Remember the days when you were able to run an ad in the paper or on electronic mediums to create and build a loyal audience? This was the way we built our businesses. We were able to target a market based on programs knowing the exact audience, listening during certain times of day and drive times. It seems so long ago, but in reality, this change was 8 years ago when the smart phone took the world by storm.

“Now with the world at our fingertips, we business owners can talk to our customers and instantly connect with our audience.”

We now have a direct line of communication, good or bad, this is the reality. With 95% of us having a social media presence, having a social media strategy for your business is no longer an option. I have heard some business owners refer to their business pages on Facebook as a business card rather than a powerful tool for moving people to action.

At CMA, it was a big withdrawal process to convince our clients to put all their advertising dollars into digital platforms; as I have covered in many of my previous blogs. The purpose of repeating myself is mainly to make my point that it was not a pleasant period in my business. With that said, we have proved to clients that we were right and the ROI on the ad dollars is astounding. With a small investment, it is not uncommon to reach millions of viewers, and they will react and reach out to you on your platforms. Even though their feedback isn’t always what we want to hear, at least we know what our customers are thinking, and we can respond immediately & correct/improve when needed.

“With a small investment, it is not uncommon to reach millions of viewers.”

Our agency works to get content for our ads and post consistently. Content is always the biggest hurdle for all social media managers. In order to have perfect content marketing, you must find your audience, find your voice, and create a format and design to reinforce your brand. If you are struggling to find content, you are not alone. CMA has been putting photos and posts across social media platforms for 8 years now, but now the focus is moving into drone footage and videos overall. We oversee marketing for shopping centers, so this is difficult as every store has their own identity. So now by adding video the real work begins. We no longer have an option, we have to find and create video for all of our clients in order to stay ahead of the content battle. In order to convince myself of this truth, I did some research, and this is what I found:

The reports I researched were written 18 months ago. At this time, 14% of marketers promoted with video. 73% say they will join the party in 2020 - you get the message: it can no longer be ignored. Facebook is rated #1 as the most impactful social channel for video posts at an 8.4% higher reach than all other channels. A Facebook video received, on average, 135% more organic reach than a photo. 43% of people want to see more video content from future marketers. 4x more customers would rather watch a video to learn about a product than read about it in a post. 70% of millennials are likely to watch a video when shopping online. 49% of companies which use videos in their marketing grow revenue 49% faster year to year than those who don’t.

“ Facebook is rated #1 as the most impactful social channel for video posts.”

Video is the key content thread of the moment-if you’re not creating video content you have to ask yourself why. All the major social platforms have now become more video focused. 80% of the online videos will account for 80% of all consumer Internet traffic by 2020.

“8 billion videos or 100 million hours of videos are watched on Facebook every day. 10 billion videos are viewed daily on Snapchat and 500 million hours of video are watched on YouTube every day.”

Now I know it seems daunting, but with a smartphone you can easily shoot video for your company. Or, of course, you can hire content agencies to do this for you. Our firm does most of our work with a drone and some smartphone shots. We have found at CMA, that 2-minute videos get the best engagement and of the videos posted, 85% of them are watched without sound! Over 50% of the videos viewed are watched on a mobile device.

We have been fortunate at our agency as our clients believed in what we were telling them, even though I know it was a difficult pill to swallow. The smart phone hadn’t taken off 10 years ago when I was talking mobile, social & digital conversions, but the payoff has been amazing. We have a conversation going with our consumers, they let us know what they want, stores they will support, ideas for events, and they trust our brand and have become ambassadors for our properties.

The next step is how do we incorporate Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality into our marketing programs? I know what my clients are going to say, and I also know exactly what their faces are going to look like…but this is a story for another time.

So, for now gurus, get your mobile devices out and start getting video footage. Energy goes where focus flows-and the time is now.

Source: Smart Brief, SCT, Forbes Magazine, Wired Magazine