Facebook has become a prime platform for video advertising over the past year due to their introduction of auto play videos. This will greatly benefit companies, especially small businesses, as it provides an opportunity for large scale marketing.

How Video Advertising on Facebook can benefit your business.

There has been a “50% growth on video viewings on Facebook” according to this Facebook for businesses page, this is 7.75% of the global digital advertising market when put into context, which has provided an opportunity for businesses to take advantage of this, and use this platform often for their advertising. Facebook states that videos uploaded directly to the site , are more successful than linking to YouTube or Vimeo accounts in terms of views. It seems dedicating time to creating video content for Facebook individually, is a beneficial manoeuvre.

According to Sandberg in this article, there are “30 million small business pages on Facebook” and 1 million of these small businesses use Facebook to advertise; this is about half of the total number of active Facebook advertisers. These statistics show that many small businesses are already using Facebook to its full potential to promote themselves, however, many are still not taking advantage of this.

What she specifically mentions is how “more than 1 million small business owners have posted videos to Facebook” and that she doesn’t “think there are probably 1 million advertisers who have bought TV ads in the same time”. Due to the cost, Facebook allows much cheaper advertising whilst providing the ability to reach a wider range of audiences.

Within this ICN article, ‘industry observers’ also agreed that “video and other forms of multi-media advertising are indeed the future for small businesses through low-cost channels like Google and Facebook”. It seems both video, and the ability to post this video on social media, is the most beneficial for business in multiple ways: cost, efficiency and availability.

What was successful over the past year?

Ad Week has created an article exploring the most successful Facebook video adverts over the past year. Amongst the top videos is LOT Polish Airline’s #KISSaLOT campaign which was targeted at people in different cities when planes were on route. This resulted in $300,000 worth of “free media thanks to the attention from blogs, and likes and shares on Facebook”.

In addition to this, Kia Motors created ‘GT Ride – Viral Gaming for Kia’ where Kia created a car racing video game where players built their own virtual racetracks. After their video was released, the app was downloaded 180,000 times and meant 250,000 racing games were played; this shows the immense scale of businesses that can be utilising the Facebook platform for advertising.

Tips to optimise video advertising on Facebook

In order to optimise the success of a business’s videos on Facebook, there are methods that one can use to do this:

Facebook itself explains how you can improve the efficiency of your video when obtaining views, by optimising who your footage is targeted at; Facebook will then distribute the video effectively. You can do this by changing the ‘video views objective’ so that the video is shown to those most likely to watch it.

Additionally, this article mentions the “3 second rule” whereby a video automatically plays as a user scrolls through the newsfeed, however, you have 3 seconds to make your video eye-catching before they scroll past it; It is important to make the video visually pleasing as the auto-play feature does not include sound.

Just like any viral video, the most successful videos on Facebook are those that gauge an emotional response, through authenticity and story-telling rather than just explicitly selling the business. It would be beneficial to create a narrow list of aims you wish to achieve so as not to overwhelm audiences.

Another way to establish more conversion, is by integrating a ‘call to action’; the CTA is a method of telling people what to do, such as ‘keep watching to learn more’ or ‘click the link to buy these items’, encouraging future engagement.

It is important for a business to utilise the online advertising services on offer and to do the most it can to promote the videos themselves on other social media platforms (for example, Twitter, YouTube and Vimeo), not just on Facebook; this will all compile together and assist in the growth of a business, ultimately providing more audience engagement and awareness, equating in wider success.

Sources

http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/here-are-12-best-facebook-marketing-campaigns-last-year-165332

https://m.facebook.com/business/a/video-ads-on-Facebook?campaign_id=1394943474141816&creative=NonNative_1

http://www.inc.com/jeremy-quittner-small-business-future-is-in-video-advertising.html%20

http://www.inc.com/jeremy-quittner-small-business-future-is-in-video-advertising.html%20

http://adespresso.com/academy/blog/5-tips-increase-conversions-facebook-video-ads/

https://pixabay.com/en/facebook-system-network-news-140903/

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Facebook_like_thumb.png

http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/facebook-advertising-statistics/2/