How to make the most of video on mobile

This article is about; well you guessed it, video. I'm a massive fan of multimedia, and any form of combining text, audio, still images, animation, interactive content forms and most importantly, video.

The Chairman of the Newspaper Association of America stated "as newspaper penetration falls... the culture itself moves from textual to visual literacy".

Wikipedia will tell you that "video recorders were sold for $50,000 in 1956, and videotapes cost $300 per one-hour reel". That's a barrier to entry right there.

It's no surprise that advances in technology have eliminated (nearly) all barriers and allowed, practically anyone, to capture, store, edit and transmit video clips from multiple devices to each and everyone.

Combining the lowered cost of production with the rise and availability of multiple platforms and channels, it's clear that video is ripe with possibilities. 

These days when getting noticed is a difficult achievement amongst the plethora of highly competitive marketing campaigns, first impressions are critical for success.  

In a brief summary from a presentation I viewed last week by John Speers, DDI:

There is simply no better way to improve your communication or content than to embrace the power of the visual. The brain deciphers images simultaneously, while language is decoded in a linear, sequential manner. Content must be highly visual based, quality visuals that are borne out of strategic integrity, executed brilliantly and imbued with the brand's values. 

The same presentation references some supporting numbers from WARC, 2013:

• Marketers using video in email campaigns generate 40% higher revenue, 55% higher click throughs, 44% greater time engaged and a 41% increase in forwarding.
• 25% of global internet traffic by 2014 will be mobile.
• "Rich media is the key to engaging, immersive brand experiences with significantly more positive opinion to interactive ads, permitting a deeper brand-to- consumer conversation, which leads to a longer dwell time, 31% more." (InMobi).

All the stats floating around the internet about video are on graphs that point north, particularly combined with the penetration of mobile. 

With video consumption on mobile going through the roof, by tomorrow it will be too late as video advertising across all platforms becomes the norm and your audience suffers complete saturation, so get on it now and capitalise on early mover advantage.

My advice is to be timely, narrow your target, use whatever CRM data matching is possible, be relevant, put the creative in context, offer an immersive and engaging experience, measure against your business objectives and use analytics and insights in each campaign to evaluate and direct your next steps.

Now the problem with my advice, and the 'nearly - all barriers' I mentioned before, is the challenges I undoubtedly share with you: video at a commercial level costs money, and quality production takes time.

So to practise what I preach, I'm going to tackle my video objectives in several progressive steps. If you have some constructive advice for me on this approach, then I'm all ears. 

The company I work for sells tyres, the ultimate consumer grudge purchase. My marketing audience is anyone with a car, the average tyre replacement is 3.2 years and at any given time, only 3% of the population needs new tyres on their passenger vehicle.  

I market a product that everyone needs but no one is interested in, it's competitive and difficult to get cut through. The consumer market is down, profits are declining and internal austerity measures are in place. Oh, and I want to create video and capitalise on the explosion of mobile. 

Our biggest competitive advantage is that we sell tyres online and facilitate fitment. So let's start with targeting our entire audience and explain the situation in a real life example.

To reduce the expense, the actors are staff and a team of one produced it.

Once this was done I wanted a different video that highlighted customer pain points and would receive more traction on email and display advertising, particularly mobile.

So through an awesome company I found, right here on Econsultancy, I hit 87 Seconds up on twitter, skyped them, agreed on the project, and then had a video produced in Belgium, from my desk in Sydney, exactly how I wanted it, from start to finish in several weeks.

This was done even more cheaply than the 'real life' video. 

As an aside the team at 87 Seconds are great and they get video. The company's named for the optimal time for a product video to run, and even though we were literally half a world apart, their use of interactive briefing and reviewing tools meant that turnaround times were perfect.

To get more money from the bean counters, you need to prove something works, so my plan is to have more budgets allocated to video, so I can push video options out to all devices. Capitalising on cheap mobile advertising currently in the market, I know I can get clicks through to our mobile optimised site for a CPC of less than 30cents.  

So why not inform, pitch, sell, and explain my business in a nutshell, in 87 Seconds, "the perfect time to make the best impact on your audience."

I may have to do some more work and look at all the new ad formats including pre-roll, multi-selector pre-roll, interactive, click to rich, overlays, interstitial, calls-to-action, choose your own adventure and social sharing buttons to ensure I drive post-play interaction. This will be done in a week. 

My team will be simultaneously repurposing videos for niche audience groups, attempting a viral video, adding internally produced video content to our store pages, watermarking videos that will get traction, encouraging UGC videos that we edit and brand for distribution and engagement.  All at low cost until more money is provided. 

If this works and I get a great ROI, then I will try tablet only creatives, start targeting and promoting specific messages based on segmentation, personalisation and localisation. My goal is to use video and mobile as a key ingredient to building our brand. Personally I am a video novice, but I believe in it, so I'm going to become well educated and make it happen. 

I am not just here to offer advice, I'm not afraid of my own ignorance so feel free to point me the direction of getting the most out of video on mobile, especially in times of internal financial scarcity.