• by Julia Bujan , November 24, 2014

Nothing quite beats the impact of sight, sound and motion. To hear the Video Commerce Consortiumtell it, using video ads is the easiest way to get products flying off your shelves.

Like most marketers, however, you’re equally intrigued by the opportunity as you are skeptical of the claims. That’s wise, because video ads alone won’t meet your business goals. You need to have all the right pieces in the right places -- a rarity in many of today’s video campaigns. Here are six tips to achieve a successful campaign.

1. Define your goals. To grab the consumer’s attention, your ad must be very specific and compelling. That begins with a precisely defined goal upfront, whether that’s building brand awareness, meeting specific performance goals (e.g., conversions + price), or driving some kind of conversion event, such as contest entries, test drive sign-ups, etc.

2. Think long and hard about campaign strategy. Your goals are the main guideposts for your strategy. From there, consider message development, target audience, ad formats, and frequency capping. You can’t just apply what works for TV or display to video. Your programmatic partner should have insight to help you plan a campaign strategy – leverage their expertise.

3. Correlate video message to sales funnel. A customer’s time is precious, and your ad must make an impression right away. Conversions from first-time viewers aren’t likely, but if the consumer has seen previous ads and visited your site, a conversion may be in reach. Here are some rules of thumb for correlating your message to the consumer’s place in your sales process:

• Upper funnel – use engaging (read: fabulously creative) content to raise awareness of your brand.
• Mid-funnel – encourage the consumer to learn more by clicking to a microsite or your Facebook page. This will give you the opportunity to retarget the consumer later in the campaign.
• Low-Funnel – leverage compelling incentive or offer to encourage conversion.

4. Identify your target audience. Do you know whom to target, and how? If you don’t have existing audience data, you can target consumers based on the context and content in which your prospects are most open to your message. Of course, if retargeting is an important tactic for your campaign, you’ll know exactly whom to target.

5. Let campaign goals determine the ad format & frequency. Many marketers equate video with pre-roll ad units. Indeed, for brand awareness campaigns, pre-rolls are more desirable, but they’re expensive. If you have a specific ROI goal, mid-rolls may be a great option. They may not deliver the same conversion rate as the pre-roll, but the lower media-acquisition costs make it easy to reach cost-per-sale and ROI goals. If reach is a goal, set a low frequency cap so you can message as many consumers as possible.

6. Creative: There are numerous aspects to the creative you’ll need to consider for campaign success, including:

• TV creatives are a starting point. True, they’re super-creative and can breakthrough banner clutter, but you’ll need to customize them to the online channel.
• Learn from your data! Unlike TV, online video lets you measure engagement level (percent of video viewed, clicks, shares, etc.) and track multiple exposures. Use this data to improve your messages and design a message sequence.
• Sequence ads based on previous interactions with site content. You can see which ads work with each audience type, and optimize campaigns accordingly.
• Have your designers work closely with the team that analyzes the campaign results. Give designers feedback on messages shown at every stage so their next round of creatives performs even better.