Social Media Video is Still More Effective Than You Think
If you're responsible for an eCommerce brand, you already know that acquiring and retaining customers is the essential purpose of eCommerce marketing.
The question is this: What tactics should you be using?
Today we'll look at two common mistakes that eCommerce brands make:
Overindexing on paid media
Missing opportunities for brand building
Together these mistakes make eCommerce marketing harder than it needs to be.
Framing the Problem
Khalid Saleh, founder of invesp, put together this report on How Marketers are Using Online Channels:
Compare these two charts and you can see where eCommerce brands make a common mistake.
Email, Social Media, and Content Marketing are ranked as more effective long-term marketing tactics. But when it comes to time, attention, and budget, paid media and display are at the top of the list—especially for acquisition.
Of course, eCommerce brands need ads that are effective and on point.
But they tend to overindex on paid media because because they have a direct, measurable result: "We spent x, we sold Y, here is our ROAS."
The missing piece is this: brand building improves both customer acquisition and retention.
Brand-building makes paid media more effective and improves ROI
Why? Because brand-building activities give you multiple touches with the consumer, creating a lasting impression.
When that happens, the cost of acquisition and retention goes down.
We see this on every project we work on. The stronger the brand, the more efficient the ad spend.
We've never seen outsized, awesome ROAS without a brand that consumers love.
Social Media Video for eCommerce
Once you realize the need for brand-building, the question is how to do it.
That's where we've seen a lot of success with social media video.
Social video is one of those tactics that works for eCommerce brands because—if done well—it helps with BOTH brand building and paid media.
A great social video campaign will help you:
Stand out and make an impression in a crowded market
Get dramatically more impressions and views through cost effective social advertising
Use social video as creative for conversion ads that drive email signups & purchases
Publish organic content with the potential for extended reach
Great storytelling makes everything easier
Even average social videos will help you achieve these goals because it's just so much more effective as a format.
But the truth is if you want to stand out and have outsized results, average video is not enough.
Because part of the rising trend in video is the fact that everyone is making videos.
As always… the thing that makes you stand out is telling a relevant story to your audience. Once you have that, the rest of the tactical pieces get a whole lot easier.
