We are in the golden age of video advertising. Marketers everywhere are veering away from static ads and are adopting video as a medium of choice.
Personalized video takes this marketing trend one step further by offering marketers the ability to customize their clips to each viewer. Now, not only are marketers able to reach their audience across all technological devices, but they can also send personalized videos containing information such as age, location, hobbies, etc. for a clip with a custom-made aesthetic.
With this hyperlocal technology, marketers have 10x better engagement rates and the highest levels of ROI — more than any other digital marketing technology. Regardless of these overwhelmingly positive elements, many marketers are hesitant towards implementing personalized video in their strategy, because they worry the tool may be too gimmicky.
While slapping an algorithm into your clip that will pull the viewer’s name or birthday is certainly gimmicky, there are a lot of ways that a brand can use personalized video without alienating the consumer.
Here are two brands who are using personalized video the right way and reaping a massive return on investment.
Nike +, a built-in app for all Apple products, tracks, and logs your workouts. Recently Nike’s marketing team sent 100,000 personalized videos to users, documenting their progress over the past year. The videos celebrated users’ physical fitness achievements while simultaneously promoting the Nike brand.
The videos contained information such as miles covered, minutes logged, location, weather conditions during workouts, etc., all of which offered the user a refreshing look at their exercise journey over the past year.
What worked about this video campaign is that Nike used the hyperlocal technology to strengthen the relationship between the Nike brand and the consumer. At no point is a new product pushed or a membership offered. The lack of outright selling to the consumer is the major reason these videos didn’t fall into the gimmick category.
Rather than abuse the personal information they have in their inventory, Nike used the information to create a feeling that the brand has a personal vested interest in the user’s physical fitness achievements. That is what we call good marketing!
Nike didn’t go halfway with the look of the video either; they enlisted the artistic talents of French artist McBess for the Meliere-esque look to the clip. This attention to artistic detail increases the shareability of the videos because the videos are fun to watch for those of us who don’t even use Nike +. Knowing this, Nike has made the videos easily shareable on all social media platforms.
Chocolate company, Cadbury, made a personalized video campaign that did something a bit different than Nike’s. Instead of giving consumers a look at the past year together with the brand, they told a bit about their customers’ personal tastes in chocolate.
Part of the process involved customers clicking Cadbury’s Facebook page. Once this happened, Cadbury collected data from their profiles which resulted in a personalized video filled with Facebook photos and other personalized information. Ultimately, the clip revealed the consumer’s best match in dairy milk chocolate products.
So why isn’t this campaign too gimmicky? Aren’t they selling consumers their candy outright by using their personal Facebook profile information? Though this campaign does toe the line, it works because of a simple fact that we, as consumers, love learning more about our personal preferences. This campaign feeds into our inherent narcissism with Cadbury offering insight into our personal preferences of chocolate.
With the implementation of personalized video, this Cadbury campaign obtained a 65 percent click-through rate and a 33.6 percent conversion rate.
Ultimately, the key to properly utilizing personalized video is to offer consumers something they want, not what your brand would like them to want. Whether that “something” is a look back at physical fitness achievements or learning about a sweet tooth.
If you allow consumers to find their own reason for wanting to participate by giving them content they can vest a real interest in, you’ll strengthen the bond between brand and consumer for long term results.
This, in a nutshell, is how brands can get the most out of personalized video.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: Check Out The Brands Who Are Nailing Personalized Video
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