Video creatives
for mobile user
acquisition.

Video advertising is one hot trend that every marketer in 2020 needs to be using. Even back in 2018, 54% of the users claimed they wanted to see more video content from a brand or a business and now the need for video ads increased even more.

The secret to people’s love towards video is that video ads are engaging, interactive, and immersive. They allow users to better experience and evaluate the product, hence, increasing the chances of a purchase. But it’s not enough to just craft a video and launch it in a hope that people will rush to your website. It’s important to be aware of the top video production trends that are dictated by the users’ needs and expectations.

Personalized videos

Due to the fact that 72% of the customers are ready to engage with the brand only if it provides personalized offers, it becomes clear that personalization is an absolute must in modern marketing. If your company does not provide personalized offers, you might be losing a significant share of customers and revenue.

We’ve already seen personalized emails and personalized images - now it’s the turn of personalized videos. A personalized video is customized for an individual user and thus creates a deep connection between a user and content.

In a perfect world, marketers would customize a video every time for every user - but in reality, it’s extremely time-consuming. So in order to provide personalized content without too much hassle, a marketer can simply come up with several identifiers (i.e. a customer’s name) and a special program will dynamically insert this identifier in specified areas of the video. Take Cadbury’s ad from 2014 as an example.

Another way to personalize videos and provide customers with engaging experience is to transform certain content into videos. It can be an installation guide for a new product as an example. As long as the video provides value and engages the customer, it’s worth making.

Vertical videos

One more video production trend that’s gaining traction now is the vertical video format. It’s really simple to explain: more and more people use their mobile phones to film content and mobile videos are presented in a vertical format. With a 9:16 ratio, such videos are perfectly suitable for mobile and can be shared across multiple channels.

A recent study found out that vertical videos have a 90% completion rate, compared to 14% for the regular horizontal ones. With this in mind, marketers should consider the way they present content to the viewers and make it more suitable for a diverse variety of devices and platforms. In addition, vertical videos are perfect for social networks - think Instagram or Snapchat. And considering the fact that people started using social media for purchasing goods and services, it is obligatory for an ad to look native and to require minimal effort from the user.

Data-powered video ads

If you want to make accurate and profitable strategic decisions, you need to base them on the data. Now, it might be quite challenging as data requires processing, filtering, and further analysis. Not all companies can allow the investment of a significant amount of finances and resources into data science - but those that do receive an ultimate competitive advantage. The analysis of the collected data allows companies to better understand strong and weak areas in their strategy and much better understand customers, their behavior, and habits.

Since video marketing falls under the promotional strategy category, it is recommended to base it on the data as well. That means, before creating and launching a video ad, one needs to do a lot of preparatory work, which is: analyze customers’ behavior and previous responses to similar content, analyze the performance of previous ads, identify the weak areas, and the possible opportunities. It might turn out that almost 90% of your customers turn the video off after the first minute - and that means, you don’t need to invest in making two or three-minute-long ads. This is just one example of how data analysis can help a company save its time and resources and make more user-friendly and valuable content.

360-degree videos

For a more immersive experience, many marketers began using 360-degree videos and this results in tremendous success. Such videos produce a 7% higher purchase rate and are more favorable if compared to regular videos.

Even though 360-degree videos are more difficult to produce, the results will be rewarding. Because these videos offer a deeply immersive experience, customers can better interact with the product and easily “try” it before purchasing. As well, this form of videos is now more accessible to people due to the growing popularity of mobile and devices like Oculus Rift.

In addition to that, do not forget about Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. These technologies offer customers a unique chance to interact with the brand from anywhere and at any time and explore it in detail. As well, the use of VR and AR can become a big competitive advantage as not many businesses implemented them yet.

Longer videos

Every marketer probably knows that the human attention span is decreasing and it is recommended to make videos that are no longer than a minute or so. However, the 2020 year seems to be different as researchers find out that people are actually more engaged in long-form videos.

While only one-third of the customers are engaged with short videos, videos that last 15 minutes or longer display a much better engagement rate. A long-form video tells a story that people want to know and such videos help brands much better express their personality and opinion to a user.

Take Patagonia outdoor clothing brand as an example. Their videos feature real people in natural surroundings and seem more like a documentary rather than another ad. As a result, people are getting more connected to a brand and perceive it as something more wholesome than just another business.

Summary

Despite the video format that you choose, remember to do a few things. First, thoroughly analyze your strategy and ensure that it corresponds with the customers’ needs and their interests. And second, invest some time into finding a reliable video production agency that will ensure high quality and 100% correspondence of the video to your requirements and business objectives.

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Victor Shulga