Wipster Content Team
6 Practical Tips for Giving Feedback and Collaborating on Video
Are you kicking off a new video project, but you're not a video professional yourself? Then it's likely you're going to need to collaborate with...
You’re scrolling through your Facebook Newsfeed when you suddenly come across an ad.
You ignore it.
A few minutes later you come across another ad, a video ad this time, and it starts playing automatically. You’re transfixed by it. Slowly you point your cursor on the brand’s profile, click on it, and spend the next couple of hours stalking that brand.
This is the power of a video ad. It can hold the audience captive and enthral, inform, and convert them; after all, there’s been a 50% increase in video content being consumed on Facebook. And video marketers need to take notice of these increasing numbers.
Brands of all shapes, sizes, and advertising budgets are taking advantage of it. The Fox Tan increased their sales 6.5X and saw a 2.5X higher return on ad spend by incorporating video ads in their Facebook advertising campaign. Skinfood’s Facebook video ad campaign saw a 55% lift in purchase intent and received 3.79 million video views.
If you’re thinking of jumping on this bandwagon, or are already creating Facebook video ads but haven’t had much success with it, we’ve created a checklist for you. It covers all the important factors that contribute to the success of Facebook video ads and everything that successful brands are doing to get higher ROI.
So, let’s dive right in.
1. Valuable video content > fluff video content
With social video content on an all time high, only the best of the very best video ads get seen and clicked on.
Create targeted educational video content for your ads. Address your audience’s pain points, solve problems, present your brand as a hero, tell a tip, give quick instructions, and make sure you’re providing your audience with some sort of value. And let your brand personality shine in the video ad. Informative doesn’t always mean stiff and boring.
Fluff video ads will not give good results, so spend a little time and understand the kind of content your audience is looking for.
2. Don’t disregard video ad CTAs
After you’ve managed to successfully hook in your audience, don’t let them walk away. Convert them with a compelling call to action. This is oft-repeated advice you’ll find everywhere, because so many facebook video ads fail to have a compelling CTA (a vague or a generic CTA doesn’t usually work) or a CTA altogether.
Try to be as creative as you can and test different CTA’s to see which works best. Here’s a great article to help you nail your CTA.
3. Leverage social proof
According to Robert Cialdini, who studied and explained the concept of leveraging social proof to persuade others in his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion,
““We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it”
Translation: When we’re unsure of what to do, we follow experts.
In this case, to persuade viewers you need to show them that experts trust you and your brand. It can be in any form - a testimonial by a client (the more influential, the better), industry awards, celebrity endorsements, and even the number of customers or subscribers you might have.
Likes, comments, and shares are another form of social proof, so actively try to generate engagement on your video ads, as well.
And,
4. Add oomph to your content via a good editing software
A good video ad needs to be aesthetically pleasing. While that doesn’t mean you need to spend thousands of dollars on production, investing in a few good editing softwares (some are even free) to put together a good-looking ad is a great idea.
You can create fun slideshows videos by using interesting brand pictures through these apps (slideshow videos are big on Facebook, as Facebook collaborated with ShutterStock to provide 25 million pictures to Facebook advertisers free of cost), or beef up your existing video content, and add interesting textual and visual elements in it.
Some great options include:
5. Get your point across in 6 seconds
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg stated that in testing :06, :15, and :30 second videos, 6-second videos performed best against all brand metrics.
Instead of trying to cut your 30 second videos to make them 6 seconds long, tell your story concisely and create a pithy ad that focuses on just one thing. Don’t add too many things; too many brand messages, too many CTA’s in a short video ad. After all, it’s only 6 seconds.
“You can really get to a level of poignance and a level of human connection that you cannot get to even in a 15-second spot. It’s because you sort of have to understand your subject matter, your medium, your production tools so much more intimately in order to make use of six seconds in an effective way. I think it’s one of the most important ad formats—if not the most important ad format—that we are going to see more of.”
- Maud Deitch, Creative at Instagram
6. Gamers! Invest in rewarded video ads
For gaming advertisers, Facebook’s rewarded video ads can be a great investment.
And what are rewarded video ads?
You’re playing a game on your mobile phone, and you run out of coins. Suddenly, you see a little icon that says ‘You can get extra coins simply by watching a video.’ When you click on that icon (because who doesn’t want extra free coins), it takes you to a fully immersive Facebook video ad and at the end of it you get your coins.
Win-win for all.
Facebook states,
“Rewarded Video is 100 percent initiated by the viewer and delivers a full-screen, immersive video experience. Players like gaining additional benefits in a game without having to wait or pay. By giving people the choice to watch ads in exchange for a reward, Rewarded Video allows publishers to offer a positive user experience while also increasing revenue through Facebook’s people-based targeting and high-quality demand.”
According to Facebook, when gamers are rewarded for watching a video ad, the ad is 53% more likely to be perceived positively. Gamers are also 23% more likely to purchase the product advertised in the video and games containing these rewarded video ads generate 11-15% more stars in their ratings.
PlayRix and Pretty Simple have seen great results via rewarded video ads, and several other gaming brands have followed suit to surge their CPM.
7. Use Playable video ads to get ahead of the game (pun intended)
Playable video ads allow users to play part of the game in the advertisement. Once it’s over, they’re asked to click on the CTA to install the app and play the rest. This ad format works best for game publishers only, so unfortunately other brands will miss out on this.
“Game developers are leaders in digital, and people love to try before they buy. That’s why we’re working with gaming app marketers to test a new playable ad format in News Feed that lets people play a game before they install the app. We think this creates better choices for people when they engage with app install ads, and gives businesses better likelihood of acquiring more high-intent installs.”
Kelly MacLean, Facebook director of brand and video
Gaming brands have the opportunity to hook their audience in initially and then add an irresistible CTA to convert them instantly. And since interactive ads yield a higher conversion rate than non-interactive ads, 47% to be precise, it’s a popular ad choice for creative brands.
8. Utilise captions
If you’ve been in the digital marketing world for a while, you probably know that 85% social media users watch video without sound. You need to think like a silent film producer and create a video ad that can deliver its message and convert without depending on audio.
The easiest way to get around it is to utilise Facebook’s caption feature and add captions to your video ad automatically. Captioned video ads can increase video view time by an average of 12%.
Additionally, try using catchy colours, big and dramatic text on the ad itself, and interesting graphics to capture your audience’s attention.
9. Square vs landscape videos - the verdict is in
Square videos will give you the best return on your investment and we’ve got numbers to prove that. Buffer reported square videos get 30 to 35% more views versus landscape videos and 80 to 100% more engagement. They take up more real estate and fare a lot better on mobile.
It also costs 33% less to get your audience to engage with a square video than a landscape one.
All in all, square video perform way better than rectangular ones.
10. Use native videos for your Facebook video ads
Facebook native video averages 110% more interactions and 478% more shares. So it’s clearly a winner.
It’s easy to link your video from an external source (YouTube, Vimeo, Website) to Facebook ads, click Publish and have your ad up and running. It’s a bit more time consuming to upload your video on Facebook first and then use it for your ads.
But by spending a bit of time, you can get better video ad results. Directly uploading videos on Facebook can run on auto-play, gives you an insight on a host of different metics, and Facebook optimises these videos and makes them appear wider on the newsfeed.
Quintly’s study revealed that,
‘Facebook native videos had on average a 477.76% higher share rate compared to Youtube videos, and the interactions for Facebook native videos were on average 304% higher than for YouTube videos.’
Need some video inspiration to get your creative juices flowing?
Video ads are ruling the social media world. We all know that now. But it can get a little frustrating trying to decide what kind of video will work best for your brand.
To make it easier for you and help you create a high-converting video ad for your brand, we’ve compiled a list of the best of the very best Facebook video ads in different industries.
Download it and start using video to convert your Facebook audience.
