Why Doesn’t Anyone Care About Your Beautiful Story Ads?
What makes video stories successful is authenticity, not format. Here’s how to create your own secret sauce for catchy stories.
Are we are still in 1996? Looking at trending video Ads in 2021, it seems we are.
📀 Stop posting for posting: it’s boring for your audience (and for you).
Are we still in 1996? Looking at trending video Ads in 2021, it seems we are. When Bill Gates proclaimed his famous “content is king” adage in 1996, there were 257,601 websites globally; we now exceed 1,8B websites. “Content is king” was already true when the internet market looked like a neighborhood grocery store. In the age of Amazon, Youtube and Instagram, how many sponsored stories catch your eyes, seriously? You can publish as much video content as you want. If it doesn’t reach your target in the heart, you will only enrich marketing agencies, advertising platforms (and the freelance growth hacker you met through your LinkedIn premium account).
💡Seeing most of today’s video ads, Bill Gates would probably say something like: “Only great ad is king.”
What is a great video ad in 2021?
SMA, Display, UGC …Times have changed, but marketing wasn’t born with the internet (let alone with Facebook ads). Growth hackers willing to share their secrets for a LinkedIn like and comment are the new apostles of marketing who have understood one thing: they can sell you the same recipe a hundred times without ever giving you the ingredients to make it succeed. And there is nothing wrong with that because the recipe is important. But if you really want to skyrocket your audience, you also — and most importantly — need to have the content fuel that matches your product or service to propel it through the marketing tools.
Buyer persona identified, funnel defined and leverage chosen, all planned in a publication calendar plus a little growth hacking to boost it all and off you go! But stop for 5 minutes to compare the time spent developing the strategy versus creating your content. It takes so much effort to put together a marketing strategy that the creative part is sloppy most of the time. Today’s marketing toolbox is so vast and addictive that it blurs your vision and purpose: The great video in 2021 is that portrait video whose first 2 seconds hold your attention, not how you made it.
💡Take away: quality content is your engine driving fuel. Everything else is just the car around it, and to win the race you mostly need a super engine.
Find your tone & universe: it’s your DNA.
Like a song or anything that requires a creative process, not all content is great. Good ideas are not enough and what makes a great artist — or a great content creator — is his tone and his universe. You know, the universe is that remarkable signature when you listen to a record, watch a movie, or a good commercial. A good signature always makes the difference with “a good idea”. Why? Because we are not a jury evaluating ideas but sentimental crowds looking for connections with others. The universe is the DNA of a designer. Audiences can appreciate a good idea but what will move them is an identity they can identify to connect with.
We spend so much time on methods and tools that once we master them, we just want to publish any content.
💡Do not reverse the priorities: creating your content universe is the priority because it’s the driving force that inspire an entire successful campaign.
How to create your own video secret sauce?
In 2021, your audience will be even more razzed by advertising. You have two choices: go unnoticed by posting the nice Hi-Fi video of your product/service (which will cost you a lot of money) or focus on your target to find the right video and language to catch their attention. But how? The first step is to find inspiration. Even if you know your topic and its audience, we all need other people to inspire us. Unfortunately, this step is often botched or even avoided, as finding inspiration can take a lot of time and human resources. This is one of the main reasons why campaigns fail.
Good news for once, you won’t find best practice tips here, but direct access to find inspiration through different content. (It’s here and it’s free). Pictalio is the place where you can download authentic stories for free thanks to a community of real amateurs. Once downloaded, you are free to adapt them to your needs to create your own secret sauce of branded video content.
We created Pictalio because we love stories and the magic they convey. The unexpected mix of good times in good places with good people, as real as you and me. Stories are both personal and generic treasures that you can make say whatever you want while maximizing your SEO. We wanted this service to be free because stories exist and are a resource available in their “natural state”. We made sure that Pictalio allows their exchange quickly thanks to an open-access platform and a simple but efficient search system adapted to your needs, whatever they may be.
Why it works :
- True amateur videos made by true people
As mentioned in my previous article, today’s best-performing video content look like your audience. The reason amateur stories and UGC videos are among the most effective formats is because they don’t look like ads and reassure your target audience. Fresh content from real people: that’s your audience.
Tools to go further :
- The story editors
The engagement generated by stories has become so significant that it now extends beyond the mobile landscape to cover all other display formats. Google has made it possible to spread the story phenomenon everywhere it needs to be with its AMP stories format. Once you find the video you need on Pictalio, you can easily customize it and publish it anywhere you want without coding using tools like MakeStories or Join Stories.
- Test your content before spreading it
Best marketing practices are no longer enough. You need to know what your audience likes. It’s no coincidence that services like Dash Hudson are so successful today. Thanks to their AI, this type of SAAS allows you to predict which of your photos and video content will perform best before you put them on the web.
💡You know your product inside and out, so let your intuition guide you to find the video content that will hit the spot. This will be my only advice: people are tired of ads, so be yourself by using the videos they created themselves!
