIn are developing more options for video because that is the way their audiences expect and want to receive content. It cannot be left unsaid that mobile phones play a pivotal role in this trend.
While social media strategists seem to be actively adopting videos into their content marketing strategy, is it really producing the kind of traction that is required on social media? Used appropriately, the videos on social media whether regular posts, ads, stories, promotional, or profile videos, can only send provisional one-size-fits-all messages to the online seekers based on the audience classification and preferences. But in a crowded social marketplace how do you make the impact, gain the continuously-shirking consumer interest and how do you convert?
On the other hand, personalized video marketing using SMS or email has been at play for some time now. They have been effective in unlocking value by garnering greater audience attention when targeted one-to-one, contextually set, and data-driven. They gained popularity because marketers realized that it isn’t just important for brands to deliver accurate, timely information but it is essential for brands to deliver personalized, relevant information, that consumers are looking for.
Personalized video marketing has been effectively used to:
- Breaking through the noise
- Gain higher open rates and higher click-through rates
- Build more customer engagements
- Grow relationships and loyalty
Sadly, videos on social media currently have been mostly plain spam with no correlation to the customer’s need or interest and they don’t convince customers to buy the brand.
Enter the world of personalized social media videos
To address the new digitally savvy customer on social media, marketers have transitioned from a “react” to “build” mode, to create innovations in social media marketing that can play out in the digital space.
A new emerging trend that is taking social media by storm is personalized videos. A social media video is said to be personalized when the content is customized for multiple segments of the customer persona or audience, including age, geography, ethnicity, language, occupation, past purchase, date & time, and much more. This means you can craft specific experiences based on their personas and target them with information based on each consumers’ unique interest or location.
More than ever, social media users are turning unique with specific interests, likes, and demographics. So why target any user with the same video message on social media? Here are some reasons why it is important and beneficial for any brand to be using personalized social video marketing:
- Adaptation to social network algorithms to personalize video content
- Creates better emotional connections on social media
- Builds virality for ads with increased marketing ROI
- Personalized videos make people interact with it
- SEO in videos is here – a new!
- Better storytelling techniques and possibilities
Certainly, personalized social video marketing is moving north, and with building more data and AI into videos, these hyper-relevant videos for the social user are gaining boundless prominence. For instance, a recent advertisement from Cadbury’s in India https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlzjdRb1-Ms promoted small and local business owners in the light of the current lockdown, as they needed the haul. The video reflected the magnanimity of a brand that cared for the subtler aspects of the audience’s requirements. Besides, the brand extended its gifting attribute to several small businesses, which have been struggling due to the pandemic. Using AI and countless permutations of retailers and social audience, based on postal PIN code, the social media video ad was able to promote more than 1800 local retailers across India in the ad, dynamically. The video went viral on social media capturing the hearts and emotions of Indians, just like Cadbury’s TV ad did in the early ’90s with its ‘Kya Swad Hai Zindagi Mein’ Ad.
Personalization in social media videos can successfully blend creativity, content, and information all into one integrated whole, to stand out in the clutter and create hyper-personalized viewing and action.
Selfanimate Social Video Marketing Platform – Drive social connectivity, engagements, and results
Selfanimate believes that personalization is an endless experience. Our social video marketing platform can be used to automatically generate thousands of videos using data and AI, to precisely target social users and tailor content to each individual users’ requirements. The possibilities of creative customization are limitless with Selfanimate social video marketing as it can result in higher CTRs and conversions for any brand.
- Feed into the interest of your audience. Our tool offers unprecedented scalability for brands to promote themselves on social media – a real-time custom video for every product, and individual social media user based on their unique set of personal attributes, likes, dislikes, preferences, and behavior.
- With Selfanimate’s social video marketing platform your ads appear across all channels. In addition, our platform AI applies learnings from all channels and seamlessly integrates data dynamically, to serve the right video content, simplifying the campaign workflow, and reducing the production costs.
- Programmatic ad placements. With flexible variations in potential placements, you can generate multiple creative variations based on ad preferences, quickly. You can also run effective campaigns across your social media footprint.
For instance, an insurance provider can use personalized social video marketing to promote their loan offer across the country. Each social media user in any part of the country can be served with not just the loan offer suiting his profile, but also with the nearest dealer or office location from where he can get the loan. The call-to-action can be interactive in the video for higher conversion.
As social platforms continue to mature and develop new creative ways to keep their audience engaged, there will be more opportunities for marketers to grab. Using social media video marketing as a medium to market a business or brand will no longer be a “nice to have” but more of a “must have.”
Disclaimer –This blog post is only for information sharing and the references provided are not Selfanimate property and we don’t claim them. This blog post is not a part of the herein mentioned companies or brands. Additionally, this blog is NOT endorsed by the following companies in any way.
Web Marketing Video Council, Social Media Today, HubSpot, BigCommerce, and Buffer
