9 general techniques for short video + soft article marketing

Short video marketing is a very efficient way to spread brand advertising. A valuable short video can not only attract users to watch and share, but also create a viral effect. The development of short video platforms has made short video marketing a powerful tool for brand marketing. So what are the techniques for short video + soft text marketing ? Let's discuss it together.

I first came into contact with video operations in 2010. Now it has been ten years. Time flies. At that time, I was still in college. Because of the work requirements of the school studio, I learned video production. The senior who led me to the beginning at that time told me: "For a good video, technology only accounts for 30% at most, and content accounts for more than 70%."

I think this statement is still very true today. Nowadays, with the explosive development of short video platforms in recent years, watching short videos has become a high-frequency entertainment method in people’s daily lives. Short videos are short in duration, play quickly, and can be watched anytime and anywhere. They are a product born in response to the trend of the times. Therefore, most companies combine brand marketing with short videos, looking forward to opening up a new world in the new market.

Since I started working, I have been applying the video production and operation experience I learned in college to my work. In the process of transforming technology into marketing productivity, I have also explored some methodologies that combine short video + soft text marketing. The following is for everyone to discuss together.

1. Characteristics of short video marketing

Let’s first talk about the characteristics of short video marketing:

Image source: Made by myself

1. Strong interaction

Short videos are a medium that enables businesses and users to communicate in multiple directions. This two-way or multi-way interactive feature can convey user feedback information to the business. In addition, users’ comments and sharing can play a certain role in creating momentum for a company’s short video marketing. For example, if users have heated discussions in their replies to controversial content, the click-through rate of the micro-video will also rise sharply, which will further expand the company’s brand awareness.

2. Strong popularity

Nowadays, many videos on short video platforms are posted by individuals. They have no group nature and no authority. They merely represent their personal sharing, and therefore appear to be more popular.

3. Highly entertaining

Nowadays, short videos are mostly developing in the direction of being relaxed, interesting or entertaining, because this can bring entertaining and soothing content to the public and relieve the mental stress of users in life. It is for this reason that short videos are quite popular with the public. If corporate short video marketing seizes this point, it will be easier to produce effective dissemination and achieve marketing success.

2. 9 general techniques for short video + soft article marketing

Short video soft text marketing is actually a marketing method that expresses soft text copy in the form of short videos. Short videos often use shots, pictures, advertising slogans and sounds to express the content of the copy. It is a marketing method that expresses the implicit content of the copy through shot switching, shooting techniques, picture presentation, and dialogue advertisements. This article mainly discusses the methods of short video soft text marketing with everyone.

1. Creativity can attract more users

A short video with excellent creativity can help companies attract more users. Creativity can be expressed in many aspects. Freshness and fun are just one of them. It can also be close to life, focus on hot social topics, trigger thinking, contain life philosophy, include technology and pay attention to humanistic care.

For short videos, if the content lacks creativity, the entire copy will only become an accessory to the advertisement. Therefore, when brands do short video marketing, they must pay attention to the creativity of the short video content.

Creativity is not necessarily a wild brainstorming session. There are actually methods to follow in the process of generating creativity. Here is a method of generating creativity that I learned on the Everyone is a Product Manager platform. I also often use this method to find creativity in my daily work.

List all product descriptions, list all user descriptions, and then randomly match product descriptions with user descriptions to find interesting combinations, as shown in the figure:

Picture: I drew it myself

Application examples:

• A certain mobile phone brand: simple, cheap, powerful, metal body, good-looking, narrow frame, fast...
• Target users: young, fashion-loving, fun-loving, regular exercise, homebody, cost-effective, new things-seeking, campus-going, art-loving, history-loving...
• Discovering creative combinations: the artistic journey of a steel plate

You may want to try this method in the future, maybe you will find more interesting ideas.

2. Introduce product selling points using reverse thinking

The so-called breaking of traditional thinking means not following the crowd and using reverse thinking to introduce selling points. For example, when other brands are saying that they are the best, pointing out the circumstances under which a product is bad may unexpectedly attract consumers' attention.

Here are some examples:

• First: I am the best, luxurious, warm house
• Second: I am not the best house, but I am the warmest

The first of these two copywritings is a traditional copywriting thinking, which is to constantly praise how good their products are. The second copywriting breaks the traditional thinking and highlights their own strengths by explaining the shortcomings, which leaves a deep impression on consumers. There is a wine advertisement that has the same effect: xxxxx is good, but don't drink too much.

It can be seen from this that copywriting with non-traditional thinking is interesting and humble, which allows consumers to comfortably accept the text information therein, while copywriting with traditional thinking is too commercial in nature. Although this phenomenon has long been commonplace in the short video marketing social circle, it is likely to cause aesthetic fatigue among consumers.

Therefore, reverse thinking short video copywriting is a way to easily attract consumers, and it is also a way to differentiate products from other products, making it easier for consumers to identify their products among many products.

3. Grasp the pain points and create short videos

To grasp the pain points in short video marketing, companies must think from the perspective of consumers, list the problems that consumers will face, start from these problems, and incorporate the solutions to the problems into short videos, so as to write a better short video marketing copy.

Many companies do not know how to grasp the pain points of consumers, and often rely on the short-lived inspiration of copywriters. In fact, if companies want to write marketing copy that grasps the pain points, they can improve their efficiency by combining their thinking with products from several aspects.

Picture: I drew it myself

4. The text is presented on the screen

When using short videos for marketing, the audience cannot see the text of the soft article. They only see the scenes and subtitles and hear the corresponding background music, while the real copy is presented in the pictures and subtitles.

For example, there is a very classic video advertisement for Melatonin. I believe most people have heard of it. As shown in the following video advertisement, two cute cartoon elders are dancing in a lively and cute yet humorous manner, coupled with Melatonin's classic line - "I will not accept any gifts this year, and I will only accept Melatonin", which simply and directly presents the advertisement copy through the picture and subtitles:

Screenshot of Melatonin video advertisement

I believe that many readers think that this video ad is too simple and direct. However, if you take a closer look, you will find that almost every second of this video ad is just right. Many of the details in it can be used as reference when we do short video marketing in the future. If you take a closer look at this ad again, will you have any new discoveries? Welcome to comment and communicate.

5. Put important information in the title

Short video marketing should put the important part of the copy into the title. This marketing technique is actually very similar to ordinary written advertisements. For example, if a company plans to write a soft article about selling umbrellas on rainy days, and the sales price is 30% lower than usual, then the marketing title cannot be: Dear customers, it’s raining, please buy an umbrella.

Instead, it should be: Dear customers, it is raining, please buy an umbrella which is 30% cheaper than usual.

Putting important content into short titles is to let users know what the product can bring to them by reading the title. It is a short video marketing method that captures the user's consumption characteristics.

6. Capture visual, auditory, and emotional appeal

In short video marketing, all the audience's senses are composed of the following elements:

• Vision - Picture
• Hearing – Sound
• Feelings – the resonance or emotions evoked by visual and sound stimulation

When brands create short video marketing ads, they should start from these major elements, grasp the inner needs of users, and use short videos to express the content of soft articles. Now many short video marketing uses storytelling to present brand connotations. For example, Yida’s short video marketing recommends products to the audience through one story after another. If these stories are the content of soft articles, then using short videos to express these stories is the carrier of soft article dissemination, as shown in Yida’s advertisement:

Screenshot of Yida advertisement

7. Make sure to show your selling points

The content of short videos determines the strength and breadth of short video marketing and communication. Currently, attractive content is usually interesting, funny and other types of short videos. In other words, compared with traditional videos, short videos in the mobile Internet era pay more attention to fun.

Generally speaking, if a short video cannot attract audiences in a short period of time, then the brand is likely to lose part of its audience. Therefore, when conducting short video marketing, brands should try to show the selling points of their products in an interesting way that is easy for the audience to accept.

When doing short video marketing, be careful not to be too big and comprehensive. When doing brand short video marketing, many companies like to show all the selling points of their products, which makes the short video look very "miscellaneous". Not only will the audience feel aesthetic fatigue after watching it, but they may not even remember any selling point. Therefore, when doing short video marketing, what kind of selling points should be shown?

Are all the selling points displayed? The author’s suggestion is to showcase your brand’s most representative and unique selling point—the selling point that allows the audience to distinguish your product from that of your competitors.

For example:

Vinda Tissue Wedding Dress

Vinda’s tissue wedding dress video marketing and Vinda’s tissue goldfish catching video marketing both highlight the product’s most representative selling point that distinguishes it from other brands: toughness.

8. Conduct integrated marketing

Nowadays, each user may not use the same platform or media. According to their own usage habits, some people like to share information on Weibo, some like to use QQ, some like to use WeChat, and some like to visit forums. It is precisely because of this complexity and the different usage habits of people that it is difficult for a single video marketing to achieve good results. Therefore, the brand's short video marketing can try to use integrated marketing for promotion.

For example, a classic integrated marketing case that I like very much: Coca-Cola's "Lines Bottle" integrated marketing (Case description source: PR Home)

Image source: Internet

• The "lines bottle" promotional form is actually to design some personalized lines on the packaging of Coca-Cola beverage bottles, making each bottle unique, and able to capture the emotions of young consumers with some classic, popular, heartfelt and positive lines.
• In terms of integrated marketing channels, Coca-Cola's "Lines Bottle" used Weibo to create topics, WeChat Moments advertising, major knowledge websites to distribute case studies, mainstream video websites to place short video ads, and offline channel posters.
• From the perspective of the marketing form of the "Lines Bottle", it used a variety of content forms such as text, pictures, and videos, and gained a high level of attention and dissemination through the resonance of content and emotions; at the same time, combined with the innovation of brand concepts, creativity in packaging, and seamless connection and coordination of promotional content, the overall effect of this "Lines Bottle" integrated marketing was very smooth, with a sense of hierarchy and highlights.

It can be seen that multi-faceted marketing integration can bring out a more powerful synergistic effect. When doing short video marketing, brands can integrate their most advantageous channels for marketing based on their actual conditions to achieve the highest marketing efficiency.

9. Gain attention through social hot topics

In today's era of information explosion, hot topics can often attract people's attention for a certain period of time. For brands, using hot events for short video soft text marketing is a very good choice. The short video copy is combined with hot topics through certain characteristics, and then the attention of hot topics is used to attract the audience's attention.

The main marketing process of hot spots:

Picture: I drew it myself

The significance of using social hot topics for short video marketing is that if the short video marketing related to hot topics is done well, then the short video can easily be spread spontaneously on the Internet by the audience, eventually forming word-of-mouth marketing and greatly enhancing the brand's influence and popularity.

3. Short video + soft article marketing steps

Times are changing, and the ways of playing are changing. If a brand wants to conduct short video marketing, it must first start with the general steps of short video marketing, accumulate slowly, and then it can make a breakthrough. Let’s discuss the general steps of short video marketing.

1. Prepare short video topic materials for creation

Short video topic materials can be prepared in many ways. Here are a few sources I often use:

• Baidu Hot List: In the Baidu Search Hot List, you can pay attention to the hot information that is currently attracting a lot of attention, which can serve as a source of short video materials and information.
• Popular searches on Tik Tok or Kuaishou.
• Hot topics on Weibo: There will be many interesting events and hot topics on Weibo. When we are selecting topics and looking for inspiration, we often check out the hot topics on Weibo. Not only can we find some materials, but we can also know which hot topics are worth following.
• Popular TV series: You can extract interesting passages from popular TV series as materials for short video marketing.

Image source: Baidu

2. Choose the right keywords

In many short video marketing campaigns, text and short videos are often combined for marketing. At this time, the brand must choose the most appropriate keywords and embed the keywords into the text to increase the user's information volume and allow the advertisement to be embedded in the user's mind invisibly.

3. Choose the right platform to publish

After preparing the short video materials and determining the keywords, the brand must decide on which channels to release the short video. It is recommended that the brand should divide the short video into primary and secondary channels when releasing it. Generally, the channel that best matches the brand tone and has the largest brand audience should be focused on, and other channels should be used as auxiliary channels. Here, the brand can operate according to its own actual situation. So, how do you usually choose channels when releasing short videos? Welcome to discuss it together.

IV. Conclusion

The times are constantly moving forward, and every time a new media emerges, it will give birth to a group of brands that grow explosively, from portals to Weibo to WeChat public accounts, it has always been like this. Nowadays, the comprehensive development of short video platforms has made short video marketing an indispensable part of brand marketing. The brands that first seized the short video trend have already reaped rich rewards. However, as competition in short video marketing becomes increasingly fierce, who will be the trendsetters of the next era? Let's wait and see.

Author: Village Chief Liang

Source: Village Head Teacher Liang