What’s your brand doing on YouTube?

There was a time when YouTube was considered a wild-wild west of content — a place where marketers shied away from uploading their commercials, let alone building a branded channel. But these days, YouTube has become more mini-van than stagecoach. From Toyota Sienna’s high-profile television commercials urging consumers to visit their YouTube channel, to (what might be considered the anti-minivan) Harley Davidson’s fan-centric YouTube universe, there has been a noticeable shift in corporate adoption of the platform.


Billions (literally) of people are watching today – so I'm sure you agree that YouTube provides a unique opportunity for high-profile brand placements. Not sure where to start?  Check out YouTube Trends to get an idea of the types of content currently being consumed.   Also, think of your YouTube channel as an extension of your brand that lives and breathes. You’ll need someone who is dedicated to tending to that page, building your audience by reaching out to fans, and managing your profile online.


Start by searching your brand on YouTube and see what the existing conversation looks like. Then try reaching out to people who already have an affinity for your product or service by commenting on their videos and/or “friending” them. Remember that YouTube is an online community, and if you’re not participating in the dialogue, then you are missing the opportunity for true engagement.  More tips and tricks or for good examples by content type, select the area of concentration below:

Gaming

How-to / Education

TV + Film

Music

Non-profit

Sports

"The Next Level" – Nike Football's Branded Utility

While Nike had been gaining traction in soccer for years, it had been losing traction with advanced players, who tended to gravitate toward rivals such as Adidas as they moved into more-serious competition. The 2008 European Championships presented just the opportunity to change this perception.  Note:  This campaign is a few years old now, but would work as well today as the day it was launched.  Great ideas are great ideas.  Period.

What resulted was the kind of campaign (by 72andSunny) that proved that it doesn't take a big footprint to do great work that delivers results.  Moreover, this is also exactly what we mean when we talk about branded content and utility - brands creating something that is participatory and useful/valuable to their customers.

The centerpiece of the program was a striking, fast-paced two-minute film directed by Guy Richie, which shows one athlete's first-person view of taking his game to a higher and higher level (first person POV complete with pre-match vomiting and requests for autographs).

Taking the self improvement theme further, an online "boot camp" based on Nike's site provided video-based advanced training and skills regiments. The short film by Guy Ritchie featured superstars such as Cesc Fabregas, Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo showing off dazzling skills, but positioned in the context of all the training it takes to get to the next level.

RESULTS
The effort drove 50 million unique visitors to Nike's site in six months, a total that doesn't include external websites such as YouTube, where one posting of Ritchie's film has drawn more than 4.2 million views. Print and outdoor executions focused on specific elite skills, and challenged readers as to whether they had them while also prominently referring them to the Nikefootball.com website.

♔ THE REAL VALUE OF BLOGGER OUTREACH

The digital age has brought about consumers that are no longer passive receivers of brand messaging (if they have ever been), but engage in active relationships with the brands they love or hate. In these relationships, the brand promise is under constant evaluation: is a brand delivering on its promise or breaking it?

As a marketer, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the 1% rule — that just 1% of your brand’s follower’s are responsible for the majority (over 80%) of sharing. They share your campaigns with their larger social network, passing on links to your contests, promotions, deals, and other marketing campaigns. These key influencers are more than just fans — they’re brand ambassadors.   It's the same reason hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts are given to actors at the Oscars each year (and the same reason Kim Kardashian will tweet your brand for $10,000).

Simply because these key influencers can drive between 30 up to 70% of ALL visits to their campaign pages, beating out display and search advertising as the most efficient driver of traffic to their sites.  That’s pretty incredible, considering activities require no media buys and costs are (comparatively) next to nothing to implement, whereas banners and search ads are a huge expense.  These “super influencers” drive an even higher share of conversion — on average influencing 30% or more of all conversions on marketers’ sites just by recommending a brand’s products, content, or promotions to their online communities.   If you can reach out to this 1% target by directly offering them special promotions, thanking and rewarding them for their influence, they will be motivated to share early and share often.  

Identifying your key online influencers is fairly straightforward. There are a wealth of social media measurement tools that enable marketers to find the people who are talking most about their brand, see what type of content they’re sharing and with whom, and how they are sharing it (e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, their own blogs, etc.). Once you find these influencers, the trick is activating them to share even more. The bottom line though is that the opinions of bloggers are heard and respected by thousands, even though many brands still ignore their potential reach.  

For most brands, this is because Blogger outreach is still relatively unknown – though the science of targeting the influencer (articulated by Razorfish as Social Influence Marketing (SIM)) is proven to build trust.  It’s a framework that extends real (BTL) grassroots activity that builds a groundswell of support and momentum.  By targeting and building relationships with bloggers that address your audience, you can garner effective, unbiased reviews of your products and services.  Their readers will then be introduced to your brand, get interested in it, visit your site, and hopefully buy based upon peer advocacy. 

Simply identifying your key influencers is not enough in today’s market. Instead, you’ve got to find them and then motivate them to share. Over the long term, your goal as a marketer is to increase the size of your influencer base by finding and engaging in a direct dialogue with your super influencers and turn more “followers” into “sharers.”

Some of the other benefits of blogger outreach also include:

• Peer Advocacy - People trust consumers (i.e. bloggers) more than they trust advertising (Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey 2009).
• ROI - It’s cost effective and ROI is measurable
• Amplification - It has the potential to go viral. People tweet and share good blog posts, and may do that with a blog review of your brand.

Agency's know that the the old methods of advertising and marketing simply aren’t cutting it anymore. The landscape changed. With sharing, community and conversation being today’s keywords, shoving a television commercial down consumers’ throats isn’t the way to create brand evangelists anymore. 

Integration - Like all media, blogger outreach should be interwoven into your wider marketing strategy.  For example, any time you see a new post referencing your brand on someone’s blog, tweet it, put it on your Facebook Page, share it on bookmarking sites, and link to it on your brand blog.  That will further amplify indexing, relevance and solidify the relationship for further partnerships.  Bottom line? If your brands looking for an edge (and have an appetite for innovation as a differentiator) - with 126 million blogs and growing, BLOGGER OUTREACH is something you simply can’t afford to ignore any longer.  

Need some help?  This is our specialty.  We can work with your team (or for your team).  Whatever’s easiest for your organization.  Contact us today.

♔ THE REAL VALUE OF BRANDED CONTENT

With so many different marketing, advertising and PR channels out there, it’s becoming harder and harder to be heard above the din.  The numbers change from source to source, but we know the average person is bombarded with thousands of marketing messages every single day.  The problem is that many messages can be blocked, through tools like digital video recorders, filters, or by simply clicking the X on an unwanted popup ad.  It makes you wonder why advertisers don’t develop content people actually want? 

The good news is that, despite ignoring corporate monologues, consumers are still hungry for relevant and contextual information. They seek knowledge and increasingly don't want to pay for it.   Just think of the last time you wanted to know how to do something, like give your dog a flea bath or get red wine out of carpet. You probably Googled "how to X."  Among the results were surely articles written by a company's representative. Maybe an article on "How to Give Your Dog a Flea Bath" was written by the marketing person at a flea and tick bath product company. Or maybe a carpet company rep wrote the one on the wine stain. The point is: these companies are providing valuable information to consumers and they're not charging for it. They're not asking visitors to register their email addresses or other transaction to get the information. So what are they getting out of it?

Trust.  By becoming a ‘go-to’ resource on a given subject, a brand can secure the trust of consumers, which makes the likelihood they will become customers ten times more likely. Think about your own buying practices. Do you buy brands because they are a (perceived) superior product? Of course. But what is also likely is that consumers have a level of trust with these brands that competitors don't - and finding ‘under-the-radar’ ways to permeate the consumer mindset and creating an emotional connection (and somatic markers) is imperative.

The reality is that many companies are still slow to join the content bandwagon, so chances are, you can still beat your competitors to it.  By providing all the useful information you can on your industry, you stand out as an expert, and people like companies that know what they're doing and talking about.

The Value of Branded Content  
Your content, in its many forms, is what will connect your brand to consumers in today's crowded marketing environment. By providing useful content, you can successfully extend value while connecting your brand to your prospects and customers. 


Our suggestion is to publish topical, relevant and professional content on a regular basis. Content that introduces and/or reinforces brand attributes, adds supplementary branded content, and also amplifies your brand while aligning it with relevant trending ‘topics’ (of interest to your sector).  This will have a positive affect, both on your SEO and PR activities.


Content marketing (in this case using articles) has proven to be one of the most cost-effective ways to establish your brand as a thought leader and expert in your industry.  The resulting amplification leads to increased sales and dove-tails into all other activities by intelligently integrating with digital properties (i.e. Blog/RSS, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and other relevant social properties.)  The best part is that all content can be measured on a case-by-case basis and can be optimized moving forwards, therefore extremely cost-effective.

Need some help putting a framework in place or developing branded content?  We can help.  Contact info@goodbuzz.ca for more information.