Video Ads: Your Guide to Using Social Media Ads With Video

The growth of social media platforms as marketing channels has played a pivotal role in how businesses can advertise their products and services. These were once exclusively social networking sites and video sharing platforms. Now they are incredibly versatile, user-friendly and powerful advertising tools for businesses.

Compared with standard text or image ads, business video ads and social media ads score significantly higher in terms of the following:

• ROI
• Click-throughs
• Conversions
• Impressions

The best part is that any video marketing collateral can be spun and utilised differently, depending on the platform.

Videos in Social Media Marketing Campaigns

Social media sites often have videos as the centrepiece of their user experience, such as TikTok. In contrast, others have perfected the ability to incorporate user-generated content and business video advertising content seamlessly. The number of people watching or live streaming LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook videos speaks volumes about how diverse the video marketing landscape is.

Above is a social media marketing video we created for The Peppermill hotel and restaurant in Devizes.

While a business could create videos across multiple social media platforms, it’s crucial to have clear objectives and a defined video marketing strategy. The competition is rife and fierce, so before you throw yourself into the world of social media video ads, you need to think about what your content should look like. You should also consider the best ways of distributing it so that it’ll support your brand and digital marketing objectives.

Uses for Social Media Videos

Social media advertising with video is something many marketers relish with a low barrier to entry and plenty of choice at your fingertips. Video trends are constantly changing, and your audience may find a relatively easy type of video production more digestible. Furthermore, there’s less need for video editing expertise, with plenty of user-friendly tools for each social media platform.

That said, you shouldn’t go in all guns blazing. Instead, you should think carefully about what you could use video marketing collateral for as part of your business' social media. Some suggestions are as follows:

• Show off physical products in action
• Educational and how-to videos, explaining technical or complicated concepts in a concise and easy-to-understand manner
• Drive users and organic traffic to brick-and-mortar stores, your website or your e-commerce store
• Showcase the service your business provides in a concise way
• Build anticipation for upcoming product launches, store openings and events

Getting started with video advertising campaigns can seem overwhelming. It becomes easier when you figure out what your audience wants. If you need advice on how to market your business videos to entice the right types of customers, you may benefit from these video marketing campaign tips.

Social Media Video Questions to Ask 

While you may not need a substantial marketing budget to leverage the power of social media video ads, you will need a sense of the best practice for your particular target audience, niche and business sector.

As such, you should ask the following questions as a guide:

• Which type and format of video would be most effective for engaging my followers or generating leads?
• Which video advertising platform is best for my audience?
• In light of the recommended platform, should I stick to one social media site or spread the content across multiple platforms?
• What message will resonate with my audience the most? What tone of voice would they respond to?

How to Make Video Ads/Social Media Ads Work More Effectively

Regardless of your industry, you can take the following principles on board and apply them to almost any video advertising campaign.

• Timing is everything, so keep your video ads short if in doubt. Don’t waffle, and try to make your point in as few seconds as possible
• If you want your viewers to take action, give them a reason or incentive to actually do something having watched your video content. This could be checking out their nearest store, your website, or sharing the video with their network as part of a competition
• Diversify your content on more than one channel if your video campaign would suit it. You could use videos in proposals and blogs on your site
• Remember, different social media sites have different ‘categories’ of users who could absorb content differently. For maximum effectiveness, consider distributing variations of your core video content in other paid video campaigns to expand your potential reach

Free Video Marketing Review from Ginger Digital

The most crucial aspect of any social media video campaign is to have the right content and strategy. Without the right goals, objectives and realistic milestones to achieve, you won’t know how well your content performs.

This is why Ginger Digital offer a no-obligation video marketing strategy review call, which you can find out more about here. It could be precisely what your business needs to stand out from the competition.