The growth of video over the past year has been unprecedented. While there has been a notable upward trend for video consumption over the past few years, the pandemic has certainly accelerated it even more.
Wyzowl’s 2021 video marketing report showed that the number of businesses using video as a marketing tool, overall, has increased from 61% to 86% since 2016.
In fact, a new report commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau from PwC revealed that despite the initial decline due to the global COVID-19 disruption, digital advertising spending actually grew 12.2% year over year in 2020.
All these figures show that today’s post-pandemic video landscape is rapidly redefining our consumer’s content consumption and reframing how we watch, what we watch, and why we watch content.
So, what are the implications of these facts to your local business? More precisely, how can video ads help grow your local brand?
In this article, you’ll discover how to harness the power of video localization and how local brands can reframe their approach to video ads with successful strategies that will actually work.
Why do local brands gain a competitive advantage with video ads?
Over the past pandemic-filled year, consumers around the world have vastly relied on digital channels to work, shop, connect with friends and handle other daily activities.
These drastic lifestyle changes from at-home consumers have made an impact on the entire video consumption landscape – from viewers to advertisers to creators and artists.
Investing in video ads for local brands with a pretty tight marketing budget can be a daunting endeavor. But contrary to what most people think, video ads are becoming one of the great equalizers in digital marketing.
You really don’t need to shell out a lot of cash for a national TV ad; you just need to create a good video that will capture the interests of your local community and your target audience.
Video is especially useful for local brands due to its visual nature. Consumers sometimes have psychological biases for local brands, and seeing the brand on video may help them feel comfortable enough to overcome their prejudices.
Creating video ads is one of the most promising methods to help local brands reach out to their audience and acquire new clients. Local brands can take advantage of where they are and highlight specifics that matter to locals, such as your location, connections within the community, and even local holidays or events.
With engaging video ads, even small local businesses can leave a lasting impression on potential consumers. Thereby making video ads a great local marketing strategy that will help build brand awareness and bring organic growth to local businesses.
Make it Local (at Scale): Creating Video Ads that Work
In a world where consumers have tons of content to watch, traditional content consumption has been replaced by a more localized and personalized content consumption.
These include moments of consumer engagement that are wholly driven by the viewer’s interests and preferences.
A Google survey showed that over 60% who watched something on YouTube in the previous 24 hours said it was related to something they were passionate about.
As personal relevance and viewer passion gain more importance, it’s time for local brands to rethink their mindset on video ads.
Here are five essential lessons that local brands should adapt to their video strategy:
· Capture attention immediately.
With tons of content to choose from, a viewer’s focus is becoming more and more selective about the type of content they wish to focus their attention on. If something does not immediately get them hooked, they will instantly skip, scroll, or ignore a video ad.
Local brands need video ads that will grab their consumer’s attention from the get-go. They need content the will surprise and intrigue their viewers during the first few seconds of the video. This will give them a compelling opportunity to make consumers watch and engage with their videos instead of skipping.
· Be a truly helpful local neighborhood guru.
Viewers rely on online videos and tutorials to get things done. They are also relying on social media platforms like Youtube, Instagram, and TikTok for purchase decisions. Wyzowl’s 2021 report showed that 84% of people acknowledged that they’d been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.
To stand out among the barrage of ads that viewers see every day, local brands should consider creating helpful content that meets the needs of their local consumers. Through a video series, they can create a persona that will help them become a friendly and reliable neighborhood guru online. Keep in mind that if you teach and inspire your viewers, they won’t just watch your ads. They have the potential to become loyal, long-term advocates of your brand.
· Learn to be relatable.
Understanding the local audience and the community is essential to a successful video ads strategy. More than that, being relevant to the local consumer’s personal interests may just be the most critical aspect of a local brand’s video content.
Google showed that when people decide what to watch, relating to their passions is three times more important than whether content features famous actors and 1.6X more important than whether it has high production quality. This just shows that when brands can reframe the context of their video into something that local consumers care about, it will naturally drive results.
· Build relationships on the platform.
Video is a unique and immersive way for local brands to build relationships with their local community. As such, local brands can use social media platforms like Facebook, Youtube, and TikTok to help break the fourth wall and have a two-way dialogue with their consumers.
This is a good way to make the brand more humane and approachable. Let consumers think of your brand as more than just a business, but a reliable member of the local community, just like them.
· Build a compelling call to action (CTA).
Creative video ads with enticing CTAs will make it easier for local brands to encourage viewers to take them to the next step. Whether it’s visiting your website or making a purchase, a compelling video CTA will help build brand awareness and drive results to your local brand.
One way of doing that is to create a sense of urgency with FOMO as a creative hook on your video ads. Make them aware that there’s an expiration date on your deals and promos, and give them a good reason why they should purchase your products immediately.
Shakr creates high-quality video ads that help increase brand awareness and drive local brands’ results with its location-based creative personalization tool. With the help of Shakr’s powerful video creation platform, Shakr has empowered over 10,000 brands worldwide with top-notch video ads for both their paid and organic digital marketing campaigns.
Tips on how local brands can leverage videos for local marketing
TIP 1: Include it on the website landing page
Video ads can be linked to your brand’s website landing page to help consumers view it as they go through other information on your website. Videos can serve as your consumer guide where they can walk through the information they need while watching the video and move on to the next step on your website.
Circulating local-centric content is essential to reach your target audience. Furthermore, it is also equally important for video content on your website landing page to enhance user experience. Remember that the key to a good video ads strategy lies in creating precise and consumer-centric videos. In addition, there should be information takeaways that are relevant to your local audience.
TIP 2: Send it directly to the customer
Videos can also be sent directly to existing consumers via newsletters or subscription emails. Local brands can directly embed videos into their newsletters and let them automatically play in the email. This strategy will help readers consume information without any additional effort.
Keep in mind that readers are more likely to watch videos than read lengthy emails about your product promotions. Since they are more receptive to consume video content, these readers will also be more willing to engage with the brand. It will also help your local brand form a close relationship with your local consumers since personalized and localized video content will appear more genuine.
TIP 3: Promote it on social media.
According to Wyzowl’s 2021 report, people watch an average of 18 hours of online video per week. This is an increase of 2 hours per week compared to a year ago. Therefore, this is an excellent opportunity for the local brand to promote your products using different social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and TikTok. If done right, local brands can make a mark within the community by using these social channels. As such, it’s essential for local brands to understand how these platforms work.
Harness the power of localization: How Shakr Local can help local brands
Location-based creative personalization is a great marketing opportunity for local brands that want to build brand relevance within the local communities. Whether it’s about creating hyper-localized ads in the areas they operate or calling out neighboring cities with ad creatives, location-based creatives are proven to work.
With Shakr Local, local brands can create hyper-localized creatives and set up their campaigns at Scale on social media. Shakr Local is an advertising technology solution that will help local brands create geo-based variations of your videos for different locations. Shakr can also set up and traffic your brand’s hyper-local campaign at Scale, whether you want to personalize your creative for 10, 100, or 1,000 different locations.
Here’s how Shakr Local can help local brands:
Local brands can earn more with less effort.
Easy-to-use platform that empowers local brands to create high-quality videos in minutes.
Creative Localization has proven to be highly effective with solid performance gains. Shakr Local is the perfect solution for local brands that strive to have a local relevance in people’s lives. It can be used to increase the relevance of your brand’s video ads, even if you are running an online-only business with no brick-and-mortar store. Shakr enables local brands to create localized video ads at Scale for dozens, hundreds, or thousands of locations and quickly traffic complex campaign setups.
Local brands can maximize video usage for optimum performance.
Data-driven creative automation tools that serve personalized video ads and locally relevant ads for local brands.
Hyper localized campaigns created with Shakr Local have been proven to drive up to a 47% decrease in Cost Per Lead and a 50% reduction of poor quality leads. By making video ads personalization a priority, local brands can improve the business impact and efficiency of their brand’s marketing campaign while providing their consumers with more memorable experiences.
Local brands can simplify their video creation workflows.
Seamless integration to leading social media platforms with cutting-edge solutions.
Shakr provides world-class creative video ads at Scale to help local brands succeed on social media platforms by creating bespoke video templates. Its easy-to-use, intuitive video creation platform can seamlessly deliver great video experiences to local consumers. Automate every step from video creation to campaign activation with programmatic access to Shakr video technology.
Shakr Local Case Studies
American Express
Success Rates:
· 69% partner merchants received AMEX payments
· 60% increase in cardmember spend during the campaign
· 20% increase in cardmember spend post-campaign
Financial service company American Express wanted to increase local AMEX spend by encouraging cardholders to choose their AMEX card when shopping locally. With the help of Shakr’s Dynamic Geo Ads, AMEX delivered hyper-local video ads to individual postal codes across the country. Each video ad encouraged cardholders to visit a specific AMEX partner merchant located within the target postal code. AMEX successfully created hundreds of variations of their video ads, each unique to a specific location, to create locally relevant videos for their diverse American audience.
Coupang Eats
Success Rates:
· 62.7% more app installs
· 38.5% decrease in CPI (cost per install)
· 38.4% increase in CTR (click-through-rate)
As the leading food delivery app in South Korea, Coupang Eats used Shakr Local to increase app installs. They created a video localization campaign that raised the relevance of their creatives with Shakr Local. The video ad was created with the objective of getting new users to install the Coupang Eats app by urging consumers to order food delivery near their location.
FilGOOD
Success Rates:
· 31% increase in purchase intent
· +2.2pts increase in overall purchase intent
· +3.95pts increased purchase intent in the target audience
Major Korean beer brand, FilGOOD utilizes Shakr Local for their brand awareness campaign on Facebook and Instagram. FilGOOD successfully increased its audience’s purchase intent by 31%. Localizing their video ad assets for 50 of the largest areas in Seoul and Incheon. By uploading their TV asset to Shakr and layered on localization messaging that indicated what area their viewer was.
Shakr is here to help local brands brand ramp up their video ads strategy for the local community.
We’re here to help you create successful ad campaigns with winning video marketing strategies. Shakr will help you create engaging video content that will help increase your brand’s visibility with your local consumers.
Want to learn more? Book a discovery call with us now!
References:
Graham, M. (n.d.). Digital ad spend grew 12% in 2020 despite hit from pandemic. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/07/digital-ad-spend-grew-12percent-in-2020-despite-hit-from-pandemic.html
H., G. (2019). How Can Local Video Marketing Help Small Businesses?. Retrieved 112August 2021, from https://www.lemonlight.com/blog/how-can-local-video-marketing-help-small-businesses/
Mohan, N. (2021). Retrieved 12 August 2021, from https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/video/post-pandemic-video-trends/
The Full Video Marketing Guide For Small Business. (2020). Retrieved 12 August 2021, from https://marketsplash.com/small-business-video-marketing/
The rules of online video ad engagement. (2019, March 4). Think with Google. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-apac/marketing-strategies/video/online-video-ad-engagement/
The post The Video Ads Advantage: How Local Brands Can Maximize the Power of Video appeared first on Shakr Video Marketing Blog.
* This article was originally published here