Know Your Audience

Marketers have access to hundreds of thousands of consumer insights thanks to digital technologies. It is largely due to this wealth of consumer information that marketers are expected to not only drive growth but prove marketing impact on business outcomes. Despite this, recent findings reveal that today’s marketers are actually underutilizing data and missing out on major customer engagement and business opportunities.

In a recent study conducted by ViralGains, in partnership with The CMO Council, 233 senior marketers were surveyed to understand how digital video advertising is leveraged and measured throughout the buyer journey. The findings revealed a startling disconnect between digital video application and expectation, as well as a tremendous amount of as-of-yet untapped opportunity.  

When asked to identify the metrics by which their own success is judged, 78 percent of marketing leaders surveyed named sales impact as the top KPI. However, when it comes to measuring the success of their video advertising campaigns, marketers are using campaign performance metrics — such as CTR, VCR, and impressions served — to define campaign success rather than focusing on metrics that speak to business results. In fact, when asked what consumer insights marketers are drawing from campaigns, a mere 25 percent reported consumer sentiment as a takeaway, while 26 percent indicated purchase intent. Consumer insights of this type are critical to understanding digital video influence on consumer behavior.

Don’t set it and forget it

Marketers need to actively engage with their campaigns in order to derive real-time consumer insights such as preferences, attitudes, and behaviors. This type of intelligence puts marketers in the driver’s seat, allowing them to optimize campaigns toward the most engaged audiences.

Picture this: you spend $500K on a digital video campaign. You employ data and smart targeting to find your ideal audience and start serving impressions. Your campaign is in-view, fraud-free, and brand safe —  a great start. What you don’t realize however, is that only 25% of the audience you’ve reached has a positive perception of the brand to begin with. The other 75% of your audience prefers the competition. If you had known how performance was unfolding, would you have reached your audience in the exact same way, with the same message and creative over the span of a few weeks or even months? Would you have changed your approach? How would your boss feel about these findings?

It is not enough in today’s technologically advanced and data-driven world to simply launch a campaign, set it, and forget it. You need to learn from it as well.

One size does not fit all—and we can help with that

Platforms like ViralGains empower brands with audience insights that put their customers at the center of their digital video campaigns. Our technology enables two-way conversations between brands and consumers that reveal real-time insights into consumer attitudes, preferences, and behaviors.

With these consumer insights, brands can tailor their messaging to engaged individuals within their audience, and drive authentic connections with those people. Messaging is not the only factor to consider, however. With so many devices to reach consumers across, brands must stay agile. ViralGains gives brands the flexibility to reach consumers across screens and devices, and in different formats. For instance, Americans spend 29 percent of their time watching vertical video on mobile — with ViralGains, brands can provide consumers with a non-interruptive, seamless, vertical video experience.

ViralGains in action

A feminine care brand aimed to drive sales and brand awareness for a product launch with :60s and :30s video ads. With ViralGains, the brand developed a Rich Media Engagement Card — a custom end-screen. The Engagement Card drove additional brand engagement and purchase intent by taking viewers to an interactive landing page where they could shop for products.

Engagement card with Forevermore diverse women prompting a quiz

With smart targeting and the Rich Media Engagement Card, the brand drove viewers to their landing page — influencing brand awareness and sales. The campaign achieved a 1.1 percent

CTR — 30 percent of which was driven by the Engagement Card. In addition, the brand drew behavioral consumer insights that indicated that their longer format ads garnered better engagement than their shorter ads. This information helped them inform future messaging and creative strategies. By leveraging additional audience insights, the brand learned that the audience had an affinity for diet and fitness. The brand applied this intelligence to a follow-up campaign by incorporating long-form content and targeting health and active lifestyle sites.

This is just one example of how taking the time (and leveraging the right tools) to better understand your audience can help you transition from measuring superficial metrics like impressions to drive real impact for your business through video.

Want to dive deeper into how you can achieve similar results? Reach out today to learn how ViralGains can help.

 

Ready to get started?

Get in Touch