Succeeding On Social Video Amid Economic Uncertainty

Inflation, supply chain issues, gas price increases and more are fueling economic uncertainty worldwide. For businesses, that means taking a long hard look at budgets, to determine what’s making an impact on the bottom line, and how to reallocate resources to get the most out of content for customer acquisition.

Before social video winds up in your crosshairs, though, it’s worth considering how these platforms offer unique ways to drive organic content without real spend – unlike traditional advertising, which costs more just like everything else today. But even without ad spend, brands can still make data-driven decisions around social content that increase both accuracy and impact. How?

Assess (And Reduce) Creator Risk

Surface-level social metrics like views and subscribers can conflate the actual value of a creator’s audience and their power to influence viewer behavior. Many times, those with large subscriber counts have less influence over audience tendencies and shopping interests than micro-influencers speaking to a smaller and more intimate group.

By digging deeper into audience behavior and composition data beyond just views, you can uncover most likely shoppers and shopping-to-views correlation, and determine unique viewers and watch-time. All told, these metrics grant a greater understanding of how many people are actually watching, for how long AND what they’re doing after watching. 

If marketers know that 15% of one creator’s audience is shopping for their product on Amazon after watching a video, perhaps that base is already covered (without spending a dime!). Meanwhile, if you know another creator sees 12% of their viewers’ shopping for your competitor after, that’s an opportunity to deposition them with that audience.

Seeing how content spurs shopping behavior also better informs both existing partnerships and your own assets on social videos. If your brand has been creating one type of video and it’s not generating shopping behaviors, then it’s time to change things up. Knowing an existing influencer partner fueling shopping (and buying) could mean it’s time to double down there.

User-Generated Community

Paying creators can get just as costly as traditional advertising at times. And while there’s definite value in those cultivated viewer communities, staying on top of budding trends can tie your brand into actions that generate unpaid user-generated video.

Enticing audience engagement in the form of content creation potentially generates thousands of videos that can be reshared as organic content with genuine customer validation of your brand. One recent example of this phenomenon is Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizza the Musical, which aimed to combine the star power of Dolly Parton and Doja Cat with user submissions for a TikTok performance propping up the QSR brand.

While Taco Bell has postponed the musical for the time being, the spirit of the engagement strategy remains. Brands can spend little to solicit user-generated content, and then reap the rewards while consumers benefit as well – whether that’s in the form of social media fame, free giveaways, or being part of an online movement they’re passionate about (and that ultimately ties to your brand).

Keep An Eye On The Competition

Monitoring your competition allows you to make educated budgetary decisions in the year to come. Knowing where and how they’re active on social video allows your brand to prioritize (or deprioritize) specific partnerships or content approaches completely.

• Competitors heavy on influencer marketing? Identify similar creators with niche audiences that can provide similar (or better) impact on sales.

• Already seeing the space saturated with certain types of content, viral trends or giveaway methods? Scope the market to see if there’s enough juice left for it to be worth the squeeze for your brand, too.

• Finding that your competitors aren’t especially active? Look into why. Are they short on budget, or not as informed on social video data? Either way, that’s an opportunity for your brand to respond to engage with audiences and build communities.

Times like these can seem imposing for all parts of your business. But planning ahead, staying agile and arming yourself with valuable data points can generate meaningful returns.