Get More from Your Social Media Investment with In-feed Videos

If you’re looking for a more effective way to build relevancy and trust in your brand, look to social videos.

Consumers are spending more time than ever on Yubo, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. To stay present in their audience’s lives, businesses have had to increase their investment in social media, spending more time and money to share their products, but trying to get noticed is an ongoing challenge. The secret is to share the information in a way that your customers are likely to notice it indirectly.

There are few things, if any, more popular on social media than videos. To stay relevant with their audience, brands have had to enter the video business in a big way. Not only do they have to make ads that are shorter and relevant to a tighter focus of their audience, but they also have to get people to watch them.

The challenge is that social feeds are overcrowded. Brands are competing with hundreds of other post sources. Even more popular, companies buy YouTube views more than ever. How do you get your message past the noise?

The Solution

That’s where in-feed, autoplay videos come in. These videos begin to play automatically as the user scrolls through their social feed, which gives businesses a precious few moments to capture their attention, but more than that, these ads feel less intrusive and more trustworthy than typical ad videos.

What are in-feed, autoplay videos? They are a form of native advertising, meaning that they are delivered as part of the user experience on a particular site. They match the format of the rest of the site’s content, and usually are labeled as sponsored or promoted content. In other words, they’re promoted posts that contain videos, and they appear in the user’s feed just like any other post would.

Why It Works

In a curated feed, like you’ll find with Facebook and Twitter, for example, the users select the content they see through adding friends and pages, but, in the case of Facebook, posts are also curated through their actions. Interacting with a company’s posts allows the users to see more posts by them, while pages that don’t get interaction are marked as less relevant, so the user sees fewer of their posts.

What this does is create a self-curated feed. The user already assumes that most of what they see on their Facebook feed is something they're interested in. This promotes relevancy and trust when they see the video; if done correctly, this video should be relevant to them.

The Three-Second Rule

Your audience isn’t going to stop scrolling for every video as it comes across their feed, even if it begins to play automatically. You have a single second to capture their interest, and three seconds in all to convince them to keep watching before they continue past without a second thought.

From a storytelling standpoint, that means that you don’t have time to ease into it. You have to get right into the heart of the ad’s story. Compelling visuals help. Bright colors and a clear, interesting image to start the video on, draw attention immediately. The story needs to start the moment their eyes land on the video, so you don’t have time for a dramatic fade-in.

Why is the three second mark so meaningful? That’s how long it takes most views to decide if they want to continue watching or not. They also need to watch at least three seconds, on average, to recall any of the message from the video, so even if they don’t watch the full thing, you still have a chance to benefit from their view.

Branding and Ad Recall

If you’ve ever watched a Super Bowl ad, gushed over the concept, but forgot which brand created the ad by the next day, you’re not alone. Having a great concept for an advertisement might get you views, but you also need to make sure that people are walking away with the right message: that your brand is capable of meeting their needs or wants. More so, you want them to remember your brand later on, when they’re ready to make a purchase.

To improve brand recall, you need a clear and well thought out branding strategy. People should be able to link your company with your ads within the first few seconds, and then you need to remind them throughout the video. Because these videos are short, and because you want to encourage a strong association between them and your businesses, it’s okay to be a little heavier with branding than you would in a normal advertisement, video, or other piece of promotional content. While you do still want to focus on telling a story through the ad, you have more leeway to make the branding more obvious.

The Benefits

These videos are about more than just getting consumers to see your brand and products on their feed. When people see these ads in their stream, it builds recognition. When they view the videos, it builds familiarity, trust, and a positive association with your brand. Because these ads aren’t intrusive, due to their native inclusion, and because they’re in the popular video format, you’re going to see a much higher return on your investment than you likely would with other ad formats. In-feed video ads are incredibly effective right now.

Making it Work for You

As it is with any marketing strategy, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. What works for one company might not work for yours. Test out some different videos to see what resonates with your audience the most.

One of the most important factors in the effectiveness of in-feed, autoplay videos is the relevancy of the video, not just to your audience, but to the rest of your content as well. You have to make sure that you’re targeting the right people, not just with the video itself but also with how you set up the ad. Know your audience, and get it in front of them.

Finally, keep experimenting. Run the videos a few different times, fine tuning as you go. You’ll eventually develop a strategy makes an impact for your business and for your customers.