Three tricks for short video marketing promotion: KOL + topicality + in-depth interaction

Introduction: In today's mobile era, short video marketing has become the darling of the times. A huge advantage of short video marketing is its communication power. While maintaining its own strengths, it fully absorbs the characteristics of other media, becoming an emerging marketing carrier that combines the strengths of hundreds of media and an important part of the entire Internet and mobile Internet ecosystem.

The Internet industry changes its trends almost every year, such as O2O, sharing economy, electric vehicles, Bitcoin and short videos. In recent years, as public behavior has become increasingly mobile and fragmented, short videos that share interesting things in life with low thresholds and low costs have become one of the most popular entertainment methods at the moment. Therefore, short video social software such as Douyin, Kuaishou, Miaopai, Huoshan, Xigua, Meipai, Weishi, and Xiaokaxiu have emerged.

The two slogans "Kuaishou takes you to see the world" and "Tik Tok records a beautiful life" are already very familiar to the younger generation. Since 2017, everyone from the elderly to primary school students has been addicted to the world of Tik Tok and Kuaishou.

This type of short video application has the characteristics of "easy to operate" and "easy to spread and share". Everyone can take out their mobile phone, shoot a 15-second video, and easily complete a video creation by adding BGM and simple processing. Especially since we are in the gap between the 4G and 5G eras, with Internet speeds constantly increasing and data charges constantly decreasing, everyone seems to have forgotten the embarrassing era of "looking for WiFi connection when going out". Young people of the new era who have "no shortage of data traffic" can easily click on 15-second videos at will. Faster Internet speeds have also given rise to the young generation's desire to express themselves.

At a time when mobile and fragmented consumption is becoming increasingly prevalent, short videos that share life information with low barriers and low costs cater to the fast food culture, minimalist lifestyle and mass characteristics of self-expression advocated by contemporary users, and have become the most appropriate video entertainment product. According to the "China Internet Copyright Industry Development Report (2018)", 66.3% of respondents said they had posted short videos they shot online.

Compared with traditional forms such as text, pictures, and long videos, short videos have multiple characteristics such as stronger expressive ability, low creation threshold, stronger interactivity and social attributes, etc. They can meet the needs of users for display, sharing, and interaction in a more intuitive and three-dimensional way. We have thus entered the countdown era.

As a new video ecosystem in the fragmented era, the short video industry exploded in 2017 driven by the demand for information acquisition. The number of monthly active users in the short video industry exceeded 400 million, a nearly 4-fold increase. Users of video apps spend an average of 66 minutes per day, which takes up almost a quarter of their day. All these indicate that the marketing direction has shifted from the original traditional graphic marketing to the current short film marketing.

丨Why are brands targeting short video marketing?

Including McDonald's and Starbucks' Starbucks Rewards Card promotion, GUCCI's "online" relay race 24 Hour Ace, L'Oreal's makeup filters, etc., international first-line brands have entered the short video marketing. Why are so many people rushing into short video marketing?

1) Experiential marketing is more commercially expressive

Short videos are a form of fast-food content, but this is precisely their advantage. Compared with pictures and texts, short videos provide a more stimulating sensory experience and are a good experiential marketing platform. At the same time, the era of content marketing is not far away. Brand marketing is different from the past. Compared with simply telling brand stories, it is more committed to impressing users with creative and immersive content, so that they can establish an emotional bond with the brand's products or services.

When experiential and in-depth marketing becomes a trend, the advantages of short videos become more prominent compared to traditional graphic and text marketing. They are more three-dimensional and combine sound, action, expression, etc. into one, allowing users to feel the shining points of the brand more vividly. They are a more expressive content format.

2) Short videos are the most effective way for brands to reach young audiences

Young people, as the main users of social networks, are more accustomed to fragmented reading and acquisition. Those born in the 1990s and 1995s are the watershed of young users. This generation is the indigenous people of the Internet age, and traditional media channels such as paper media and elevator building advertisements are no longer enough to attract their attention. On the contrary, the rapid rise of social networks has made hunting for the social scene of post-90s generation the most effective way for brands to vertically target young audiences.

The playback of short videos only takes up a very short period of time, but it can reduce the audience's reading pressure while satisfying their eye pleasure. This subtly deepens the audience's understanding of the brand and meets the needs of brand promotion. Short videos have become the social business card of the new generation, and Momo’s phrase “Get to know me through videos” is enough to prove it. This has further given rise to the rapid development of short video marketing.

3) Short videos have better marketing attributes

For enterprises, short video marketing has a low threshold, low production cost and short promotion cycle, which makes it attractive for enterprises to test the waters today when various advertising costs are constantly rising. At the same time, companies can conduct targeted marketing based on target customer preferences and combined with their own product features, and produce short video advertisements that attract target customers, thereby gaining their attention and resonance.

4) Short videos are a more optimized content carrier in the current era

Research data shows that the brain processes visual content more than 60,000 times faster than pure text. This is an analysis from a physiological perspective of human instinct, which makes people more willing to accept short videos. At the same time, the current fast-paced life and fragmented usage scenarios have given rise to the current situation where people watch videos on the subway, in the toilet, and while waiting for the bus. Short and concise short videos are more in line with the scene requirements of the current era. This means that brands using short videos as a language to communicate with users will be more easily accepted by the audience and will be easier to achieve the communication effect of brand promotion + sales.

丨Three tricks for short video marketing

1) In-depth cooperation with KOLs, targeted marketing

The internet celebrity economy is represented by young, beautiful, and fashion-conscious people with consumption-leading power. It is guided by the taste and vision of KOLs in selecting styles and visual promotion, attracting traffic on relevant social platforms, and relying on a large fan base for targeted marketing. Modern young people are keen on "planting grass" and "pulling grass", and the opinions of KOLs are their main "source of planting grass". Their in-depth cooperation with brands can often play a very good role in bringing goods.

For example, during the launch of its autumn and winter series of lipsticks, YSL invited 10 KOLs from Tencent Weishi to shoot and share short videos to promote the new lipsticks, and made the videos of the 10 KOLs into a Weishi collection, using splash screens for promotion and diversion, which brought a very high commercial conversion rate.

KOLs are walking "grass-planting machines". By endorsing brands or deeply implanting them in their videos, they can increase brand exposure, drive audiences' attention to products, deepen their trust and favorability towards the brand, and it is not difficult to create hits based on good operations. The cases of "Lipstick King" Li Jiaqi, Zhang Dayi, and Viya selling products through short videos can also explain this phenomenon well.

2) Build topic attributes and promote short video social networking

As short videos have developed and become increasingly powerful, one-way communication can no longer meet the needs of the audience. Only videos with topic attributes can arouse their interest. If the brand seizes such an opportunity, it will not only allow the audience to fully participate in the brand's creativity and continue the brand's influence; it will also promote the development of short video social networking, where everyone can make friends through "co-shot videos" and find like-minded groups.

For example, Skechers spokesperson Huang Zitao teamed up with Weishi to launch the Skechers Panda Dance Challenge. The magical and brainwashing panda dance caused heated discussion among fans as soon as it was released online. Many famous artists came online to dance with Huang Zitao to see who was better.

In addition, Wu Lei is the spokesperson for both Oreo and Weishi, and the brand seized this opportunity to enter Weishi. Taking advantage of Wu Lei’s special status as a dual spokesperson, we launched a super interactive collaboration – the “Don’t steal my Oreos” challenge. Wu Lei's "sister fans" all expressed their desire to feed brother Sanshi. In this marketing process, Oreo, as a prop, made a lot of presence.

3) Encourage users to participate in interaction, so that the brand image can be more deeply rooted in people’s hearts

With the rise of short video platforms, users' attention has gradually shifted from text and pictures to videos. Even WeChat, China's most important social product, has launched a short video function, which shows that the video era has arrived. After recognizing this trend, Xiaomi encourages users to act cute on Meipai, and the requirements are extremely simple. Users only need to post a cute short video and add the hashtag #像萌不耻的 to participate. Users are also required to follow Xiaomi’s official Meipai account. In just a few days, the number of views of Meipai-related videos with the theme of "卖萌不可#" exceeded 10 million.

By inspiring Meipai users to actively participate in content creation, the brand image can be more deeply rooted in people's hearts, and the UGC model triggered has a strong exposure effect for Xiaomi mobile phone brand marketing.

On the Weishi platform, Xiaomi also released several short videos. These short videos all reflect a common point: integrating the product into the overall creativity, which will trigger more associations among the audience, such as using brand names to create associative creativity. These short video ideas not only attract the attention of consumers, but also increase the interaction between the Xiaomi brand and the user group.

Due to the particularity of short videos as a medium, the role of short video marketing is no longer confined to the shackles of previous "brand" or "spokesperson". It can be a brand as well as the initiator and participant of the topic, so the brand implantation can be more natural and implicit, leaving the brand with ample room for marketing. In terms of form and content, short videos are more vibrant than traditional pictures and texts. Among the millennial online target audience, this emerging media form is more likely to capture their increasingly fragmented attention and attract them to participate in marketing.

In today's mobile era, short video marketing has become the darling of the times. A huge advantage of short video marketing is its communication power. While maintaining its own strengths, it fully absorbs the characteristics of other media, becoming an emerging marketing carrier that combines the strengths of hundreds of media and an important part of the entire Internet and mobile Internet ecosystem.

For enterprises or brands, if they can create sufficiently creative cases during the actual operation, they can fully achieve the communication effect of "single-point delivery, full network fission". With continuous and in-depth investment in short video marketing, I believe more companies and brands will profit from it, whether it is exposure, traffic, or sales, it is an inevitable direction.

But at the same time, no matter what form of marketing, its premise is to rely on good content, and content is king is still the rule, so in the field of short videos, content quality will be a long-term trend. In addition, under market trends, how short videos can be integrated and developed with other business formats, and how to maximize marketing effects through a variety of gameplay are also things that brands need to think about.

Related reading:

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5. The short video industry’s dream is shattered: everyone wants to be the next TikTok!

6. Short video promotion and operation: Who has better ability to bring goods?

Author: Tenant 404

Source: PR Home