Broad Targeting Formula are promising numbers, but when I look at the magnitude of the opportunity and the avalanche of video content that will transform the web from a text to a visual network, I find myself frustrated with how far behind marketers fall every day. The only way to capitalize on the opportunity is for marketers to take ownership and embrace an enterprise video content strategy today — one that includes strategic measurement, testing, benchmarking, and optimization, just like every other aspect of their marketing and communications programs.
Why the slow start?
Broad Targeting Formula review contesting that video content is quickly becoming the new order on the web. But just like any monumental shift, there are hurdles that we ignore or approach reluctantly when it comes to optimizing video content, such as:
- Content ownership: Naturally, the consumer marketing professionals own online video advertising. The rest of the video content can fall under the purview of a wide range of verticals, including PR, product development, corporate communications, internal communications, investor relations, executive offices… the list goes on. Without centralized ownership, there’s no standard for measurement and optimization — and often no clear understanding of what needle to try to move and when.
- Measurement: Current advertising measurement is relatively generic and, although standards are evolving, gross rating points, clicks, and views are still acceptable success metrics. But, measuring longer-form video content (1–5 minutes) is a bit more complex, and there is no standard for creating a relationship between variables that will help quantify content engagement and success.
- Content production: I am oversimplifying this to make a point, but in a traditional advertising structure, all I need to do is call my creative agency and ask them to produce a couple of great commercials a year that work both online and on TV. Fast forward to a new world where fresh cross-department video content needs to be created and distributed according to a strategic editorial calendar. That requires a publisher mentality and the involvement of many teams working together — not just marketing departments. With this comes a multitude of process and production challenges, including determining what part of the organization will be responsible for paying for the necessary shifts in resources.
- Broad Targeting Formula Discount: Advertising — whether on TV or online — offers plenty of evolved processes, and there are plenty of companies whose raison d’etre is to target the right video ad content to the right people at the right time. Meanwhile, the rest of the video content distribution typically relies on the marketers and their video strategy in creating an integrated distribution platform. They must effectively and efficiently tie together all of the company’s content access gateways without forgetting about mobile platforms that are leading the way in video consumption.
How we can avoid the video graveyard
We need to look beyond online video advertising and embrace the video content revolution as something much bigger and broader. Unless we focus on how we measure, benchmark, and track all video engagement, our expensive video content will end up in what I call “video graveyards” (i.e., most of the branded channels on YouTube).
At a relatively high level, here are four steps I would suggest to get content marketing on the right path:
1. Define your overall video content strategy, including metrics and benchmarks:Not unlike other marketing tactics, the makeup of your video content and distribution structure should be driven by business goals and the profile of your target audience. Establish measurement metrics and create benchmarks, before tracking, reporting, and optimizing.
I believe that measuring your videos’ engagement levels must be at the core of your KPIs. I wish I could tell you that it’s as easy as looking at the number of views or “likes” from your YouTube analytics dashboard, but it is a bit more complex than that. Video engagement is not a single event but rather a relationship between multiple weighted attributes in three key factors: exposure, action, and social amplification. So, when you look at setting up your video engagement KPIs, you need to look at tracking attributes — such as channel subscribers, percent of videos viewed to completion, socially embedded vs. on-channel views, etc.
