One company's video marketing strategy that helped rack up $6 million in sales
Follow these tips to get people’s attention and convert them into paying customers with videos
Author of the article:Camilla Cornell, Special to Financial Post
Publishing date:Nov 07, 2019 • November 18, 2019 • 4 minute read •
When Lior Ohayon and Aaron Spivak introduced the Hush Blanket last year, they faced a problem that is common to many e-commerce entrepreneurs introducing a brand-new product.
They had to reach out to customers who’d never heard of a weighted blanket and persuade them to get out their credit cards and place an order. “We couldn’t rely on people searching for a weighted blanket,” says Ohayon. “They didn’t know what it was.
So the pair hit on the idea of making a video to tell people about their product; which they claim acts like a warm hug, relieving stress and allowing for a more restful sleep. They rented the party room at Spivak’s condo, pressed a friend into service as the ‘actor’ and filmed a quick clip. “I edited it myself,” says Ohayon.
The strategy worked well — the Hush Blanket generated $600,000 in sales in its first year and is on track to sell $6 million this year. Video ads have become the primary driver of traffic. In fact, if your company isn’t using video, you just might be left behind. One Hubspot survey found 72 per cent of people would prefer to learn about a new product or service by watching a video than by reading text.
Here’s what Spivak and Ohayon have learned about getting people’s attention and converting them into paying customers with videos:
Target your audience. Apart from running video ads on their website and on YouTube, Ohayon and Spivak identified Facebook as the optimal platform to reach customers largely because it allows you to target an audience.
Initially, they focused on running ‘retargeting ads’ aimed at people who had already visited their website, but left without buying. “The goal was to get them back to make a purchase,” says Ohayon. “You end up making a quicker return on your investment with retargeting ads, because these people have already shown interest in your product.”
But at some point, Ohayon and Spivak had to reach out to people who had never heard of their product. Facebook allowed them to choose their audience by demographics, including age, location and interests. Or “you can look at the characteristics of your current buyers and have Facebook identify a ‘look-alike audience,’” says Ohayon. “They’ll say, here’s a million people who are very similar to those buyers and hence are more likely to buy from you.”
The good news: Facebook offers its targeting services free of charge. “You pay by the number of impressions (when people see your video), by engagement (when people like or share it) or when someone clicks through to your website,” says Ohayon. For his company, the return on investment for the video ads has been much higher than for picture ads.
Use written words as well as audio. One survey found 85 per cent of Facebook videos are viewed on mute and there is evidence that captions improve understanding. “We put subtitles on every single video,” says Ohayon.
Talk about benefits, not features. Listing product characteristics (filled with glass micro-beads, using a blend of cotton and polyester, 60 by 80 inches) rarely persuades people to buy. Instead, says Ohayon, your video should tell people what problem your product can solve for them. His company’s video ads say things like “cozy,” “washable,” “fits any décor” and “if you have problems sleeping, this baby is the answer for you.”
Hone your approach. Facebook allows you to run unlimited ads and test them against each other for effectiveness. The platform then “automatically optimizes whichever ad is performing better,” says Ohayon. He estimates Hush has about 100 ads on Facebook that are essentially edits of its videos. Some focus on stress and others on insomnia or being chilled at night. “We target different angles and different demographics,” he says.
Keep it short. At one point, Ohayon and Spivak were approached by a large agency with a good record of creating product videos that went viral. The agency put together two humorous clips for Hush — for example, one features an insomniac waking up exhausted, throwing her alarm clock across the room and pouring coffee down her shirt.
“We figured if we could make a funny video, and ideally it went viral, we wouldn’t have to put too many marketing dollars behind it because people would just share it like crazy,” says Ohayon.
The problem: although the video got lots of likes and shares and engagement, it didn’t go viral. And ultimately, people had to stick with it for a full 30 seconds before they even found out what product was on offer.
The entrepreneurs had much more success converting views to sales when they sliced the video down from 1.5 minutes to less than 20 seconds and focused tightly on the therapeutic benefits of the Hush Blanket.
“You want to explain the problem within like the first 10 seconds and then get to the solution (your product) pretty much right away,” says Ohayon. The most important part is getting them to click through to purchase your product or find out more about it, he says, “and if it takes three minutes to get there, you will likely lose them.”
https://financialpost.com/entrepren...l-media-and-helped-rack-up-6-million-in-sales
