Overseas promotion, how to make eye-catching video ads!

Many brand owners will place video ads on video platforms, but how many viewers will watch these ads from beginning to end?

For brand marketing, "whether it is skipped" is an important indicator for evaluating the effectiveness of advertising. There is a "skip" button on YouTube that can sensitively detect whether the viewer has finished watching the advertisement. If the audience does not press this button, it means that the advertisement has successfully attracted the audience's attention. The question is, for overseas brands, how can they make attractive video ads that will prevent viewers from clicking “skip”?

We have summarized 3 key tips from some creative cases that have successfully prevented viewers from skipping ads. If you understand the secrets, your brand can also create eye-catching video ads.

1. Tell great stories to encourage consumers to take action

Steven Bartlett, CEO of Social Chain Group, said: "Whether you can create a good video does not depend on your equipment, but on whether you can use the equipment to tell a good story."

If your brand can also tell stories that the audience likes based on their interests, it will not only attract them to finish watching the ad and help you successfully shape your brand image, but it will also be more likely to achieve sales conversions and enable the brand to achieve outstanding results overseas.

In addition, brands can also incorporate effective advertising materials into videos, such as attractive calls to action, to encourage viewers to visit the brand’s website or make a purchase directly after watching the video.

Yoox Net-A-Porter produced a series of 25-second video ads on YouTube. In order to increase consumers’ sense of urgency, they adopted a creative idea of ​​“burning after reading”:

YOOX Net-Poter Video Ads

The ad begins by telling viewers "If you don't buy it, you will miss out." In just 25 seconds, as the laser cutting machine got closer and closer to the luxury fashion, consumers' hearts gradually became hanging. Especially the last 15-second countdown, which suddenly enhances the audience's sense of urgency. If you don't click "Buy Now", your favorite luxury product will be destroyed, and it and the discount will disappear forever.

This is no longer just an advertisement, but also a game that makes consumers feel exciting and interesting. This idea not only prevented the audience from skipping the ads, but also greatly shortened the purchasing process and directly reached the sales target.

YOOX Net-Poter Countdown Design

Products and offers will disappear over time.

The end result was that the campaign’s completion rate was over 20% higher than the average for similar campaigns, and it also won Yoox Net-A-Porter exceptional sales during the holiday season. 【1】

2. Create personalized content to resonate with consumers

When people receive information, they always look for content that resonates with them and can help them solve certain problems. Therefore, brands also need to pay attention to personalization when creating advertising content. After all, when faced with overwhelming content, consumers are only willing to spend their time on things that interest them more. Take Gen Z and Millennial viewers, for example. Three in five of them want the content they watch to be meaningful and purposeful. As consumers, half of them said that they frequently watch certain content in the hope of gaining something to talk about. [2] Therefore, if the content of brand advertising is personalized enough and can meet the viewing needs of these viewers and consumers, it will naturally resonate with people, leaving them with a deeper impression of the brand and paying more attention to it.

So how can overseas brands produce and output personalized advertising materials on a large scale? The example of Abreva, a cold sore relief drug brand, may provide some inspiration.

Screenshot of Abreva video ad

The brand's previous promotional methods were to promote it to audiences over 35 years old through traditional media such as television, but it was later discovered that most people first contracted herpes during their teenage years. Considering that the younger generation did not have enough interest in TV, Abreva's creative team adjusted its marketing strategy: using the YouTube platform to create a large amount of personalized advertising content, which ultimately proved to be a huge success.

How did they do it?

1. Not limited to audience characteristics

First, Abreva’s marketing team broke away from the previous audience characteristics of middle-aged consumers and truly explored the passion points and needs of young consumers. With the help of the YouTube platform, the marketing team created personalized advertisements that met the needs of young people and then placed them on content channels that interested them.

In this way, the brand covers a more precise audience, and the advertising content is also what these audiences are interested in and willing to spend time watching, which is very beneficial for conveying product effects and sales conversion.

2. It is natural and does not interfere with the user experience

Secondly, personalized ads created using YouTube's new tool Director Mix can attract audiences' attention better than ordinary ads without interfering with the viewing experience. With these natural advertising contents, consumers are likely to think of/buy the brand's products and services whenever they need them.

3. Keep experimenting in the market

Finally, through market trials, brands can know under what circumstances different advertising materials will perform better.

YouTube's machine learning technology can quickly identify the resonance points between advertising materials and audiences. If market testing and machine learning technology are combined, brands will be able to optimize advertising content according to different environments, thereby establishing a more influential connection with consumers.

Abreva Video Ad

The personalized ads based on the above three points have brought Abreva's marketing activities gratifying results: overall advertising recall increased by 41%, and search popularity among target audiences on Google and YouTube increased by 342%. 【3】

3. Pay attention to relevance and make advertising content more in line with consumer needs

If brands want consumers not to "skip" ads, what they need to do is to instantly attract their attention. Only with an unexpected and engaging opening content can brands have a chance to pull viewers directly into the story, allowing them to stop and watch and interact with it instead of skipping the video.

What needs to be done specifically?

The first is to attach importance to the relevance of advertising to consumers

The latest research shows that when people choose what to watch, "whether it is relevant to their interests" is three times more important than "whether there are famous actors in the show" and 1.6 times more important than "whether the content is well-produced."

"Relevant to interests" is more important than "star appearances" and "well-made".

The YouTube ads that Converse ran in 2018 successfully tapped into content related to consumers' interests, thereby achieving the goal of instantly attracting attention.

In the first scene of the video, British actress Millie Bobbie Brown, who won the Best TV Actor Award at the 26th MTV Movie & TV Awards for her role in "Stranger Things Season 1", is wearing classic Converse shoes and is very popular. Asking a simple question: "I mean, what do you think Chuck Taylor does?" The figure and the shoe were reflected in the mirror, which successfully piqued the audience's interest and attracted them to watch, garnering tens of millions of views.

Converse 2018 video ad first shot

The second is to meet consumer needs and provide practical help.

People use online videos to meet a variety of needs, including shopping instructions. On YouTube, viewing time for videos about “what to buy” doubled between 2017 and 2018. 【4】Therefore, if the advertising video can quickly convey to the audience that your product/service can provide practical help to meet their needs, it will naturally win more conversions for the brand.

Seeing this clearly, IKEA organized a home modification tour. They filmed what they saw along the way into more than 100 episodes of video - the Ikea Home Tour series. The video series has been a hit with YouTube viewers, with tens of millions of views, because it helps consumers solve the problem of how to effectively assemble furniture.

Ikea Hme Tour video series on YouTube channel

If your advertising content can also provide knowledge and inspiration to the audience like IKEA, then not only will they not skip it, but they will also become long-term loyal fans of the brand.

From these key points and cases, it is not difficult to find that if brands want to create advertising videos that will not be skipped, high-quality content plays an extremely important role. To win over overseas consumers, brands need to make advertising videos tell exciting stories that consumers are interested in, create personalized content, and pay more attention to the relevance of content to consumers. If you also want your brand to be invincible in the process of going overseas, you might as well use the above three points as a marketing reference.

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author: Creative Advertising

Source: Creative Advertising