To truly master video marketing you need to make sure you have successful viewer experiences across all major devices and home office configurations. In the past this was not necessary, but today mobile adoption has grown to consume 25% of all global internet traffic, so there is no question that your marketing team should be considering video viewing experiences across screens. And, if you are going to be a world-class brand and service organization you need to make sure to reach your audiences wherever they are at anytime.
Marketing strategies fail when they don’t consider mobile as a strategic experience. Similar to desktop, mobile plays a crucial role in engagement with customers and prospects and should not be ignored. Just like prospects are led through a lifecycle on desktop, the same should be applied to mobile.
While having a solid mobile experience should first impact measurable goals, you should also consider that by demonstrating best practices across mobile you will increase brand value and show leadership within your industry vertical. You need to treat mobile as a top priority, in fact as high and important as your website and landing pages.
Here are some things to consider when planning your mobile video strategy:
- Video experiences across desktop will always need to be unique to the device and screen resolution they are viewed on. A consistent experience is always a good thing, but think beyond “consistent” and create experiences that fit the viewing environment. From a page layout standpoint mobile should be different, but the video content you develop for mobile can also vary from what you are serving on desktop. To get the mobile video formula right may mean investing in a variety of devices that your customers use and testing usage patterns to make sure you’ve created the optimal experience.
- Don’t create a mobile video experience and walk away. Make sure to test often and optimize constantly, so you can assure that your video campaigns are having the most impact. A lot of companies fall trap to what’s known as “mobilization” which is not a mobile strategy. Mobilization means adapting existing websites and strategies to fit mobile devices. This is in most cases will solve basic web mobile needs but fall short when video comes into play. Instead focus on crafting strategies, content, and experiences that are uniquely meaningful and effective on mobile devices.
- Leverage technology as needed to enable successful delivery. Mobile can be complex and evolves quickly. So quickly in fact that it makes content creators, strategists, and marketers rely on technology to stay on top. Companies with product offerings designed specifically for delivering video on mobile make it really easy for non-technical people to create and launch video marketing campaigns that are mobile-optimized with little effort. Video marketing platforms make is really simple to get video integrated into your mobile strategies.
- Know when to build a native app versus an optimized web page. For example, if your company produces an annual event, you could create a mobile app to help build engagement across onsite attendees. Or an email marketing campaign that drives contacts to a landing page featuring a video. There are many advantages to consider with native apps based on your use case. Another example, if you are working with interactive video, you must use a native app, because web apps force video playback via the Quicktime iOS player and strip interactivity. Also consider that native apps apps offer the ability to engage the user in a two-way conversation with push notifications, access to advanced device capabilities, and most importantly, for marketers, deep integrations with the user’s personal data which can be tracked via marketing automation and CRM.
A successful mobile video strategy focuses on measuring, engaging, and converting viewers. Adopt technologies to help you be successful and uncover measurable ROI. Marketing value is a production of integrating web analytics, marketing automation and CRM platforms.
Finally, consider that the ultimate mobile video marketing strategy integrates both mobile website and native apps with such systems. Use the data provided to make intelligent marketing decisions as you follow identified users across devices and platforms along their journey.
