A Boston Marketer Explains Effective Video & Social Media Advertising Strategies

When designing a marketing and advertising strategy for the modern economy, businesses have little choice in whether or not they are going to leverage social media advertising. Considering 40% of the world’s population utilizes social media in some form, and 68% of Americans use Facebook, it follows that Facebook advertising should make up a significant portion of your marketing spend. 

What kind of advertisements on Facebook? While you’re likely to be trying to improve your pay-per-click campaign, you have a wide range of options on Facebook’s platform, but research holds that video marketing content continues to be a preferred method of brand consumption by users—in fact, 54% of people want more video content from the brands they consume. That’s why 79% of video marketers claim that Facebook is one of their primary marketing channels. It allows advertisers to access an extremely robust analytics platform that can then be leveraged to fine-tune audience targeting, maximize exposure to an extensive audience engaging with mobile devices by improving brand awareness and improving click-through rates. 

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In the following discussion, GoingClear walks you through the technical aspects of how your videos should be formatted for effective advertising, the kinds of video content you should be creating in order to maximize engagement and clickthrough rates, and how the agency can help Boston businesses properly execute and manage their Facebook pay-per-click advertising campaigns. 

Getting Technical with Video Content

With the advancement and constantly evolving technology of mobile devices and the various platforms on which users interact with Facebook, it’s important to create video content that maximizes the viewer’s experience and still remains flexible enough to be viewed on multiple platforms. When creating video content for marketing and advertising on Facebook that will give you the most results in your pay-per-click campaign, consider the following formatting and content components. 

Tell a Story and Get Their Attention

The most effective video advertising content doesn’t feel like a commercial. When planning out your advertising campaign, create a narrative that your video content supports and reveals to viewers so that they feel more engaged. In constructing your call to action, work the end of the narrative into the click-through process so they are more inclined and invested in continuing their journey with your brand.  

Social Proof Your Content For Added Engagement

While social proof marketing is an entire article series on its own, the short and sweet version is that people will engage more with video content and your brand overall, if you show them that people like them, people they respect, or people they admire also engage with your brand. They want to be part of a bigger movement and be seen as engaging with popular brands. Create content that includes endorsements by social media influencers as well as everyday users. Potential clients’ fear of missing out will drive them to engage more with your content.  

Formatting and Technical Considerations

Content is fantastic, but some of the default settings users set in how video content runs on Facebook requires you to make a few tweaks in your production process.

• Facebook’s feed settings on mobile devices especially limit the screen real estate advertising can occupy. Choose a square format in order to maximize your advertisement placement on the screen, rather than horizontal video which could suffer from being resized. The more real estate you occupy in an advertisement with video and motion, the more likely you are to catch the eye and draw a user into watching your content. Also, the square format allows your video to be ported to other advertising platforms in the social media space, such as Instagram.
• Give your video a title and a description header that draws the reader in. Previews will catch their attention and if you’ve got killer copy in the video’s description, they’re going to want to follow through with the video for the payoff. 
• Subtitle your video and ensure that it works just as effectively on a visual level as it does on the auditory level. This is important because of the Facebook setting that allows users to default all autoplay video content – advertising and otherwise – to play muted in the background unless the user turns the sound on manually. It might not be as visually appealing, but in the end, it ensures your message and branding show clearly on the screen supported by great visual content, and encourage them to follow through with the call to action you’ve constructed whether they hear the ad or simply view it. Additionally, include the “tap for sound” prompt so they can choose how to interact with the ad and not be turned away by the lack of options.  

What Types of Videos Should You Create? 

While we’ve talked about the how and why, let’s dig a little deeper into the “what” component of our pay-per-click Facebook campaign. With Facebook representing the outer edge of content funnels, it’s crucial that the video content in Facebook campaigns is tuned to drawing potential clients further into your marketing funnels, where product spotlights and product demonstration content can do their work converting leads into sales. Regardless of whether we’re talking about live-action video or creating animated motion graphics, we have to ask ourselves what sort of content, then, should you be converting into video marketing tools in order to drive engagement and encourage users to follow through on your call to action?  

Brand-Building Content

Early in your campaign, especially if you’re a new company or advertising a new product, it’s important to create branded content that introduces your brand to potential customers to give them an idea of your vision and why they should be interested in what you’ve got to say. This is where you can heavily leverage social proof marketing tactics to show the value of your brand in like-minded individuals to the clients with whom you’re building relationships. 

Educational Videos As Part of Content Funnels 

One of the most powerful tools you can leverage across social media are blogs and educational posts that help to establish your brand as a subject matter expert relative to the products or services your company sells. As companies start to leverage long-form video in order to enhance these posts, an effective marketing strategy would be to use snippets of these videos as advertising material pointing potential clients inwards along your marketing funnel. 

Supporting Boston Companies by Providing Effective PPC Management

Facebook’s advertising platform can be a powerful and lucrative source of lead conversions with the proper PPC management. For Boston businesses looking to improve clickthrough rates and build solid pay-per-click campaigns, GoingClear offers proven strategies to maximize your advertising ROI on Facebook. Reach out to our team of PPC specialists to get access to our winning strategies today.