By Howie Zisser
Facebook video marketing strategies have moved to the forefront of many marketer’s priorities and has become an essential tool in their toolbox. The prevalence of video spiked dramatically in 2016 and it only looks to grow even more in the coming years.
According to MediaKix, Facebook Video posts increased by 94% annually in the US.
Shooting a video no longer has to be a cumbersome or expensive process – virtually anyone can do it now straight from their smartphone. And with improved analytics, you have the added advantage of knowing exactly what’s working and what’s not for your business.
According to a Buffer survey, 30% of respondents said Facebook is the #1 platform they’re looking add to their efforts over the next 12 months.
But as the wise Warren Buffett said, “It’s good to learn from your mistakes. It’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes.”
Let’s take a look at 6 Facebook video marketing strategies to form your digital plan.
1. Facebook Video Marketing Strategies for the Top of Funnel
Facebook video marketing strategy often starts at the top of the sales funnel and is a great way to get a lot of eyes on your video. This helps to really understand your customer and where they are in the purchasing process.
Video conveys message and meaning much better than a simple still image and text ever can, but it’s also highly volatile to losing eyeballs quickly if not done well.
According to Nielsen, 74% of a campaign’s impact can be achieved in the first 10 seconds of a video.
While Facebook is reportedly testing videos with volume automatically turned up, it’s smarter to rely on visually stimulating messages coupled with captions to get your point across.
MediaKix found that 85% of Facebook Videos are viewed without sound.
Another overlooked piece of Facebook video marketing strategies is optimizing the default thumbnail image. This image should pull viewers in and give them a hint as to what’s to come.
You want your default thumbnail to tell a story itself, while also drawing viewers in to learn more. Don’t assume that Facebook will choose the best still image to display for you – they usually don’t.
This Facebook video strategy works best with paid promotion, because you can adjust the targeting to ensure you’re reaching those most likely to have an interest in your offerings.
Top of funnel Facebook Video tips:
Interest Targeting
This is when you have an idea of who your target customer is, but you don’t have a large following yet.
For example, you want to reach people who are interested in clean and renewable energy options.
You can create an audience within Facebook of people with traits indicating they’ll be interested in learning more about how they can use alternative energy sources.
With a broad audience like this, you’ll get your video in front of a lot of people and can then begin narrowing down to the best prospects.
This is the best video strategy for building general brand awareness and getting quick, valuable feedback.
Using Facebook video ads in this way is a way to introduce your company and what it stands for to people who aren’t yet aware of your offerings.
2. How to make a Facebook Video for Mid-Funnel
This Facebook video marketing tactic can work alongside a top of funnel video, or it can be the first Facebook video you introduce during the sales funnel.
Alongside a Top of Funnel Video
If you have some decent traction or viewership of a previous video, you can create a Facebook Custom Audience to retarget only those who watched a certain percentage of the video.
By targeting only those who have watched 75%+ of the video, you are likely to find only those who are more interested in your company.
This video should be different than your top of funnel video, and should offer different value such as overcoming objections or giving customer testimonials.
Where the first video is meant to introduce viewers to your company, this second video should seek to make a deeper connection and build trust and confidence in actually becoming a customer.
Retargeting Website Visitors
Another mid funnel Facebook video tip is to target your own website traffic.
This works well when you’re seeing a lot of people visiting your site, either organically or through previous Paid Social efforts, but not getting to the final purchase.
They’ve already shown interest in your company, and a mid funnel Facebook video can provide them with stronger insights into why your product is a solution to their need.
For example, you can create an audience based on only those who have read a certain blog article explaining the benefits of clean energy.
This gives you a set of highly specific, highly qualified people that want to learn more about the benefits of clean energy.
From there, a video can serve to reiterate the facts in the article or take them to new depths of understanding how you fit into the marketplace for this need.
Facebook video in the middle of the funnel can be a great way to recapture attention from people who have already shown an interest in you in the past.
3. Facebook Video Marketing Strategies for Upselling
Another way to use Custom Audiences for your Facebook marketing video strategy is to just focus on your past customers.
These people already know what your brand is about, so there’s no need to create an explainer video to retell your story.
Instead, you can use Facebook Videos to tout new product lines or take your customers inside ‘a day in the life of’ your company.
Either strategy offers a fresh perspective for the end user and gives you a chance to develop deeper bonds with them.
This is an opportunity to use Facebook videos to remind your customers that maybe it’s time to make their next purchase.
Within Facebook, create a Custom Audience using only people who have hit your ‘purchase’ page within the last 60 days:
Pro Tip: You can create two separate Custom Audiences to use in your targeting so that you only reach those who have made a purchase in the last 180 days but have not returned to your site in the last 30 days:
The scheduling for Facebook Videos aimed to upsell needs to be methodical. You need to understand your user’s average reorder rate and then create Custom Audiences to align with that.
Running ads to someone too early is a waste of your budget and will eventually annoy them. Ads aligned with the proper timing of when they’re likely to want to reorder will prove to be successful.
4. Promote Your Facebook Videos!
This is more of an overarching way to use Facebook Videos, but for your social video strategy to be successful, people have to watch it!
Shooting and producing and high quality video takes time and money, so make sure you get the most for your efforts by promoting it. Simply posting it on your Facebook page and hoping it goes viral isn’t going to work 99.9% of the time, but a thoughtful distribution strategy will help you get where you need to go.
The size of your budget depends largely depends on the size of your goal. A good rule of thumb is for every dollar you invest into producing a video, you should set aside an equal amount of budget for paid promotion.
Not promoting your new video is like producing a TV commercial and never airing it.
To target those further along in the sales funnel, you’ll likely spend more money per video view but it will also be of higher quality.
Promoting your video is oftentimes the extra muscle it needs to gain traction in the marketplace.
5. Using Facebook Live
Capturing in-the-moment stories has successfully transitioned from rough shots of your friends being goofy (Snapchat stories) to brands producing polished, highly valuable content to their followers.
Facebook shared that its users watched live video more often and for longer periods of time than non-live video in 2016.
This is an incredibly valuable tool in making connections with your audience and demonstrating what it means to be a part of this tribe.
With Facebook Live, you have the opportunity to interact with your audience in real time.
You get immediate feedback as to what people like and what causes people to drop off during the broadcast and can adjust your approach based on what you’re seeing and hearing.
Facebook Live videos don’t disappear after you end the broadcast either, so it can live on forever on your company’s page for the people who weren’t able to make the live broadcast.
One of the challenges of Facebook Live is how to actually gain a following. Unless you already have a huge brand, it’s unlikely that just popping up on Facebook Live will drive a sizable audience.
So use some Facebook video marketing strategy. Make sure people know when you’ll be live and what they’ll be receiving in exchange for their attention.
Additionally, if you do happen to have a large Facebook following, you’ve probably noticed a decrease in organic reach on your video posts.
Facebook Live is a great to bust through those organic reach limits and reach your audience without paid promotion.
Facebook allows you to schedule your Facebook Live appearance, which adds it to the Newsfeed of your follows where they can set a reminder so they can be sure to check back in later when you’re ready to go live with them.
Aside from scheduling it, don’t hesitate to promote it separately as well. Status updates are a good place to start, but you should get creative with your content to draw viewers in.
Make it a can’t miss event!
Once you actually go Live, you want to have equal parts planning and improv to keep the audience engaged.
Facebook Live best practices show us that the most successful broadcasts have an agenda they want to cover, but are also willing and able to go off script to answer viewers’ questions or adjust the approach based on engagement.
6. Using Video: Mobile vs Desktop
Video is consumed much differently on mobile when compared to its desktop counterpart.
And this is important to note because 20% of all mobile time is spent on a Facebook app (Instagram, Messenger, Facebook).
The News Feed on mobile is a lot more fluid and ephemeral because people check it much more frequently than they do on desktop. It’s estimated that adults open the Facebook app 30+ times a day, on average.
This means that content gets buried quickly.
Another major difference is that mobile video is largely listened to without sound.
And while you should always create visually stimulating videos, it is crucial to engage with the mobile audience without the use of volume.
Ideally, you’ll create your mobile video from the ground up with this in mind. If not, the two best things you can do are to pick a great thumbnail preview image and to add captions so people can follow the story.
And when it comes to mobile, it’s important to consider size ratios. A desktop screen and mobile screen are plainly different.
A desktop video shot with a ratio of 16:9 doesn’t look as good on mobile where Buffer shows us that it’s much more effective to have a square video (1:1)
Using a square video results in taking up 78% more real estate in a mobile newsfeed as compared to a standard landscape video. That is HUGE for capturing attention!
BONUS! Virtual Reality Video Marketing in the Future
According to Yes Lifecycle Marketing, only 8% of marketers are currently using VR in their advertising.
I don’t know about you but that sure sounds like an opportunity for anyone looking to stay ahead of the curve!
Plus, remember when Facebook bought Oculus for $2B? Yea, they’re going to want to monetize that.
Virtual Reality gets a lot of press, but it’s still largely an untapped frontier. The technology is expensive and still clunky for everyday users, but the economies will eventually catch up and make it a more viable marketing channel for savvy video creators.
If video marketing is the most immersive type of content right now, virtual reality will take that to a whole new level. Storytelling will be even more complete, giving the customers a chance to fully experience the product.
There is still a lot of time before virtual reality becomes more mainstream and accessible to the masses, but those of us who start earlier will be better equipped to take advantage of this channel and give our customers the best experiences possible.
Last Thoughts on How to Use Facebook Videos
The evolution of Facebook Videos have been rapid, and it’s only expected to grow even more in the coming years.
The analytics surrounding it will grow more sophisticated and telling of how effective your video is doing in reaching your goals.
Facebook video is no longer a nice-to-have asset in your arsenal – it’s essential in the telling of your story and connecting with your customers.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to use Facebook Video for your brand, talk to us!
