6 Rules for Creating Successful Online Video Campaigns

March 1st, 2010

If you are an integrated media producer at an ad agency or a marketing executive at a fortune 500 brand then you have already dealt with creating an online video campaign. And whether your goals where to build brand awareness, drive online sales, capture emails or simply to educate your customers the sheer number of options, collaborators and budget constrains likely made the experience challenging.

In our experience the most common challenges are:

1. Figuring out what to do and how to get consensus amongst your many stakeholders

2. Maintaining expectations during the production of your campaign

3. Follow-up after the launching your campaign

We have talked to integrated media producers, marketing executives and countless others and determined that there is no clear agreement on what makes a good online video campaign. The one thing that remains constant is that with the increased complexity and quantity of moving parts you have to take a more strategic approach to solving these three challenges. In our experience we have found that the same tools developed to create successful user experiences for websites apply to creating video. With that in mind we have created 6 rules that you can apply to your online video campaign website.

Here are the six rules:

Rule #1. Have a shared language:

Have everyone agree on who your viewsers are and what is important to them. It allows the teams to ask the question “does this idea or solution work for our viewser”.

We helped Savings.com rally around their viewsers’ needs and created a common language from which to frame our conversation. This can sometimes be dismissed as “fluff” but if used correctly can be an effective way to communicate and produce better results.

Rule # 2. Have clear measurable goals:

Create simple measurable goals. For example: To increase return visitors by 10% in one month.
Instead of having your team focused on a set number of features, “shots” or functions have them ask “what will it take to meet our goal?”

In The Groop school of thought we use the Agile concept of the “Global Business Objective” as one of our tools to help keep the team focused on “the prize” not fighting over some of the minutia.

Rule # 3. Create approach consensus:

Working to define your goals together allows for both creative and technology partners to feel part of the process. The traditional hand-down from strategy or planning to creative to technology simply does not work.

Our experience has been that consensus is best reached when all of the parties involved participate in
the process of defining the goals and the viewsers for the campaign.

Rule # 4. Have flexible execution:

As with most websites it is better to release less features that are awesome versus more features that are mediocre. Quality of experience trumps quantity of options. More importantly even if you plan well things will change and you will have to be comfortable with cutting features to meet your deadlines and budget caps.

We use a project approach that resembles film and animation methods used today by companies such as PIXAR and Dreamworks. Shorter cycles with more with frequent adjustments towards a shared goal.

Rule # 5. Measure often but plan it well:

Measuring often is much easier than knowing what to do with the data. For optimal data analysis make sure that you plan your tests, and conduct A/B or multivariate testing. That is what makes online video campaigns so awesome. It’s like TV but you can fine tune even after “airing” the campaign.

Google Analytics, Omniture, Webtrends and others provide you with the tools and metrics that you need but only if you use them with A. a cleal goal and B. Well planned analysis will you get optimal results.

Rule # 6. Plan to Adjust:

Launching is only half the battle, the real work begins in the small adjustments that you will continue to make on an ongoing basis. Always plan for several releases in the life cycle of an online video campaign. It’s ok if you don’t get it exactly right the first time, you can adjust it.

To the left is the first design of a Savings.com coupon page. To the right you can see the evolution of the design based on the results of multiple rounds of testing.

We would love to hear what you think. What are your experiences? Leave us your comments below.

José Caballer
Chief Visionary, The Groop

For more information about The Groop’s online video capabilities please email us at video@thegroop.net

You can also call us at 213.613.0066

Entry Filed under: Advertising, Branding, Business, Design, Strategy, Technology, Video