If you own a rental property that you need to get filled fast, you’re going to want to have a few tricks up your sleeves when it comes to marketing your property and finding a qualified tenant. But for property owners who also have full-time jobs, families, and other responsibilities, you likely can’t or don’t want to be spending hours a day scouting for good tenants. Luckily, you can use good marketing strategies to help you in doing this.
To show you just how this can be done, here are three tips for marketing a vacant rental property.
Ask For Referrals
If you’ve had good renters in the past that always paid their rent on time and didn’t cause damage to your property, or if you know of people that you trust to send a good tenant your way, you might want to ask these groups of people for any referrals they might have.
People always seem to know others who are looking for a good place to live with a good landlord. So if you can find a trusted source to send someone to live in your rental property, even if this means giving other current tenants a break on rent for a month or other perks, this could be well worth your while.
Set Up Strategic Signs
Another strategy you might want to try is putting up signs in areas where you know there might be tenants interested in moving into a rental property like the one you have available.
Depending on the property, the neighborhood, and other factors, you might want to put a sign out front of the rental property, near the closest school, in a heavily trafficked shopping area, or at a community center close by. While this might seem old school, it still can be a great way to give people in your area information about a property that they might want to move into.
Post A Video Tour
One of the best and easiest ways that you can market a vacant property that you want to get rented is to post the information online.
Along with a quality description of the property and what you’re looking for in a tenant, you should also consider including a video tour of the property. By having a video tour available, people will be able to get a better idea of what the property looks like before even having to set up a tour. This way, you can weed out a lot of potential tenants who may not actually be interested in the property after seeing it for themselves.
If you’re trying to get one of your vacant rental properties filled, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you market your property effectively.
https://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/vacation-rental-marketing.jpg7421000Brian Carterhttps://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/BCGz-logo-black-horz-339x113-IMStag-1.gifBrian Carter2023-03-20 09:26:332023-03-20 09:26:353 Tips For Marketing A Vacant Rental Property
Are you thinking about marketing with video in social media, but not sure which platform will get you the best results for your videos? Well, you’re on the right track and asking the right questions because…
45% of people watch more than 1 hour of Facebook or YouTube videos per week. [Wordstream]
92 percent of mobile video viewers share videos with others. [Invodo]
And Video Drives Business:
Viewers are 85% more likely to purchase a product after watching a product video. [Internet Retailer]
52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in their online purchase decisions. [Internet Retailer]
But There Are So Many Video Platforms!
Where should you publish your videos? There are so many platforms to choose from!
Just to name a few:
YouTube videos
Facebook videos
Instagram videos
Snapchat videos
LinkedIn videos
Twitter videos
Pinterest videos
Can you really create and post video on all the platforms… especially when they all have different specs and requirements?
All the Specs & Requirements for the Major Video Platforms
Each platform has different requirements for video size, size ratios, lengths… and they each treat audio and captions differently.
Horizontal Video
YouTube: 16:9 or 4:3 ratio, 854 x 480 pixels, 12 to 360 seconds, audio on by default.
Facebook: 16:9, 600 pixel minimum width, 720p, up to 240 minutes, but average view length is 15 seconds, audio muted by default, so captions are a great idea!
LinkedIn: 4:3 or 16:9, up to 30 seconds, but the best are under 15 seconds, audio muted by default.
Twitter: 16:9 or 1:1 ratio, 640 x 360 pixels, 140 seconds.
Square Video
Instagram: 1:1, 600 x 315 pixels, 16 second maximum, audio muted by default, captions are a great idea.
Twitter can be square too, as you see above…
Something to consider- some tests say people respond more to square videos on mobile while horizontal videos perform better on desktop, regardless of platform. https://blog.bufferapp.com/square-video-vs-landscape-video.
Vertical Video
Snapchat: canvas fullscreen: 9:16 ratio, 1080 x 1920 pixels, 3-10 seconds, audio on by default; expand to long form with different video.
Pinterest: 9:16 ratio, 240 pixels wide min, up to 30 minutes.
(And I’ll come back to this topic later for the question- is there a way to create one or two videos that work for all of these? There is!)
Can You Get Big Video Exposure & Results Without Ads?
Some marketers may think, “I’ll just post my videos on all the networks! Then we’ll be good, right? I’ll get tons of exposure!”
A good idea, but not always true in practice.
Are you looking at your actual stats to see how many people you do reach with unpaid social video?
Most people are surprised by their actual reach numbers- it’s not as many as they thought!
Is your actual reach anywhere near the number of potential customers you need to reach?
Wait- how many customers do you need to reach?
How many customers are out there for you and how many should you be reaching?
Most businesses haven’t given thought to having actual quantified awareness goals.
When you start to think about the 10,000’s, 100,000’s, or perhaps 1,000,000’s of potential customers you want to reach…
And when you ask yourself: “How often do I want my future customers to hear from me so that I make an impression in their brains and they don’t forget about me?”…
“And how many times do they have to see me before they take me seriously and want to buy from me?”
You begin to realize that serious weekly or monthly reach goals are hard to achieve without advertising.
A few people are lucky enough to strike on some type of content that quickly gets them a lot of exposure, but most businesses have a harder time creating great content that can sustain itself without a little push.
Some businesses choose to only do unpaid social because they don’t have an ad budget or they think they can get away with saving the money, but our experience with the data and case studies of the successes and failures indicates that advertising gives you a much better chance of success because of three major factors…
3 Reasons Video Advertising Rocks
YOU GET IN FRONT OF THE RIGHT PEOPLE: Do you want to be sure you reach your target customer? That can be a challenge when you go unpaid only. There are specific audiences that are very hard to reach that all but require the targeting features of ad networks to get in front of: for example, people outside your brand’s connections, many B2B targets, and the people who are on social media less often or are less active.
YOU REACH ENOUGH PEOPLE: If a YouTube video plays in a forest and no one is around, does it make a sound? If you want to be sure people see your video, ads help out a lot. You can’t control how many people see your video- look at your reach and impressions, and compare that to even a small-spend ad campaign, and you quickly see how limited unpaid reach is in most cases.
YOU GET BUSINESS RESULTS: If you want significant views, traffic and sales from your videos, ads are important. Ad platforms give you an environment to look at multiple creative at the same time and discover which resonates best with your target audience. You’ll know for sure which video is best at achieving your business goals. Overall, this boosts your views, traffic and sales, and puts you ahead of the competition.
So, if you choose to advertise…
How much ad spend do you devote to each channel?
Or should you focus your ad spend all on one platform that best fits your current campaign? And for your campaign goals and your videos, which is best platform for that?
That’s what we’ll answer in this next section…
Video Goals and Metrics
What are the strengths of each network for video?
Every network achieves different results for different goals and with each metric.
The easiest way to illustrate this is to show the range of performance we’ve seen on each networks for a variety of our clients in 2018.
A few notes on the chart: every industry and audience is different, and the more you optimize, the better your metrics will be. Your mileage may vary a bit from our chart, but should be in the same ballpark. Also note, these numbers are for video ads only, not for other types of ads.
Who’s Watching Each Video Platform?
One way to choose a platform for your video is to look at who the users of each network are, and which network is best at reaching which specialized audiences, research from Pew:
YouTube- biggest number of users, but 5th in frequency of use.
Facebook- second most users, but the most frequently used (51% of users visit multiple times per day), so much so that there are still more 18-29 year olds on FB than Instagram or Snapchat, slightly more female than male.
Instagram- younger audience, with Facebook powered targeting, growing faster than Snapchat, third in frequency of use, slightly more female than male.
Snapchat- youngest audience, not as good targeting, but second in frequency of use.
LinkedIn- professionals, better B2B targeting, but less time on site than other social networks, bigger proportion of college grads than FB or Insta, highest proportion of high income households, evenly male and female.
Twitter- like LinkedIn, a bigger proportion of college grads than FB or Insta, evenly male and female, only 26% of users visit multiple times per day.
Pinterest- much more female than male.
Yet another great source for checking which platform you should be on is Buzzsumo. You can analyze the content for any keyword and find out on which platforms the most engagement happens. Here’s some analysis on the “staffing and recruiting” industry:
Note that according to Buzzsumo’s data for the staffing and recruiting industry, List posts, How-to’s and Videos do best in that industry…
So if you’re making a video, why not use a list-post format when creating your video, or do a how-to video? ;-)
Rules of Thumb for Choosing Your Platform
Next up, I want to give you what I see to be biggest strengths of each network in our experience with clients. If this seems simplistic, understand that my goal here is to give you rules of thumb to start your strategy with, not overgeneralizations to end with!
YouTube- Best for getting long video views, if you want to do in-depth content. Harder than other platforms to drive website traffic with.
Facebook- Best for website traffic, leads and sales from video.
Instagram- Hipper, younger, positive lifestyle audience using FB’s awesome ad platform- so it’s another good source of traffic, leads and sales.
Snapchat- New and affordable. Very unproven. Jury is out.
LinkedIn- Reach the upscale, smart business people and decision makers. Expensive but high quality for those purposes.
Twitter- Reach smart geeky people. If you have customers who prefer books over TV & movies, but want to do video to them, Twitter and LinkedIn make sense.
Pinterest- Reach women who like crafts, cosmetics and do-it-yourself projects.
Conclusion: How Many Platforms Does Your Video Really Need to Be On?
Obviously, you can easily post your video organically, without ads, everywhere, as long as you deal with the specs. And it makes sense, if you have time, to get it out in as many places as possible.
But how many platforms should you actually spend money on? If you’re not careful, your spend and time will get divided so much that you won’t have much impact anywhere.
Can you reach the same people on one platform without having to be on five of them?
A lot of the same people use YouTube, Facebook and Instagram…
But Twitter users aren’t necessarily LinkedIn users, and
LinkedIn users aren’t necessarily Twitter users.
That means that you may only need to be spending on two or three platforms, max!
Takeaway Strategy #1: Focus Your Video Ad Platform Choices Down to One or Two
Based on all the successes, failures, efficiencies and wasted money that I’ve seen in digital marketing over the last 20 years, I’m a big believer in the 80-20 rule.
You’ll get the best ROI by doing the 20% of things that yield 80% of the results.
Focus on the one out 5 video ad platforms that yields 80% of the results… even if you have a lot of resources- get really good at the most popular, most effective networks that have your best customers rather than being a mediocre jack of all networks.
The platform that’s your 20% may vary with your audience and goal, but for most companies these days that want traffic, leads or sales, without a doubt it’s Facebook.
At The Brian Carter Group, we recommend that most businesses run ads on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Google AdWords.
If you have a special audience-related need or goal-related need (not just a personal philosophy) that dictates that Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or another network would be a better fit, then add it on or substitute it.
But unless you have really solid proof (not just opinions) that they’re not good for your industry or goal, all the data and case studies I’ve seen suggest you should first get good at getting results from Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
This rule of thumb frees you to focus on just Facebook and Instagram, or just Facebook and YouTube and get great results. You don’t have to worry about missing out.
So, takeaway #1 is maximize your spend and your focus by only advertising your video on a few platforms:
Facebook and Instagram, or
Facebook and YouTube, or
Instagram and YouTube, or
Facebook and LinkedIn, or
LinkedIn and YouTube
Takeaway Strategy #2: The Retargeting Add-On to Cover Your Bases
But if you are worried about missing out by being to narrow on your platform choices, just add retargeting on the other networks to make sure you’re present to some degree- it’s not a big time or money investment to do that. That way you’d do something like this combination
Cold audiences and retargeting on your main platforms from Takeaway #1 above. For example, you might do Facebook ads, both video view and conversion campaign types for traffic, leads and sales. PLUS
Instagram retargeting ads
YouTube remarkateting ads
Twitter retargeting ads
LinkedIn retargeting ads
Now you’ve got your main focus driving a lot of traffic and visibility from both new people and retargeting AND you’re covering your bases by being visible to all these people on multiple networks via retargeting. Because retargeting spends are typically small, and the campaigns are much easier to set up, you’re not wasting time or money, you’re not a jack of all trades master of none. You’re increasing your bang for your buck without having to worry about focusing so much that you’ve left something out.
And that’s the best of both worlds.
https://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/camera-1024x347-1.jpg3471024Brian Carterhttps://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/BCGz-logo-black-horz-339x113-IMStag-1.gifBrian Carter2020-02-17 15:18:162022-04-01 21:22:01Which Social Platform Is Right For Your Next Video Marketing Campaign?
In the second installment of our new Digital Marketing Happy Hour Show, we talk VIDEO ADVERTISING!
In this episode, we answer questions like: What’s the best type of YouTube ad? Which objective should you choose for your Facebook ad? How long should your videos be for Facebook and Instagram?
A life, business and marketing lesson I learned from my first voice lesson with an OPERA SINGING teacher. Yes, really! Oh, and James Brown. Make it funky!
What happened? Singing!
I went and got my first singing lesson
The first, most basic thing he taught me was to hold your head up and keep your mouth open really wide.
It was really uncomfortable!
It was just me and the voice teacher in the room- but people who don’t even exist are making fun of me… There’s no one there making fun of me but in my head people are criticizing me.
He’s trying to teach me to create this ideal singing sound in my vocal cords… to get those cords to vibrate freely. There’s a certain tone a really good singer has. It’s very open it’s joyous.
When people sing with that natural, free, open tone, a joy comes through that listeners resonate with. It emotionally impacts them, the way that one tuning fork will cause another one to vibrate to the same frequency.
He says “stop that.” Stop what? “You’re bringing your head down and constricting your vocal cords.” I’m closing off my voice making it harder for myself to sing!
I’m muting myself. Why am I muting myself? Why am I automatically subconsciously choosing to turn off my own voice?! Isn’t that the ultimate self-criticism? It’s creative suicide. It’s personality suicide. why am I making it harder to express myself and why is it so hard for me to open up and not want to make fun of that?
What did I learn? Express yourself!
I’m a marketer with an ad agency. I write books. I’m a keynote speaker. I do some comedy with that. There’s a lot of creativity in my life. I’ve done music. I’ve done a little bit of visual art.
But I shut off a lot of that creativity. I’ve been in business focused on profits, results, analytics and all that left-brain, practical stuff.
The way that I showed up trying to sing said something about where I was at expressing myself in other areas. The way that I tried to sing says something about how I’ve been showing up in business.
I muted my singing voice and I’ve been muting myself in business. I haven’t been writing books. I haven’t been putting blog posts out. I have been doing videos or podcasting.
I’ve been conflicted about how I should show up and how much of myself should I let out.
What I learned in marketing is that to affect people psychologically, to get those business results we all want, you need creativity. You need creative people. You need to express yourself.
If I want to achieve full impact in business, I have to express myself and ship it without worrying about how it’s going to be received.
I’ve also learned that as an author and speaker trying to brand and promote myself that, when I hide my light under a bushel, when I don’t put myself out there, when I’m afraid to be myself, I’m less powerful. I’m blah, I’m like everybody else. I don’t stand out.
Plus being more creative and expressing yourself is essential to achieving your full potential.
I was just watching a James Brown documentary and he talked about you know be yourself put yourself out there being you, being weird, being unique, loud and proud.
There’s only one you. One of the most valuable things you have is who you are… that’s your gut instinct, what your heart says. Even when it’s different, express it. Speak your peace.
The right people will hear your honest, confidence expression and respond to you positively. Who cares about the other people?
If I want to really sing and really express who I am, stand out and find the people who wrote resonate like a tuning fork with my particular expression then I have to sing out.
Ignore the critics. There are a lot of people out there when we’re growing up or even now as adults who seem to want us to conform. To be normal. To be like them. To be mediocre. To stay quiet. They may not intend to suppress personal expression. It may be a kneejerk subconscious reactions sometimes to be critical or sarcastic or judgmental. If it’s subconscious, who cares? They may not really mean it. If they do mean it, why would you care what a mean person thinks? Don’t take critics personally. And don’t let fake or past critics live in your head. They aren’t real.
I learned I need to hold my head up and express myself. I can’t mute myself or turn myself off.
Keep your head up and keep your mouth open expressing who you are.
How is that a change for me? I’ve done it before but I got stuck!
I’ve been really stuck. I’ve been overthinking it. I’ve been trying to figure out systems. I’ve been learning a lot of stuff and working with clients and keynoting but
I haven’t been creating a lot of business content. I haven’t been finishing blog posts. I haven’t been finishing the editing of videos. I haven’t been diligent in finishing my book ideas.
This isn’t who I am. I wrote 5 books in four years. I’ve a written hundreds of blog posts. I’ve created tons of videos. I’ve written thousands of stand-up comedy jokes and routines since 2006.
Somewhere in the last few years, I became afraid to be myself- afraid that, if I express myself, I will lose business.
Looking back, it was just time to reach a new level of expression.
I had compartmentalized business. I thought business was different from creativity or that personal development should be separate from from business. I’m finding I can’t live that way. I can’t keep business creativity and personal development separate, because they’re not. I also think that it might be helpful to other people if I combined them too and showed how my creativity and my personal development helps my business and my marketing.
What I’m committed to doing:
What’s brought me out of that- I’ve been on this path… I read The Artist’s Way (highly recommended- one of my top 100 non-fiction books of all time) and I started doing “Morning Pages” which is writing 3 pages every morning in my composition book. Sometimes it’s less, sometimes it’s more, sometimes creative, sometimes it’s journaling, sometimes I’m learning things… and it’s it’s helping me evolve. I’m building a creative studio. I’m taking these voice lessons. I’m making music.
All that stuff doesn’t seem directly related to marketing or business but it is really related…
It’s about who I am- knowing and expressing that instead of being a frustrated, unconscious drone.
It’s about Expression, about creativity and inspiration and feeling motivated.
How I show up as a marketer with ideas and energy for clients and my team.
The skills I bring for that work to get the business results they need.
The presence, power and confidence I can bring to a keynote speech.
I’m a learner. I need to be stimulated. I need to go out find new things.
I’m going to continue to take the singing lessons and see how that affects my expression.
I’m writing music and discovering what I have to say the world and how that affects what I want to write in a nonfiction book.
I’m committed to doing these videos and expressing what’s going on in my real life and how that relates to business…
I’m showing up as a real person to express, to not be afraid to show you who I really am, to not be afraid of judgement or of losing business as a result of that.
I’m holding my head up, opening my voice and singing my heart out.
My Challenge for You Is…
Take a look at how this relates to you:
Is there some other thing in your life like this- a limitation holding you back?
A stuckness that might be hurting your business as well?
Is there is there something in your golf game that you have trouble with it that relates to your business or your marketing?
Is there something about how you go to the gym and work out- where you overdo it or under do it or your challenges there that relate to the way you do business?
Is there a problem you have with your your spouse or your significant other- with the way that you approach that relationship that shows up the same way in your business?
Take a look. It may be there for you. It may not be.
You may find inside there you may find there’s a block. Something you’re doing that you’ve always done that way, and if you can break through that you’ll get to the next level. You’ll get what you really want, whether it’s profits or more freedom or a more enjoyable experience of your work…
Don’t be afraid to to look at yourself and face these challenges.
If you’re like me you have always been growing. You’re always daring. You want more… and that has to come from inside- not just out there in business.
Find that inner limitation that’s limiting your business so you can take it to the next level
I hope that was helpful to you!
https://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/unmute.png449800Brian Carterhttps://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/BCGz-logo-black-horz-339x113-IMStag-1.gifBrian Carter2017-12-08 20:59:212020-02-16 14:07:26UNMUTE Your Business
Everybody loves video, whether it’s TV, movies, cartoons, Hollywood blockbusters, compulsively watching 5 Netflix episodes in a row, sharing some crazy viral video…
We all love video, so it’s not surprising that, using video for marketing is becoming more and more critical to achieving business objectives.
YouTube is already the #2 search engine in the world. And one Facebook insider has said they believe that within a few years Facebook may be 100% video.
85% of the US internet audience watches videos online. [comScore]
45% of people watch more than an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos a week. [Wordstream]
92 percent of mobile video viewers share videos with others. [Invodo]
87% of online marketers use video content. [Outbrain]
The average business publishes 18 videos a month and has a library of 293 videos. [Hubspot]
Video attracts two to three times as many monthly visitors, doubles their time spent on the site and has a 157% increase in organic traffic from search engines. [MarketingSherpa]
Viewers spend 100% more time on pages with videos on them. [MarketingSherpa]
Shoppers who viewed video on Stacks and Stacks product pages were 144% more likely to add to cart than other shoppers. [Internet Retailer]
52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in their online purchase decisions. When a video is information-intensive, 66% of consumers will watch the video two or more times. [Internet Retailer]
Viewers are 85% more likely to purchase a product after watching a product video. [Internet Retailer]
And yes, this should be a video- and will be soon! ;-)
https://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/video-marketing1.jpg12001800Brian Carterhttps://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/BCGz-logo-black-horz-339x113-IMStag-1.gifBrian Carter2017-08-14 20:46:492022-04-01 21:22:0110 Compelling Stats Prove You Need to Prioritize Video Marketing
People love video. And in marketing, video is becoming more and more important.
YouTube is the #2 search engine in the world. One Facebook insider said they believed within a few years Facebook may be 100% video.
To keep up, your business needs to market with video effectively.
So how do you get the best video marketing results?
You need to think about how to:
Create great videos,
Show them on people’s favorite platforms, and
Use advertising to ensure they reach the right people.
What are the Best Video Marketing Platforms?
Our agency has done experiments, with and without ads, to see what works best with:
Edited videos of various types: Most of our experience with video (TV and movies) is edited, not live. Edited videos are planned. They don’t waste people’s time. This is the best for ensuring people see your whole message and you get the best results.
15-second edited videos on Facebook: Generally speaking, Facebook videos need to be shorter. Facebook itself is recommending 15 second videos now when you create video ads. We’ve created tightly scripted 15-second videos that get up to 8% clickthrough rates.
YouTube videos: People watch videos longer on YouTube. You can make them extremely long (30 minutes, for example) if you want. But I would make videos for ads shorter- 3-5 minutes max. A smart new strategy is a choose your own adventure video where your first video gives people a choice and they can click to other more specific videos more relevant to them.
Instagram Video: 60 seconds and under, square dimensions- and you can use Facebook ads to target people. This is my third choice after Facebook and YouTube video.
Facebook Live: People often go live for 15 minutes to 45 minutes, but the average viewer still may only watch for 20-30 seconds. This is a challenging format for many.
Twitter video, both edited and live: Everything is limited on Twitter because of the smaller audience size, and we recommend advertising to ensure your video is seen.
Snapchat video: Very hard to get a sizable audience, and no ad platform for most companies. The filters might be entertaining, but limited marketing application here.
Killer Content: How Do You Create Videos People Love That Drive Them to Take Action?
To find out what’s most effective, we are constantly working on new things for ourselves and our clients:
Video creation tools: Camtasia, Ripl, Slidely
Video type: Live talking head, live in front of audience, edited, greenscreen, talking head, animated- You need lots of different kinds of video because you never know which kind your audience is going to respond best to until you create it and test it
Video content outline:
Starting with a list of persuasive copywriting points you need to hit will get you better business results. Who is your audience? What are their pain points? What are their biggest fears? Problems? How do you benefit them? Solve their problems? What are their dreams? What is your unique selling proposition? Why should they take action now?
Read about the charismatic leadership tactics of Martin Luther King, Jr. and other great speakers, and write a new script based on that.
Experiment with serious vs. funny videos
Video length: 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 90 seconds… on Facebook if you want people to see your whole video, create 15 second videos.
Ad targeting: Cold prospects, retargeting…
Video editing techniques: Greenscreen, video background loops, huge caption text…
We track the results to see what drives views, traffic, leads and sales.
It’s usually different for each client, so you have to experiment to discover what works best for you based on your customer and your offerings.
Targeting: Who Do You Show Videos To?
I always advertise my videos to multiple audiences, and see which videos each audience likes the best:
Cold (new potential customer) audience targets
Retargeting people who’ve been to my websites
Retargeting people who’ve watched my other videos
People who’ve signed up to my email lists
Cold lookalike audiences based on retargeting or email lists
Retargeting and small custom (email) audiences can have a high CPM but it’s worth it.
Budgeting: How Much Does it Cost?
We find that typically, Facebook ads for video are more affordable than YouTube ads for video.
YouTube cost per view ranges from $0.05 – $0.15; these are 30 second views
Facebook’s definition of a view is only 3 seconds, which is useless. They may not have even looked at your video, they may have been looking at a post above or below it. Dig into the 30-second view metrics when you analyze your results. Look at cost per 30 second view. To get that you have to export to Excel and calculate it yourself! If you don’t want to, go off cost per 10 second view.
The right goal: Is your goal just views? Don’t you want clicks to your website? And possibly real action like leads or sales? If so, I would recommend looking at CTR and CPC instead of cost per view or CPM.
The right metrics:
Facebook video ad clickthrough rate is higher, and CPC comes down with higher CTR, so…
Facebook cost per click is much, much lower- my own avg CTR is 3.0% (across 133 videos for our agency, infoproducts and my keynote speaking)- avg CPC is $0.69. YouTube CPC can easily range from $4 – $13… basically 10x the cost.
YouTube CPM’s can be 2-3x Facebook CPM.
You need a lot of content online period. And you need a lot of video. You need new video content at least once a month, if not weekly.
There are endless amount things to try with video and we all need to work on getting better at it.
Why You Have to Market With Facebook Video
I mean it’s obvious why Facebook video rocks, right? I mean you see a ton of it in your news feed. Right? It’s always there.
Facebook live, Facebook edited videos, it’s constantly there and you’re getting pulled in from one video to another through that carousel experience. You may be watching a sequence of videos before you even realize it.
It’s very popular and Facebook is pushing it like crazy, they definitely want to beat YouTube. YouTube just put out there YouTube Live thing, so Facebook and YouTube are fighting for video. There’s a huge war in general about the screen.
Facebook’s going to bring in all these people like Gordon Ramsay and try to capture your video viewing time. They don’t want you to necessarily to be on Netflix doing video viewing, they’d rather you were on Facebook doing it. Right? Anyone that’s using Facebook video has a huge advantage right now.
I’ll talk at some other time about photos versus videos, because photos still have a big advantage on Facebook just because they’re so quickly consumed. It’s not easy to do Facebook video, or video anywhere well, in a way that people are going to love. It’s a huge opportunity because Facebook really wants everyone to see it, so they are favoring it in the news feed… so you should definitely figure out how to do video.
The iPhone creates great, I don’t even have special lighting in here. When I bought an HD camera that required special lighting to look good. My iPhone does not, it’s very low maintenance.
There are ways to get involved and do video, and you’ve got to figure it out and start doing it because it’s a huge opportunity.
Facebook video is huge- Facebook reported seeing 100 million hours of daily video watch time near the end of 2015. And with the newer “related videos feature,” where people are automatically served another video after their current one, you can bet video views have grown dramatically from there.
There are a lot of Facebook video options:
Facebook Live
Facebook video in your personal or page posts
Facebook video ads
Why You Have to Advertise to Promote Your Videos
As you might know, I am a big believer in advertising everything you can on Facebook, even if you have a small budget…
Before you run away- let me explain!
What happens if you don’t use ads with your videos?
No certainty you get views. They don’t get viewed much. You may get lucky if your video is super awesome and goes viral… but unless you’re already a celebrity, you probably won’t get more than a couple thousand views. Even if you’re super interesting and talented, most videos don’t go viral- they get a few hundred views and fizzle out.
No certainty of target audience. Organic videos don’t necessarily reach who you want them to. Who sees them is not under your control. It’s whoever happens to be on Facebook right then, however the algorithm works, whoever likes or shares, whoever their friends are, et cetera.
No certainty of reaching your target buyer. If you’re doing this video for business, you might not reach your target customer. Or out of your several hundred views, maybe only a few dozen are your ideal buyers.
No certainty of traffic, leads or sales. Even if you have a link somewhere in that video or post, the percentage of those who watch that click is not 100%; it’s going to be between 1-10%. So if 200 or so watch, maybe 2-20 people click to your site. And what % of visitors do things on your site? Maybe 1% buy and 10% opt into an email list? So very little action comes from this.
But when you advertise your videos, you can:
Reach exactly the right audience (your best buyers, not just anybody, not just friends family employees)
Reach them right away (not like whenever… maybe… but NOW)
Reach enough potential customers to discover how they respond to your content- or don’t
Get more detailed stats and metrics from the ad manager than you do from Facebook Page Insights
The last thing is critical. If you don’t run ads for your videos, you won’t get a lot of analytics or insights about them. And you won’t learn much. The video analytics you get when you don’t run ads are pretty limited.
Trust me, you’ll be surprised by what you learn. You need to know
How many seconds people are watching your videos on average
Which audiences watch them the longest
Which ones convert
Which ones don’t
There are four ways to run video ads on Facebook, and all produce different results.
The first thing you absolutely MUST understand about how Facebook ads work, that many many people don’t know is that the ad goal determines who FB shows the ad to based on their most common FB activities which ensures you mainly get that response and very little of the others…
In other words,
Choosing an engagement ad shows the ad to people who engage a lot, but these people don’t necessarily click to websites…
Choosing a video view ad shows the ad to people who view a lot of videos, but these people don’t necessarily like posts or click to websites…
So your actual Facebook targeting is:
Not just the targeting you choose, but also
The subset of those people who most do the thing that you’ve chosen as your ad goal.
The five ways to advertise video on Facebook are:
Video in post, promoting the post (whether boost or a post promotion ad from ad manager/power editor): gets you in front of the subset of your audience who likes, shares and comments on posts, so you get much more engagement on the post than video views, link clicks or conversions
Video view ad: gets you in front of the people who watch a lot of video, so you get a lot of video views, more than post engagement, link clicks or conversions
Website traffic ad with video instead of image: gets you in front of people who click off FB on links to other sites (but not necessarily the subset that converts), so you get a lot of link clicks, more than video views, engagement or conversions
Website conversion ads with video instead of image: gets you in front of the people who click AND convert BOTH, so you get conversions, but less clicks, video views and engagement. Start with your goal, then choose the right ad type.
Awareness boosting ad with video instead of image: this is interesting, because in our initial tests with this, it actually beats the video view ad at its own game!
Here’s how those shake out:
NOT PICTURED: The awareness boosting ad gets you larger reach and at times can get you more views and longer duration than the video view ad.
But just beware- both the video view ad and awareness boosting ads can get you a lot of exposure but won’t necessarily get you interaction or conversions.
What do I recommend?
I like the awareness boosting ad and the website conversion ad with a video in it. I run them in separate campaigns with separate budgets.
That way you can get exposure AND conversions. Best of both worlds.
But it’s going to be different for all of you- if you have someone looking over your shoulder who expects to see interaction on your Facebook post that has a video in it, you probably should run a post promotion ad (similar to a boosted post)… remember, it’s all about your goals!
https://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/phones.jpg504672Brian Carterhttps://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/BCGz-logo-black-horz-339x113-IMStag-1.gifBrian Carter2017-07-05 06:51:222020-07-13 14:45:33Video Marketing with YouTube and Facebook
One of my best friends in the marketing world, Jason Miller…
A man I’ve been on cruises with (yeah I guess we’re old?)
A man I’ve studied VIRAL FACEBOOK MARKETING with (we did a landmark ebook called Contagious Content that guided over 100,000 marketers in how to create Facebook posts that get more shares)
A man born on the SAME DAY OF THE YEAR AS ME – we are astrological twins!!!
A man I’ve watched STEVE VAI play guitar with MY WIFE with…
Jason Miller formerly of Marketo now of LinkedIn interviewed me for his podcast, which rocks as much as he does… We talked about:
Should we just do talking heads in live video?
Why does Brian have a green screen?
Should you let people pick your brain over coffee?
Professional quality video tips- start for less than $200!
Check it out.
https://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Blog-Header-810x400-v26.01-Brian-Carter.jpg400810Brian Carterhttps://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/BCGz-logo-black-horz-339x113-IMStag-1.gifBrian Carter2016-08-30 19:06:542020-02-17 19:14:15PODCAST: Video Tips, Comedy and “Picking People’s Brains”
Facebook video is huge- Facebook reported seeing 100 million hours of daily video watch time near the end of 2015. And with the newer “related videos feature,” where people are automatically served another video after their current one, you can bet video views have grown dramatically from there.
There are a lot of Facebook video options:
Facebook Live
Facebook video in your personal or page posts
Facebook video ads
As you might know, I am a big believer in advertising everything you can on Facebook, even if you have a small budget…
Before you run away- let me explain!
What happens if you don’t use ads with your videos?
No certainty you get views. They don’t get viewed much. You may get lucky if your video is super awesome and goes viral… but unless you’re already a celebrity, you probably won’t get more than a couple thousand views. Even if you’re super interesting and talented, most videos don’t go viral- they get a few hundred views and fizzle out.
No certainty of target audience. Organic videos don’t necessarily reach who you want them to. Who sees them is not under your control. It’s whoever happens to be on Facebook right then, however the algorithm works, whoever likes or shares, whoever their friends are, et cetera.
No certainty of reaching your target buyer. If you’re doing this video for business, you might not reach your target customer. Or out of your several hundred views, maybe only a few dozen are your ideal buyers.
No certainty of traffic, leads or sales. Even if you have a link somewhere in that video or post, the percentage of those who watch that click is not 100%; it’s going to be between 1-10%. So if 200 or so watch, maybe 2-20 people click to your site. And what % of visitors do things on your site? Maybe 1% buy and 10% opt into an email list? So very little action comes from this.
But when you advertise your videos, you can:
Reach exactly the right audience (your best buyers, not just anybody, not just friends family employees)
Reach them right away (not like whenever… maybe… but NOW)
Reach enough potential customers to discover how they respond to your content- or don’t
Get more detailed stats and metrics from the ad manager than you do from Facebook Page Insights
The last thing is critical. If you don’t run ads for your videos, you won’t get a lot of analytics or insights about them. And you won’t learn much. The video analytics you get when you don’t run ads are pretty limited.
Trust me, you’ll be surprised by what you learn. You need to know
How many seconds people are watching your videos on average
Which audiences watch them the longest
Which ones convert
Which ones don’t
There are four ways to run video ads on Facebook, and all produce different results.
The first thing you absolutely MUST understand about how Facebook ads work, that many many people don’t know is that the ad goal determines who FB shows the ad to based on their most common FB activities which ensures you mainly get that response and very little of the others…
In other words,
Choosing an engagement ad shows the ad to people who engage a lot, but these people don’t necessarily click to websites…
Choosing a video view ad shows the ad to people who view a lot of videos, but these people don’t necessarily like posts or click to websites…
So your actual Facebook targeting is:
Not just the targeting you choose, but also
The subset of those people who most do the thing that you’ve chosen as your ad goal.
The five ways to advertise video on Facebook are:
Video in post, promoting the post (whether boost or a post promotion ad from ad manager/power editor): gets you in front of the subset of your audience who likes, shares and comments on posts, so you get much more engagement on the post than video views, link clicks or conversions
Video view ad: gets you in front of the people who watch a lot of video, so you get a lot of video views, more than post engagement, link clicks or conversions
Website traffic ad with video instead of image: gets you in front of people who click off FB on links to other sites (but not necessarily the subset that converts), so you get a lot of link clicks, more than video views, engagement or conversions
Website conversion ads with video instead of image: gets you in front of the people who click AND convert BOTH, so you get conversions, but less clicks, video views and engagement.
Start with your goal, then choose the right ad type.
Awareness boosting ad with video instead of image: this is interesting, because in our initial tests with this, it actually beats the video view ad at its own game!
Here’s how those shake out:
NOT PICTURED: The awareness boosting ad gets you larger reach and at times can get you more views and longer duration than the video view ad.
But just beware- both the video view ad and awareness boosting ads can get you a lot of exposure but won’t necessarily get you interaction or conversions.
What do I recommend?
I like the awareness boosting ad and the website conversion ad with a video in it. I run them in separate campaigns with separate budgets.
That way you can get exposure AND conversions. Best of both worlds.
But it’s going to be different for all of you- if you have someone looking over your shoulder who expects to see interaction on your Facebook post that has a video in it, you probably should run a post promotion ad (similar to a boosted post)… remember, it’s all about your goals!
https://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/BCGz-logo-black-horz-339x113-IMStag-1.gif00Brian Carterhttps://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/BCGz-logo-black-horz-339x113-IMStag-1.gifBrian Carter2016-08-04 16:14:302020-02-13 15:05:39Why You Aren’t Getting the Facebook Video Ad Results You Want
I mean it’s obvious why Facebook video rocks, right? I mean you see a ton of it in your news feed. Right? It’s always there.
Facebook live, Facebook edited videos, it’s constantly there and you’re getting pulled in from one video to another through that carousel experience. You may be watching a sequence of videos before you even realize it.
It’s very popular and Facebook is pushing it like crazy, they definitely want to beat YouTube. YouTube just put out there YouTube Live thing, so Facebook and YouTube are fighting for video. There’s a huge war in general about the screen.
Facebook’s going to bring in all these people like Gordon Ramsay and try to capture your video viewing time. They don’t want you to necessarily to be on Netflix doing video viewing, they’d rather you were on Facebook doing it. Right? Anyone that’s using Facebook video has a huge advantage right now.
I’ll talk at some other time about photos versus videos, because photos still have a big advantage on Facebook just because they’re so quickly consumed. It’s not easy to do Facebook video, or video anywhere well, in a way that people are going to love. It’s a huge opportunity because Facebook really wants everyone to see it, so they are favoring it in the news feed… so you should definitely figure out how to do video.
The iPhone creates great, I don’t even have special lighting in here. When I bought an HD camera that required special lighting to look good. My iPhone does not, it’s very low maintenance.
There are ways to get involved and do video, and you’ve got to figure it out and start doing it because it’s a huge opportunity.
https://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/video-marketing-interface-circular-symbol_icon-icons.com_53784.gif338600Brian Carterhttps://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/BCGz-logo-black-horz-339x113-IMStag-1.gifBrian Carter2016-07-05 01:35:452020-04-27 19:00:50Why You Have to Market with Facebook Video
Here’s the problem with LIVE VIDEO, which yes is a huge opportunity for those who use it well:
Most live Facebook videos I see make me say, “Ah, well that’s why you’re not on real TV…”
Be careful that, with your broadcast, you’re not saying to everyone, “My narcissism makes me believe that OF COURSE you will want to watch me now that I can broadcast to anyone! Why? Because it’s ME!!!”
And make sure you pay attention to how long people watch- video retention time is the most important metric and the biggest reality check. People DO NOT watch your entire videos.
Here’s the problem with live video:
Most people are not interesting enough, or
Trained on being on camera, or
Have any on camera experience.
And if they don’t care whether they’re interesting, then they’ll never fix any of that.
Yes, you’ll easily get a small number of people with a ton of time on their hands who love you who will watch, but if you want to reach more than say 5,000 or 10,000 people, you need to heed this…
There’s actually a whole industry for quality video- two in fact- TV and movies. And if you hadn’t noticed, it’s not easy to succeed in them.
The whole local news anchor trying to become a national news anchor thing… it’s tough.
Moving to L.A. and struggling to get into the movie business. The struggle is real. It’s hard. A lot of people never make it.
Why? Because even people who get on air or get into movies don’t all succeed.
Why? Because you have to be extremely likeable and talented to rise to the top.
The fact that you can broadcast is not some magical thing.
You still have to be interesting.
More interesting than the video of people snuggling with elephants that’s below you in the newsfeed, more interesting than the trending news about the new movie trailer that I want to watch.
This is why I think edited video is better than live video: edited video is shorter and quicker and it respects the viewer’s time and attention. It cuts from one shot to another every few seconds. It’s interesting.
If you do live video…
Do something that grabs attention, on purpose.
Re-grab attention every 30 seconds, on purpose.
Deliver value and tell them what that value is and why they should care and what it will help them with.
Continues to deliver value and make sure they know what it is every minute.
Be a pretty charismatic individual.
Try adding sexy people, funny people or explosions.
One of the few compliments I’ll give Gary V is that he is very attention-grabbing.
But not everyone naturally is.
If you’re not an extrovert from New Jersey who’s constantly dropping F-bombs (which is not only inappropriate for most of us, but I agree with Seinfeld: it’s cheating), you’d better be interesting in some other way.
So:
Why should I watch?
Why are you interesting?
Why is what you’re saying valuable?
How are you entertaining?
Are you making eye contact?
Are you smiling?
Are you likeable?
Are you engaging?
Be honest with yourself (your best friends won’t be, because a lot of times people think being supportive means being positive even when that means lying).
If you aren’t getting big engagement and views, you might need to make some changes.
Try improv
Try stand up comedy
Try toastmasters
All three of those will make you better.
Everyone starts somewhere, and you can get better.
The point is, realize where you really are at, and work at getting better!
https://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/hownottosuckatlivevideo.jpg466932Brian Carterhttps://briancartergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/BCGz-logo-black-horz-339x113-IMStag-1.gifBrian Carter2016-05-27 22:55:302020-02-17 19:22:56How Not to Suck at Live Video
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Everybody loves video, whether it’s TV, movies, cartoons, Hollywood blockbusters, compulsively watching 5 Netflix episodes in a row, sharing some crazy viral video…
