TV adver­tis­ing has, his­tor­i­cal­ly, focused on expo­sure. But to be suc­cess­ful today, brands need to har­ness the pow­er of video mar­ket­ing, which should be focused on engage­ment. By focus­ing first on those most like­ly to care, your brand can gen­er­ate insights and mobi­lize advo­cates to make your whole mar­ket­ing plan bet­ter.

Accord­ing to con­tent mar­ket­ing research, 76 per­cent of B2C mar­keters have a YouTube chan­nel, but only 49 per­cent are using it effec­tive­ly. Why? Because mar­ket­ing is under­go­ing a sea change and the TV adver­tis­ing strat­e­gy that earned senior mar­keters their last pro­mo­tion can’t be repur­posed into a video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy that will get them pro­mot­ed to CMO. Online video presents oppor­tu­ni­ties that tele­vi­sion sim­ply doesn’t. For exam­ple, YouTube is patron­ized by a hyper-engaged, high­ly-con­nect­ed younger audi­ence who craves the two-way com­mu­ni­ca­tion that online video offers. And unlike TV, YouTube lives every­where because it’s acces­si­ble on hun­dreds of mil­lions of mobile devices glob­al­ly. So, a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of brands must unlearn what they have learned about suc­cess­ful TV adver­tis­ing strate­gies before they’ll be ready to learn ways to improve their video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy.

Flipping The Funnel From Exposure to Engagement

Last year, Google’s Engage­ment Project cre­at­ed the “Flip­ping the Fun­nel” info­graph­ic, which illus­trates how dra­mat­i­cal­ly the par­a­digm has shift­ed for senior mar­keters. In the old mod­el, which many of us learned in our col­lege mar­ket­ing cours­es, most com­mu­ni­ca­tion is one way – because that’s how mass media like tele­vi­sion, radio, news­pa­pers, and mag­a­zines worked in the 20th cen­tu­ry. As a result, brands need­ed to reach lots of peo­ple and then win­now them down to the con­sumers who mat­ter the most. In the new mod­el, brands invite their audi­ences to take part by inter­act­ing, com­ment­ing, shar­ing, and cre­at­ing. Brands get real-time feed­back when ideas res­onate and audi­ences help spread the mes­sage.

Ben & Jerry’s Is Successfully Flipping the Funnel

For exam­ple, Ben & Jerry’s is an expert at bring­ing its ice cream brand to life on Insta­gram. Focus­ing on its key themes of fla­vors, fun, val­ues and com­mu­ni­ty, Ben & Jerry’s was one of the first brands to join Insta­gram in Feb­ru­ary 2011. “It’s our visu­al sto­ry­telling plat­form,” explains Ben & Jerry’s dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing man­ag­er Mike Hayes. Ben & Jerry’s Ver­mont her­itage is also a key part of their sto­ry, but now that the brand has a glob­al pres­ence, they use Insta­gram to con­nect with peo­ple around the world and to source pho­tos from Insta­gram­mers enjoy­ing their ice cream in far­away places. In fact, at least half the pho­tos and videos that Ben & Jerry’s shares through their account today are from com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, many of whom com­pose their shots using the fram­ing tech­niques mod­eled by the brand. One favorite: a shot of a cone or cup from the POV of the per­son about to enjoy it, with a fun back­drop that iden­ti­fies where they are. As Hayes sees it, “We’re a cura­tor of our brand sto­ry now.” Ben & Jerry’s does all of their account man­age­ment in-house, from shoot­ing images and videos, to review­ing Insta­gram pho­tos post­ed with Ben & Jerry’s relat­ed hash­tags, to select­ing the best of the best to share in their own feed. Hayes doesn’t point to a com­pli­cat­ed for­mu­la when asked how the brand has become so suc­cess­ful on Insta­gram. “Oth­er mar­keters ask us what the secret is,” he says. “It’s helped being on the plat­form from the begin­ning, but the secret is respect­ing the com­mu­ni­ty and pro­vid­ing val­ue to them.”

7 YouTube And Video Marketing Strategies For This New World

This sev­en part series explores sev­en ways that you can improve your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. Here are the top­ics cov­ered:

• Mak­ing YouTube videos part of your over­all con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy.
• Ten fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples for cre­at­ing con­tent that peo­ple will love.
• Devel­op­ing a pro­gram­ming strat­e­gy and sched­ul­ing video for a year.
• Opti­miz­ing your con­tent, playlist, and chan­nel to ensure you reach your audi­ence.
• Ampli­fy­ing your video with social media to improve dis­cov­er­abil­i­ty.
• Pro­mot­ing videos with paid media to reach your tar­get audi­ence.
• Defin­ing key met­rics to mea­sure the suc­cess of your strat­e­gy.

Yes, even I have learned a thing or two from Ben & Jerry’s mar­keters while tast­ing Boston cream pie at Flour Bak­ery + Cafe paired with Hazed & Con­fused. Hey, who said writ­ing for Momen­tol­ogy couldn’t be a tasty assign­ment?