So, you want to make great video content?
Video content is taking the digital world by storm! Here are our top tips for creating awesome video.
Centre the video around a story
Rather than focusing on the sale, tell a story. Make the story the centre of the video and draw people in that way. The most compelling advertisements and content to provoke emotion. So, create a story and input the sale in it that way, not the other way around.
Capture attention in >10 seconds and keep it short & sweet
Most people click out of a video in less than 10 seconds. Capture the audience’s attention within the first few seconds and keep it interesting so people watch for longer. A longer watch period also equals a higher engagement rate so the Facebook algorithm will take this and show it to more people too. A win, win.
Use humour
Make it funny! Stay away from boring. Use your personality. This goes along with capturing the audience’s attention in the first ten seconds. Think about it, would you be more likely to continue watching something that’s pure facts, or something with a bit more character.
Quality is important
As technology develops, we are seeing more and more high-quality content on our feeds. Done with the webcam and low-quality iPhone videos (most of the time!) Try making sure your videos are uploaded in HD and use a DSLR or other high-performance camera.
Choose the correct platform
And adjust the sizes! Each platform performs better for different things. Make sure you create different versions for each platform, i.e Instagram and Facebook stories have different requirements to page posts. Convert your video into each and make the most of each available platform!
Have a CTA
Including a CTA will greatly increase your conversions and engagement. What are you trying to sell? What do you want your audience to do after they’ve finished watching? Whether its a visit to your landing page or simply sharing and commenting. You don’t get if you don’t ask, so remind them!
Educate and prove your brand!
Your video is going to represent you, and your brand. Therefore create a top quality video that you are proud of! If it’s an educational video, make sure you don’t just talk the talk, but walk it as well. Make sure there is something in it of value. Ask yourself, if 1 million people were to watch this, what would happen?
What kind of content is right for your brand?
So, you’ve decided to start a content marketing strategy! Awesome move. When it comes to creating content for your brand, there are almost too many options to know where to start. Blog articles, eBooks, infographics, whitepapers, listicles… the list goes on! However the first (and most important) thing to think about is what you want your content to achieve.
When it comes to digital marketing, having amazing content serves a number of different purposes. Some of these include:
- Educating the audience about your product or service
- Establishing your brand as an authority within your industry
- Converting readers into sales or email sign-ups
- Improving organic Google search rankings
- Developing brand awareness and loyalty
It’s important for you to prioritise what you want to get out of your content (as well as what you want your audience to receive) before you dive in and start creating. Let’s take a look at some different types of content and what they could mean for your business.
Blog articles
Writing regular pieces of content for your blog is a great place to start if you’re new to content marketing. Blog articles work as an excellent way to push traffic to any larger assets you might develop, such as eBooks, and are also a great way to inform your audience about upcoming events or promotions. Examples of structures for blog articles include how-to’s, listicles, reviews, or news snippets. Skip the essays though! I’d recommend keeping blog articles around the 500 to 600 word mark. You do want people to actually read them, after all.
Blog articles are also your best chance when it comes to content of improving your search rankings. No matter whether you’re writing the articles or someone else is – you should be taking advantage of this opportunity, and making sure that all articles are thoroughly optimised for search engine preference. Do some keyword research to make sure you’re targeting the right phrases, as well as using effective and sensical headings and subheadings for Google to scan through.
eBooks and other downloadable resources
Otherwise known as ‘premium’ or ‘gated’ assets, these are basically more time intensive pieces of content that you don’t give away for free. They’re not located on your public blog, and instead people access them through signing up to your email database or making a purchase, for example. This means that these pieces of content have to be very high-quality, so that the consumer doesn’t feel they’ve been ripped off or scammed in the process of receiving it.
They may take more work, but this type of asset is an amazing way for building a contact database, securing leads and building brand loyalty. If you’re positioning your knowledge and expertise as valuable enough to not be accessible to the ‘general public’, this builds your industry authority and thought leadership.
Other examples of premium content include downloadable eBooks, templates, guides, mind maps or quizzes.
Email newsletters
Email newsletters are also known as email nurture sequences or email direct marketing (EDM’s). They’re used for ‘nurturing’ your audience and keeping them engaged with your product or business at the front of their mind after they have signed up to your platform.
A great way to get people to sign up to receiving your email newsletter is to have a pop up on your website offering a discount code if you’re an eCommerce platform or some kind of other enticing offer.
Once people have signed up, they’ll be lead through an email sequence (I’d recommend sending one email a week through a platform like MailChimp) that informs, entertains and engages the audience with news, events or other information.
Email newsletters are also a fantastic way to build brand loyalty, as they offer a personalised and ongoing method of communication between business and consumer. Just make sure that you’re writing them to not be too long, be snappy and to the point, and to include as much relevant or useful information as possible.
This is just a snippet of the options when it comes to content marketing. It terms of developing a strategy, there’s an absolute smorgasbord of pathways to choose from. But if you play it right, you could find that content marketing could be the missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to building a relationship with your customers.
Ceycodes offer content marketing services for all kinds of businesses and service providers. Have a chat with us today about developing an amazing content strategy for your business that could have you reaching heights of customer engagement you never thought possible.
Entrepreneurial Marketing
As a serial entrepreneur, the challenge of taking a concept, developing a strategy and building a brand has dominated my professional life. It is my all consuming passion and offers challenges and opportunities daily.So, what is entrepreneurial marketing? It’s more about a marketing spirit than a marketing strategy. It allows small businesses to compete on a global scale where limited resources can create maximum impact for start-up businesses. It involves innovation, risk taking and proactive application and can provide greater flexibility and unorthodox approaches suited to the very nature of start-ups and small businesses.
Here are five Digital Marketing Strategies to help your business grow.
Create a Goal:
Start with a solid goal. You want your business to grow. This may be customer growth, staying ahead of competition or stronger brand awareness. Precision and strategy only strengthens your digital marketing which needs clear goal focus.
The Marketing Funnel:
Your marketing funnel is developed in four parts: Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action.
An effective funnel will help generate leads, build repeat business and improve the overall experience for your prospective customers.
Call to Action:
If you don’t create a call to action, you don’t deserve the sale. A good call to action will be attention grabbing and absorbing, helping the potential customer to engage in your business. A call to action may be an image or text that prompts online activity such as direction to landing pages, newsletter subscription, direct contact or purchase.
Effective Lead Magnet:
The offer. Use offers to secure greater information about a potential client and the service or product they want. Pull them into your funnel at the same time. An example would be a free download that requires the individual to complete a form providing you with more information. This increases the interaction between the prospect and your business.
Driving Traffic:
Your marketing needs traffic. Through quality content, strong keyword strategy, better website optimisation and increased social media engagement, you can improve your online marketing strategy hugely.
If you’re serious about growth, then digital marketing is an absolute necessity. This puts your business into the spotlight and provides tangible figures next to the dedicated marketing budget. Talk to the experts here at Ceycodes and we can help you establish a strong, digital strategy and get the leads your business needs.
But don’t take our word for it – take our customers word. See our Work and how we’ve helped clients such as Alexandra Park to make a difference to their business and generate measurable results.
Negative Keywords
Recently there have been requests to explain how negative keywords work and concerns over competitors clicking on client Ad’s wasting valuable budget. Here are some tips to look out for and how the Ceycodes Team can help.
You could be wasting up to 30% of your total spend!
In a recent analysis of 1000’s of adwords accounts, at least half of advertisers wern’t using negative keywords. Without negative keywords, we estimate that you could be wasting up to 30% of your total online marketing budget.
Negative keywords are words selected to help filter out clicks and impressions you don’t want to show for. For example if you have a residential plumbing business but don’t do any commercial work, a recommended negative keyword to add would be “Commercial” to stop your Ad showing for “Commercial plumbing New Zealand”.
Negative keywords when used correctly can help:
1. Increase return on investment
2. Increase click through rate
3. Increase your campaigns quality score
4. Reduces wasted budget on irrelevant impressions and clicks
5. Increases relevancy of your campaign
6. Rules out standard searches like “Do it yourself” and searches without the intent to buy/purchase
Negative keywords are one of the many techniques we deploy to increase your return on investment. Here’s what else we look for when running a campaign.
Click Fraud can be costing you up to 20% of your total spend!
Are you a victim of click fraud? Statistics say you are. Click Fraud is happening every day devouring your campaign spend. Competitors, repeat visitors (obsessive comparison shopping), ex-employees & more are clicking ads every day and after a recent study, up to 20% of your total spend could be spent on these visits.
You have a right to know who is clicking your ads. Ceycodes can monitor your campaign and stop click fraud activity before it starts, allowing you to get more leads for every dollar spent using Google adwords.
Speak with one of our consultants in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch to see how we can run a highly profitable campaign.