How to Implement Video Ads in Your Social Media Marketing Strategy in 2022

You can do a lot with 100 minutes. It’s almost the perfect amount of time, long enough to start something substantial but short enough to keep you engaged. Whether you are cozying up to watch a movie or reading a few chapters in that book you’ve been meaning to finish, you can accomplish a lot in 100 minutes.

Why 100?

What significance does that number have?

“What if we told you the average person is predicted to spend 100 minutes per day watching online videos in 2022.”

Nearly 82% of global internet traffic will come from streaming videos and downloads. Live streaming platforms like Twitch have exploded in popularity during the Covid era, boasting nearly 30 million visitors a day. Youtube has become the second largest search engine and social media platform on the planet. We are heading toward an era where the bulk of the content users consume on their platform of choice will be video. Preparing your social media marketing strategy accordingly will be key moving into the new year.

Setting up video ads in your social media marketing strategy in 6 steps

Staying ahead of the curve will mean starting to implement video content into your marketing strategies. But what does that look like? Below we outline 6 steps to take when implementing video in your social media strategy.

Step 1: Set your video marketing goals

As with most things in marketing, setting a measurable goal is key. That goal will act as a measuring stick for you to look back on and gauge levels of success. What is it you want your videos to accomplish for your business?

If you are having trouble deciding on a goal, determine which part of the marketing funnel you would like to focus on. Are you seeing people lose interest during the consideration phase of your product or service? Let’s start there. While most companies don’t have just one area they want to focus on, choosing a place to start with a rock-solid goal and a unified vision across your team will allow for creativity to flow and an effective message begin to form in your social media marketing strategy.

Step 2: Pick your platform

Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn, TikTok….where do you start? Do you need to be posting everywhere all at once? Will we be spending the rest of our lives creating video content?

The answer is no, don’t worry. You don’t need to be the next great social influencer or live streamer posting different bits of content simultaneously across multiple platforms to be successful with videos.

The simplest answer to the question: “Where do I start?” is “where are your customers?” Is a midsize B2B company looking to increase leads over the next year? LinkedIn would be a great place to start building a presence.

Are you a feisty clothing startup looking to hit a younger crowd of early adopters? TikTok might be the place for you.

You may already know where your audience is and, if you do, that is where you should start. There are also places you can find demographics on most major social platforms that will give you a good breakdown of users that you can layer over your current customers and make an informed decision.

Step 3: Pick your content

You have set your goals and know which part of the marketing funnel you need to focus on. You have also picked the platform you want to start running your video ads on. Now comes the hard part, making the content.

What type of video should you create? That is a great question and the answer comes down to which part of the marketing funnel you chose early on.

Top of Funnel: Building Awareness

If you are focusing on the top of the funnel then the videos you make want to build awareness about your product or service. You want to hook and educate your prospective audience. Animated explainer videos, educational videos, or problem/solution videos are all great options for the top of funnel video ads.

Middle of Funnel: Consideration

Individuals in the middle of your marketing funnel have interacted with your brand in some way. They are digging deeper and want to learn more about the problem you help solve. Videos highlighting certain products or more in depth “How To” tutorials may give customers the information they were looking for and help in their decision making process.

Bottom of Funnel: Conversion

This is where you bring everything together. If someone has gotten to this stage you know intent is much higher than someone further up the funnel and you want to take advantage of that. At this stage we want to show customers why you are the absolute best solution for their specific problem. Video content like webinars, customer testimonials, case studies or demo videos are all great ways to give customers the opportunity to say, “yes this is what I am looking for”.

Step 4:  Plan your ads calendar

Create a social media marketing strategy content calendar.  We know, you’ve heard it a million times but, with video especially, it is a life saver. This is something all marketers are familiar with but can very easily get put on the back burner. With so many tools these days, content planning has become a powerful tool that brings team cohesion and focus.

If you know your company is coming out with a new product line, make some video teasers giving customers a pre-order option.

A new update for your product is going live soon? Create a tutorial video showing off the new perks.

The beauty of the content calendar is even if something gets postponed, you have the content ready to go when the time comes. You can never have too much content and when you map it out one, two, six or even twelve months in advance, it puts your whole team on the same page and allows them to know what is expected of them moving forward.

Step 5: Create the content

The way we make videos is changing and it all depends on the platform you are using. Newer platforms like TikTok are not a place for highly produced video ads. TikTok thrives off of the “home video” feel you get from the content. Every video is shot in a vertical format from, what feels like, your friend’s iPhone 10. These types of videos can be much lower budget with people and products you have around you.

Compare that to a platform like LinkedIn. If you ran a video made for TikTok on LinkedIn, our guess is it would not do well. LinkedIn is a platform for professionals to network and educate themselves and your content should mirror that feeling. If you chose LinkedIn above then you may have a full script for your video, professional video equipment, lighting, and a videographer. These sorts of things and more, provide the professional grade video users on LinkedIn pay attention to.

Look into popular videos in your field on the platform you chose. See what styles and topics are popular. This is a good barometer to measure your own content against across your entire social media strategy.

Step 6: Go live and analyze

You have a new video that you just published and is beginning to deliver ads to users across your chosen platform.

Is that it?

No, arguably the most important part of this process is what comes next, analyzing the video metrics. The metrics that mean the most to you will be the ones that have an effect on the marketing goals you set in Step 1. There are many different metrics that social ad platforms provide and as you begin to run more and more video ads you will know which to pay attention to and which are there for fluff.

Plan a solid social media marketing strategy

As you continue to run video ads you will get a better sense for what sort of content resonates with customers at certain parts of the marketing funnel in your social media strategy. Not to mention which platform performs the best. After a while you will have a handful of “champion” video ads that you can begin to try on other platforms. Maybe you started on Facebook and are curious if the same sort of video would be effective on Youtube. The best part is the content is already there!