Marketers spend a lot of time optimizing in the name of hitting their KPIs: optimizing budget, optimizing targeting and optimizing creative to boost ad performance. Of course, marketers need to focus on optimization to create efficient and effective campaigns, right?
No. When marketers lock their attention onto optimization tactics, they focus too closely on budget and targeting. Their tunnel vision makes them lose sight of their creative’s value and the possibilities it has beyond its initial asset form.
Creative plays a crucial role in delivering results, affecting the performance of a campaign up to 75%. So, with the pressure to hit KPIs and to keep advertising spend on budget, here’s how marketers can leverage their existing video creative assets by repurposing—not optimizing—the content across social platforms.
New content isn’t always the right answer
Creating new video content quickly that engages your target audience is expensive, especially when additional iterations are needed to hit campaign goals. Even if you allocate the budget for necessary changes, the time needed to get the new creative within your identified campaign window can become crunched.
As marketers continue to face the effects of Covid-19—with limited production capabilities and tighter budgets—it’s time to reconsider the assets you already have at hand and play smarter to level up your ad game.
Not all vertical videos are same
Social media users treat and consume content differently on mobile platforms. Remember the days when people used Instagram mainly to share photos of their lunch? Now with the Stories feature stealing eyeballs from the feed, users spend more time immersed in fast-moving content. The flexibility of the content, ranging from entertaining to educational, also expands with the options of sound and text, and holds the viewer’s attention from one story to the next
Yet, on TikTok consumers expect more entertaining content, with a large focus on music and audio. They also want clear branding or a call-to-action within the first couple of seconds. For TikTok, ditch all the rules for “designed for sound off” and let your music or audio track do its work.
Getting the most value out of your creative
There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to video ads on across social platforms.
Their differences and the changes needed for each might seem minor, but to get the most value out of your ad, your creative concept should be tailored to the ad unit for each. Here are some steps to take when repurposing vertical video content:
Create engaging content for the user; adjust for the platform: Even if you are targeting the same age demographic or interest group with your creative, users consume video content differently on Instagram and TikTok. A 12-to-15 second vertical video might work with a swipe-up CTA on Instagram. However, for it to perform well on TikTok, you have to cut down to an optimal 9 seconds, using design principles to avoid overlap with TikTok’s visual overlays.
Grab attention and hold it: Marketers are in the attention business, but consumers are selective about what to give their attention. Provide the brand benefit with via text and subtitles within the first few seconds to secure the viewer’s interest and buy-in. If you don’t want to be another swiped past story, talk about your product or benefit on mobile-social platforms to support your bigger story. Keep it short, grab the consumer’s attention and be meaningful in that brief amount of time.
Experiment with data while maintaining relevance. When repurposing existing creative, roll out the new CTA creative quickly to test the reaction of your target audience. Change the ending, adapt the text and/or subtitles, focusing on being fast and adaptive.
Marketers who are smart about how they spend their time, focus and resources when working on campaign creative will be the ones who win the attention of their target audience. Repurposing content for campaigns is the strategy that can help them cinch that win.
At 9-16 We don’t use the word “creative” lightly. Our teams of in-house creative video designers went through intensive training from the industries finest at Instagram, TikTok and Google to design best performing ads at scale in a very short amount of time. Supporting our clients with a best in class marketing perspective and infuse our creative agility to quickly re-design creative assets for selected ad formats.
With that in mind and more than 10,000 videos which we designed for L’Oréal, Bayer, Netflix, Microsoft, Mondelez, Coca-Cola, BMW, Adidas and many more gives us a distinct advantage to design experiences for the mobile generation.
In other words, smart spending of time, focus and resources determine whether you’re winning or losing the attention of your audience.
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Cihan Ergür is one of the founding members and the VP of global partnerships at 9-16. He is responsible for business with Fortune 500 brands and major social media platforms. Prior to 9-16, Ergür was a digital lead at PepsiCo and worked as an award-winning creative in major ad agencies.
