Welcome back! It’s time for your 11th installment on ‘Video Marketing Revealed’ series. Hopefully my last blog gave you good clarity on video marketing features & business uses. Now let’s take a look at how to use video contests for marketing.
How To Use Video Contests
Every element of digital marketing holds in it great potential to reach and influence consumers. Consider social media, earned media, engagement marketing, user-generated content, consumer-generated content, outsourcing, crowd-sourcing, co-creation, etc: they all affect your brand. The evolution of these and more elements has over time led to mass experimentation with the more effective components, such as video contests.
Running a successful video contest is not an easy task but if you have all the parts needed to make a good contest, you should have people scrambling to participate. Ensure you do the following before launching your next video contest:
Define Your Objective
It's the most critical step when running a video contest and a lot of people get it wrong. Marketers run video contests for different reasons and without an actual goal or objective it would be difficult to gauge the success or failure of the entire process. These are some of the main reasons video contests have gotten so popular:
Higher ROI from creative production costs
Increased engagement and time spent with the brand
Generating buzz and word-of-mouth
Sourcing target insights
Determine what you hope to achieve by running the contest and gear it towards that objective. If done right, the contest should yield multiple benefits.
Select the theme
When deciding on a theme, you may keep it aspirational and open enough so that the participants can inject their personalities. This might be hard to do when you're marketing a highly technical product but still, try to look beyond product specifications and consider the following:
How will the brand fit into people's lives?
Are there any conversations going on about your brand, and if so, can you use that in the contest?
How does the current user-generated content reflect on the brand?
Good themes compel the participants to deliver the brand's message subtly, so it doesn't come out as a list of benefits.
Craft the brief
The brief is a crucial component in the creation of the contest. It communicates to the would-be participants and lets them know what to do; which is why ultimately it has such a tremendous impact on the content they turn in.
Rule of thumb: Tell the audience in simple language what you want done, and set reasonable constraints. Unless you want the content to show specific imagery, there's no need to inject too much color imagery in the brief. Use simple language and start with an inspiring brand story then move on to why you want videos from them. Keep it short and include the following:
The personality and tone you want
The audience that the videos are targeting
Description of any resources the creators have
If needed, a CTA to be included in the video
The limitations set forth
Incentives
Determining the price and criteria for selecting winners is crucial for pulling in not only the best talent but the right kind of talent, as based on your specific goals. The more basic incentives are cash, products and travel packages, visibility (could mean publishing their work on the website or on TV), etc.
In order to attract the most talented people from your networks, implement a significant prize for the winner (a minimum of $10,000), selected by a special jury or the brand itself vs. a “most views” or “most votes” criteria.
If however, your goal is to engage the audience or generate buzz, the winner could be chosen on a most views or votes basis, and the price should reflect the effort. Basically, weight the prices in accordance with your goals.
Promoting The Contest
Creatives tend to operate from self-organizing communities all over the web but even with the best theme and price package, many video contests launched without the aid of an experienced crowd-sourcing partner go unnoticed. When promoting your contest, the crowd-sourcing expert does the following:
Engages communities and groups in platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn
Reaches out directly to smart creatives on Twitter, Vimeo and YouTube
Builds relationships with student groups and school administrators
Posts opportunities in multiple creative sections on multiple websites
If you want the contest marketed to a larger audience you may have to reach out to an expert.
THE TIMING
Timing is crucial for the success of the contest. It usually takes a few weeks to create good work for the contest as well as generate enough buzz. Let the time frame be 8-16 weeks.
Another crucial factor to consider is the submission deadlines for other competitions. Schedule the competition so that it ends several weeks after other contests have ended, so you don't lose potential competitors to fatigue.
Basic rule of thumb: Never extend the deadline of the contest. That would be a huge breach of trust and you would credibility with any talented creative.
Moderate Content
Not all video contest platforms allow you to control incoming content, but even so, learn how you can moderate what participants are submitting. Moderation has its benefits:
You can help submitters improve their content in case they miss the mark You have more control over your brand's identity
Be consistent when moderating content. If the competition requires by-the-book adherence to the instructions posted on the brief, ensure all approved work goes through the same level of scrutiny.
Use All Approved Content
It’s a question a lot of people ask: What do I do with all those videos?
Some ideas to get you working:
Distribute good quality videos on websites such as TubeMogul.com, and remember to include SEO best practices so they show up in search results
Embed some of the videos on your own website
Feature the videos in your social network profiles as a way to boost engagement
Run another contest rewarding public where people vote for the best video and reward participation
Understand The Law
All video contest hold a few legal implications so whether you launch the contest on your own or choose to work with a partner, look into this:
Ensure your brand is protected against copyright issues
Rights to offline and online usage of content
Set terms and conditions and establish proper contest rules
When you run a contest it gives you a truer interpretation of how people perceive your brand. Listen to them, engage with them and see what you can learn from their participation. So that’s it for today’s installment of knowledge in ‘Video Marketing Revealed Series’. In the next we will discuss about how to make your videos standout.
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Until then If you have any questions, just let me know. I help Small Business with Big Dreams to achieve their true potential & much awaited growth. If this is useful for you and you’d like some help to leverage the unmatched benefits of video marketing, or just need to put in place predictive client generating strategy using videos - just send me a message with the subject ‘VIDEO’ at mithun@mithunnarkar.com, and perhaps we can help you put together a strategy to achieve your dreams & targets as well.
Hope this has been helpful.
Talk to you soon.
Mithun Narkar
P.S. Don’t forget, I’m here to help, so if you have questions just ask!
The fastest way to reach me is here: "www.mithunnarkar.com"
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