5 reasons why to use film in your marketing campaigns

Reasons you should use film in marketing campaigns are clear.

It has long been recognised that film and video are an excellent way to engage consumers. Our appetite globally for tv and moving picture through film and YouTube is staggering. Every marketer would love to be the driving force behind the ad campaign that everyone recognises world over.

What is overwhelmingly apparent in our world of today is that the ‘recipe’ for a global viral hit is not necessarily the same as you would have specified ten years ago. There are, as with any creative success, some guidelines and parameters which make the end result more likely to succeed. To coin a Stephen R. Covey phrase ‘start with the end in mind’. In simple terms, what is it what video / film can do for you and your business?

Here are 5 benefits of using film in marketing campaigns.

1. Get your point across quickly

The stats on how much quicker people absorb information from film are staggering. People have an appetite for fast information, everyone is busy, no one wants to wait too long for anything. Film enables you to quench this thirst, to tell a story and to deliver your message in the shortest possible time.

2. Leverage context

The context of the information you are sharing is important to the relevance to the viewer. Moving picture enables you to set context visually and aurally without relying so heavily on understanding, translation and imagination. Film makes it easier for you. To show the viewer that your message relates to them.

3. Stimulate emotion

Most, if not all, successful campaigns, films, books and music strike an emotive chord within people. The basic nature of film enables you to create suspense, drama, aspiration and many other emotions which you wish to associate with your product or brand. People buy because they are made to feel a certain way. Using film enables you to enhance that emotion in ways other media cannot.

4. Heighten engagement

Trying to pull the kids away from the TV is the easiest analogy to describe engagement brought about by film. Lifting ones head away from an engrossing book or magazine article is fairly easy by comparison. You can mark where you left off with the simple positioning of a thumb or finger, react to whatever has stimulated you and then revert back. Film’s different. Yes you can hit pause but you’re unlikely to do that in the middle of a scene. There’s a fear that you might miss something. Using film enables you to increase that engagement with your target audience.

5. Increase ‘share power’

Social media has brought about ‘likes’ and ‘shares’. Not only are these measures of the stickiness of your content but now they also affect your rank on search engines. You only need to look at your Facebook feed or which virals have been most successful to realise film is an intrinsic part of virality. It is also evidenced that film embedded into email marketing significantly increases click through rates.

Summary

It’s clear that video/film is an essential part of today’s marketing mix. What is less clear is how you should apportion budgets. We would recommend that you make as much budget as is physically available for film. Without it, your message and brand will get lost in the vast stocks of content available at the click of a button. Without film, you just won’t be as memorable as those who do use it. There’s a further point too.

If you are using or intend to use film in your marketing campaigns, you need to ensure the quality is reflective of the quality of your brand. Viewers will make judgements, both consciously and sub-consciously, about your products and brand based on the quality of your film. Put back those marginal improvements on other areas of your marketing mix and invest your budget in video. Do it right and you’ll never look back.

By Ryan Mullins

Google hack – how to achieve page 1 ranking

How do you get your website onto page 1 on google and other search engines?

The secret to achieving a Google page 1 ranking

Achieving a Google search page 1 ranking has swiftly become the Holy Grail for online businesses—after all, how many punters ever bother to go onto the second page of a search? And reaching this nirvana has spawned a whole new industry of SEO consultants and experts who would have you believe there is some arcane and complex magic for nudging your way up the search results.

But…getting onto page 1 for a Google search isn’t difficult at all!

Yes—that’s true, despite what SEO and internet gurus might have you believe. It’s simply a matter of following a specific formula and being mindful of competition for the phrases you want to rank for. And we’re willing to share the secret with you, so you can reconfigure your pages to achieve the Google, Bing or Yahoo search ranking you want.

Just a word before you start…

Take this example: a local insurance broker approached us and said, “We want to appear on page 1 of Google.”

We asked them what search term they wanted to achieve page 1 for.

“Insurance!” they said, naturally enough.

We had to ask, “How deep are your pockets?”

With the pressure of online competition, not deep enough! And this is the root of the problem. This company, by wanting to rank on page 1 for “insurance” was setting itself up in competition with all the hundreds of thousands of other insurance companies all over the world. And although “insurance” is an applicable search term for this small local business, it does nothing to set them apart from the rest of the competition.

The problem is, how do you rank on page 1 without diluting your message?

It’s all to do with the search terms you choose. If you pick a high competition key phrase that attracts a huge volume of searches, you’ll find it nigh on impossible to achieve a page 1 rank on Google or any of the other search engines. Not totally impossible—but if you do get to the top, your competitors will be snapping at your heels and you’ll find it incredibly difficult to maintain your position.

So how can you achieve a page 1 ranking?

Here’s our guide to raising your page up the search engine ranks.

Research your keywords to differentiate your business. For example, if you’re an insurance broker in Bedford, specialising in commercial risks, don’t attempt to be page 1 for “insurance”. You’ll be better served by ranking for “commercial insurance Bedford”.
Understand search volumes. Once you’ve identified some possible search phrases for your business, you need to be mindful of how many people are using them. After all, being number 1 for a phrase that nobody is using isn’t going to make you particularly discoverable.
Identify your site’s key pages. There will be certain pages on your site that are valuable to you and your customers. You need to know which pages these are and what information your visitors are looking for. Use analytics to identify your top ranking pages.
Optimise your site to make it easier for Google to read. Google isn’t human and it needs information to be configured in a specific way in order to find it. If you leave out what it’s looking for, your pages won’t rank. Every single page needs to contain the following information:

Key phrases that are specific to the page
META Title – this needs to contain the key phrase(s)
URL – must contain the key phrase(s)
META Description – also needs to contain the key phrase(s)
The first, second and final paragraphs must all feature the key phrase(s)

If this still seems a little daunting or if you simply haven’t the time to review all the pages on your site, we can help you to gain a page 1 ranking for Google and other search engines, such as Bing and Yahoo. Our first step is to assess your site and make a recommendation on how much work will be required. Then you can decide whether you’d like us to transform your search engine rankings.