If you’re considering an online video marketing initiative for your brand, product or service, the last thing you want to be bothered with is the aftermath of a successful online video marketing campaign. So here are five things you can do to make sure you’ll see little or no return on your online video marketing investment.
1. Establish your online video marketing goals and expectations after the campaign is over. There’s really no need to figure out all this stuff up front. Just look around at all the successful video campaigns that are launching every day. All you really have to do is get some videos produced and put them up on Youtube. The rest will take care of itself. After the dust settles, there’ll be plenty of time to figure out how you did at hitting the goals that you’re about to establish. Predicting a return on investment and setting goals and expectations beforehand would actually work against the most effective strategy, which is to cross your fingers and hope for the best.
2. Approve creative that says everything you want to say. Pack as much sell into each online video as you can, repeating the important things even two or three times. Viewers will spend so much time appreciating your value proposition that they won’t even have time to share the videos! Another benefit is that you won’t have to bother encouraging discussion about your brand, products and services on blogs, online publications and discussion boards — because everything viewers need to know will be right in the video.
3. Plan to spend nothing on viral marketing. As long as you have an intern manning Twitter and Facebook or you send out a press release, you’ll be OK. In fact, fans of your brand are probably just looking for ways they can help share your message. As you already know, they think about you constantly. You could actually develop and execute a viral marketing strategy to include video seeding, ad placements, targeted blog outreach, video search optimization and social networking that would guarantee views and engagement — but what fun would that be?
4. Don’t integrate other marketing initiatives or include other teams in your campaign. The worst thing you can do is share what you’re doing with those guys in sales, PR or other marketing teams. They’ll just mess everything up by integrating your video campaign into their TV, outdoor, radio and PR outreach. What a disaster that will create — because after the campaign is over, how will you even know how much of it to take credit for? Imagine a scenario where TV ads drive traffic to a Facebook page, with a shareable branded entertainment web series, and where the PR department and viral blog outreach all share the same messaging. Imagine targeted social networking, banners and maybe a contest, all orchestrated to reach a common goal, and you’ve got a recipe for success that you’d be asked to repeat over and over. Who needs that?
5. Launch your online video campaign and move on. This is probably the most important step. After your videos are out there for the world to see and share, don’t waste valuable time and resources monitoring the types of audiences you’re reaching, or conducting reactive engagement. Once someone’s already seen your videos and commented or posted something about your brand, product or service, there’s no point in engaging them further. Move on to the next product or service and let this one go! Your work here is done.
Just follow these simple five steps, and I can assure you there is absolutely no way your campaign will be a success.
Originally published on MediaPost, written by Supercool Creative Director David Murdico