We live in a world where everything is moving faster. People no longer have the patience for long-form content and are looking for short, digestible videos, preferably under 3 minutes.
Adopting a video marketing strategy that is based on short video content not only allows you to give your audience what they want but also helps you get across your message to them in a more effective manner.
But why is short video content better than traditional long-form content? Let’s assume you have an excellent blog post on your website about a particular feature or a product that you offer. The chances are that even if a particular set of your audience is intrigued by the content in the article, they might not read the entire thing. And this can happen due to a multitude of reasons including short attention spans, lack of time, etc.
The fact of the matter is, that the content that you painstakingly created is not being consumed by a section of your targeted audience. But, if you summarize the same article into a short video, the viewer is more likely to sit through the whole video, thereby increasing engagement.
What is Short Video Content?
Short video content is often defined as anything under 60 seconds in length. Short-form videos became popular thanks to social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Snapchat. It is fast-paced, emotional, and engaging. It can easily be distributed across multiple platforms, and the content style is addicting due to its short nature.
Humans have always been interested in watching small films without cuts, and as technology becomes more advanced, opportunities are expanding. Short videos also have an advantage over other long-form content in the amount of time and resources you put into creating videos.
Top brands in every industry have embraced short, easy-to-make content that is in line with the current social media trends while slowly phasing out long-form content with high production value.
What Platforms Can You Post Short Videos To?
Over the past couple of years, short video content has become a visual marketing trend that has caught the attention of all major social media platforms. Almost every social media platform worth its salt has a feature that lets you create and share short videos. Some platforms require a little bit more work than others to set up, and some will provide you with more exposure to your target market than others.
Let’s take a look at all the major social media platforms that allow us to post short video content.
TikTok has taken the world by storm since its release in 2016. This short-form video app is a social media sensation that allows users to create and share short videos, which can now be up to 10 minutes long. With over 2 billion downloads, TikTok is growing faster than social media giants like Facebook and Twitter.
With a host of new features designed to help brands increase their engagement, more and more businesses have hopped onto the platform to promote their products. Even with an explosion of brand presence on the platform, there’s plenty of room for brands to gain market share on TikTok. Getting on the platform right now is a great idea, as it allows your business to be an early adopter of a tool that drives ridiculous organic engagement and impressions.
Instagram Reels is a content format that allows you to create and share short, memorable videos. Unlike Instagram Stories, which disappear after 24 hours, Reels don’t time out.
It’s fair to consider Instagram Stories as the original short-video format on Instagram, and while there a plenty of ways to leverage Instagram Stories to drive traffic to your website, Reels offer way more functionality and opportunity for users.
The format has grown in popularity since its introduction, mainly due to its ability to drive massive amounts of organic traffic to your page. Brands like Sephora, Walmart, and Beardbrand regularly use Reels alongside their other short-video platforms.
The addicting nature of Instagram Reels makes it an excellent content style to pursue for brands. The platform empowers you to be creative, highlight your strengths, and design visually inspiring content up to 60 seconds in length. While other platforms allow you to do all of this, Instagram is still one of the best social media platforms on the market when it comes to deploying a video marketing strategy due to its maturity as a platform.
Not only does Instagram have access to a much larger userbase than its competitors, but there’s also tons of Instagram tools that can help facilitate the creation and publishing of your content on the platform. Many newer platforms like TikTok still lack the same third-party tools that make life easy for digital marketers on platforms like Instagram.
So, are Reels different from TikTok? Yes and no. Reels are usually much shorter, but does that make a lot of difference for content that’s already very short? Probably not.
The real difference between TikTok and Instagram reels is the platforms themselves. In Instagram, there is the need to be ‘grid worthy’. That is, you want your content to look good on your grid, and have a certain aesthetic appeal to it. TikTok on the other hand is a bit more ‘crazy friendly’ and allows you to explore the kind of content that wouldn’t normally work on Instagram.
So, you must have separate strategies for both platforms to be successful.
YouTube is the most relevant video platform in the world. No other platform comes even close. YouTube has 1.9 billion users, more than double the amount of the next largest video platform, Facebook. It is the second-largest search engine in the world after Google. YouTube also has the highest engagement rate of any video platform and accounts for just under half of all internet traffic. While Facebook has nearly three times as many users, its engagement rate is a fraction of that of YouTube, which has a staggering watch time of 100 minutes per day.
But a lot of that traffic was thanks to long-form videos which Youtube is generally popular for, but all that changed with the launch of Youtube shorts. Within a few months of its launch in India in September of 2020, the daily views accumulated by YouTube shorts zoomed past 6.5 billion. That number can only be higher now.
YouTube Shorts also has an advantage over Instagram and TikTok because they are apps mainly just used by younger consumers, which can make it hard for brands to find success. In contrast, YouTube is used by people from all sorts of age groups, countries, industries, and niches. It seems like there’s a video for everyone on YouTube. With YouTube Shorts, more brands will be able to give their content to an even wider range of audience targets.
For example, a B2B brand might have difficulty finding success on TikTok, but they might be able to find success with professionals looking for industry-related content on Shorts. Similarly, if you target older generation audiences (e.g. Gen X), your short-form videos would get more engagement on YouTube than on TikTok or Instagram.
It’s not uncommon for people to underestimate the power of Snapchat as a video marketing strategy tool because it’s thought of as a media-sharing app where you text with friends. You may have heard of this feature called “Spotlight,” where popular videos are curated and featured in a dedicated tab on the Snapchat app, much like on TikTok.
You can set this up to pull in users you follow who have posted a certain type of video, like a brand or a specific event. Then, you can choose to re-post the video to your story or not, depending on whether you think it’ll be of interest to your audience.
Snapchat’s user base allows brands to do promotions that are highly targeted and thus serves as a great platform to reach people that you wouldn’t have otherwise reached.
How Can Businesses Drive Traffic and Sales with Short Video?
With platforms competing for short video content, organic impressions and engagement are at all time highs for those that decide to post short video content. Brands can take advantage of this to drive more traffic and sales for their business.
Let’s go over some methods that you can use to drive more traffic and sales to your business with short video content.
1. Hire Influencers to Create Short Video Content
There are several benefits to hiring influencers to promote your business. People are visual learners and video allows you to communicate with them in a very powerful way.
Influencers allow you to add a human element to your brand, this is important considering that people trust people more than they trust brands.
Here’s things to keep in mind when using influencers:
They should create educational videos that attract people to your product. Content should be natural, and not overly promotional.
Influencers should grant you permission to redistribute thecontent, sometimes this is going to cost you a bit extra, but it’s well worth it.
You should have methods in place that allow you to track ROI of the influencer content, whether that be sales, website visits, signups, or more.
Provide them with an influencer campaign brief so that they are clear on the goal and objectives of your campaign. Confusion and misalignment between brands and influencers is the number one reason why campaigns fail to work out.
The videos should be a mixture of your brand identity and the influencer’s own identity. If you don’t have a brand identity yet, here is a checklist to help you establish one.
If you have any problems finding the right influencer for your brand, you can make use of an influencer marketplace, this will make the process of finding influencers for your brand much less time consuming.
2. Run Ads with Short Video Content
Using short video for your advertisements is an excellent way to drive traffic to your website. There are multiple benefits to paying for traffic, and video does an excellent job of capturing the attention of the users.
Short video content gives you more opportunity to capture the attention of an audience as opposed to static photo content. This can be accomplished by using a catchy hook, having a clear message, and choosing the right short video ad format.
Short video ad formats are broken down into three categories: skippable video ads, interactive video ads, and in-stream video ads. By choosing the right video ad format for your business, you’ll be able to create an effective video ad and will be able to track how effective your video is and convert them into customers
The most important tip we can give is to create an ad that is both interesting and relevant to your business. If your ad doesn’t have either of these traits, then it will not have the ability to get many views and clicks. These days, natural content seems to work best, so don’t try too hard to sell your product. Instead, let the product sell itself by showing off the most valuable aspects of the product.
A few things that make video ads particularly great are captions and fast cuts, these are both great ways to retain the attention of the viewer so that they watch the ad all the way through. There are plenty of web-based ad makers that can help you achieve this, which is great for people that lack the knowledge to use traditional video editing software like Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro.
Whether you are looking to get more traffic or want to increase your ROI, short video ads can also help you gain more organic traffic. When you use video ads, you’ll be able to get a higher click through rate (CTR). A higher CTR means that more people will be able to click on your ad or watch your video and then they’ll be able to go directly to your website.
3. Ask Your Customers to Create Short Video Content
Asking your customers to create short video content that serves as testimonials for your product is perhaps the most powerful tool you have at your disposal to reach the targets outlined in the video marketing strategy. Testimonials are easy enough to make for your customers because all they would need is some sort of video recording device and the ability to send the footage over to you.
The power of word-of-mouth has been so studied and documented that it’s scary. A study by MarketingSherpa found that customers were willing to spend up to 30% more on a product after reading positive reviews.
Another study found that customers were willing to spend 43% more when they were provided testimonials. Video testimonials are a powerful way to get your customers to speak up on your behalf. 94% of customers trust word-of-mouth referrals and 92% are more likely to trust a local business with a customer review.
A recent study found that customers are just as likely to trust a review from a stranger as from their friend. Video testimonials are the next best thing to a customer recommendation. The greatest benefit of video testimonials is that they build trust and credibility for your business. Testimonials tap into a deeply rooted psychological bias where we trust the opinion of people we know.
4. Add Short Video Testimonials and Product Videos to Your Website
Adding the short videos that you create to your website is a video marketing strategy that we can’t stress enough.
When customers are browsing around your website, there are a million questions or objections they have about your products. With a short video formatted as a TikTok, you can easily answer most common questions or objections in less than 60 seconds.
The reason short video formatted as a TikTok or Instagram Reel works especially good is because consumers are already familiar with this format because they browse content on those social platforms. When they see this style of content on your website, it provides comfort.
Explainer videos on the homepage of your website help reduce the burden on consumers of having to navigate to different sections of your website to learn about your product. The easier you make it for potential customers to learn about your product, the better it is.
Adding short video content to your website is an excellent way to handle objections and increase conversion rates. You can even leverage short video on your “about us” page to build trust.
5. Repost Your Short Video Content to all Social Media Platforms
There is no upside to publishing content and then doing so little with it afterward. If we can get more mileage out of the expensive content we create, our return on investment will only go up. That’s right — re-using your content will improve your entire video marketing program’s ROI.
Publishing a piece of short video content and then not redistributing it is a wasteful strategy. It’s like buying an expensive clothing item and only wearing it once before throwing it away. A huge part of content creation is repurposing content.
When you post a piece of short video content on TikTok, download the original and post it on YouTube shorts and Instagram Reels as well. Slice it up into smaller clips and use it as an ad creative. Find creative ways to re-use your short video content.
That’s a lot of traffic and conversions you have to give up if you let your content lay dormant on a blog or social media post, with no re-shares, links, or clicks.
Conclusion
Adding short videos to your video marketing strategy is an excellent way to increase traffic and engagement across your social media channels.
The different methods listed above show how there is no single method of leveraging short video content to drive more traffic for your business. Rather, there are multiple strategies that can help get your short video content in front of more people, and by constantly iterating and introducing new strategies you can make this an effective channel for your business.
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Cynthia Ramsaran is director of custom content at Third Door Media, publishers of Search Engine Land and MarTech. A multi-channel storyteller with over two decades of editorial/content marketing experience, Cynthia’s expertise spans the marketing, technology, finance, manufacturing and gaming industries. She was a writer/producer for CNBC.com and produced thought leadership for KPMG. Cynthia hails from Queens, NY and earned her Bachelor’s and MBA from St. John’s University.
In a groundbreaking alliance, Amazon and Hyundai have joined forces to reshape the automotive landscape, promising a revolutionary shift in how we buy, drive, and experience cars.
Imagine browsing for your dream car on Amazon, with the option to seamlessly purchase, pick up, or have it delivered—all within the familiar confines of the world’s largest online marketplace. Buckle up as we explore the potential impact of this monumental partnership and the transformation it heralds for the future of auto retail.
Driving Change Through Amazon’s Auto Revolution
Consider “Josh”, a tech-savvy professional with an affinity for efficiency. Faced with the tedious process of purchasing a new car, he stumbled upon Amazon’s automotive section. Intrigued by the prospect of a one-stop shopping experience, Josh decided to explore the Amazon-Hyundai collaboration.
The result?
A hassle-free online car purchase, personalized to his preferences, and delivered to his doorstep. Josh’s story is just a glimpse into the real-world impact of this game-changing partnership.
Bridging the Gap Between Convenience and Complexity
Traditional car buying is often marred by complexities, from navigating dealership lots to negotiating prices. The disconnect between the convenience consumers seek and the cumbersome process they endure has long been a pain point in the automotive industry. The need for a streamlined, customer-centric solution has never been more pressing.
Ecommerce Partnership Reshaping Auto Retail Dynamics
Enter Amazon and Hyundai’s new strategic partnership coming in 2024—an innovative solution poised to redefine the car-buying experience. The trio of key developments—Amazon becoming a virtual showroom, Hyundai embracing AWS for a digital makeover, and the integration of Alexa into next-gen vehicles—addresses the pain points with a holistic approach.
In 2024, auto dealers for the first time will be able to sell vehicles in Amazon’s U.S. store, and Hyundai will be the first brand available for customers to purchase.
This collaboration promises not just a transaction but a transformation in the way customers interact with, purchase, and engage with their vehicles.
Pedal to the Metal
Seamless Online Purchase:
Complete the entire transaction within the trusted Amazon platform.
Utilize familiar payment and financing options.
Opt for convenient pick-up or doorstep delivery.
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Alexa Integration in Next-Gen Vehicles:
Enjoy a hands-free, voice-controlled experience in Hyundai vehicles.
Access music, podcasts, reminders, and smart home controls effortlessly.
Stay connected with up-to-date traffic and weather information.
Driving into the Future
The Amazon-Hyundai collaboration is not just a partnership; it’s a revolution in motion. As we witness the fusion of e-commerce giant Amazon with automotive prowess of Hyundai, the potential impact on customer behavior is staggering.
The age-old challenges of car buying are met with a forward-thinking, customer-centric solution, paving the way for a new era in auto retail. From the comfort of your home to the driver’s seat, this partnership is set to redefine every step of the journey, promising a future where buying a car is as easy as ordering a package online.
Embrace the change, and witness the evolution of auto retail unfold before your eyes.
It’s no wonder that responsive search ads have steadily grown in popularity in recent years. Through Google’s machine learning capabilities, RSAs provide a powerful way to automate the testing of multiple headlines and descriptions to ensure a closer match to user intent. The benefits are clear: RSAs mean broader reach, better engagement, and improved performance metrics.
However, all these benefits come at a significant (but reasonable) cost – they can be extremely difficult to manage, especially when it comes to updating ad copy to promote limited time offers.
I know this firsthand – I work with several ecommerce clients with promotions that constantly change. Not too long ago, I found myself going through the consistently tedious process of updating a client’s RSA headlines and copy. As I was making the changes, I thought to myself: “There must be a better way to update this ad copy. I shouldn’t have to use find and replace so many times while pausing and enabling my ad campaigns.”
After expressing this to my colleague, Jordan Stambaugh, the two of us agreed there must be a better way. But we’d have to make it happen. A few weeks later, we put that idea into action and created a more efficient process for updating RSA ad copy on a scheduled basis. If you want to try this process for yourself, just keep reading.
Responsive Search Ad Customizers 101: Basic Options & Execution
Before diving into the process of scheduling automatic updates for your RSA customizers, it’s essential to understand some key Responsive Search Ad fundamentals.
First, you can customize three main options within RSAs: the Attribute Name, the Data Type, and the Account Value. Each of these plays a vital role in personalizing your ads:
Attribute Name: This is essentially the identifier for the customizer. It is how you’ll reference the specific piece of information you’re customizing within the ad. For instance, if you’re running a promotion, you might name an attribute “Promotion.”
Data Type: This indicates the kind of data the attribute represents and it determines how the information can be formatted and used within the ad. Common data types include Text (for plain, non-numeric text), Percent (to represent percentage discounts), Price (to denote monetary values), and Number (for any numerical value).
Account Value: This is the default value for the attribute that you set at the account level. It acts as a fallback if more specific values aren’t provided at the campaign or ad group level.
For example, if you wanted to promote a 10% off discount using RSAs, you’d use the “Discount” attribute, a data type of “Percent,” and an account value of “10% off.” Then, when someone is searching for products, Google would test automatically inserting a copy regarding a 10% off promotion into your ad.
Once you’ve set up the right customization options, you can start to format your RSAs with customizers.
Here’s how:
Start by typing in {
Click on Ad Customizer then select your attribute
Google will populate your attributes that are already uploaded
For a simple offer, use the “Default text” attribute as a catch-all. This will ensure your ads run smoothly if Google can’t pull the right messaging from your RSA feed
How to Schedule Your Ad Customizers with a Feed
Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s cover how to schedule your ad customizers.
Just follow this three step process:
1. Create the feed
Start by creating two sheets: The Parent sheet, and the Child sheet. The “Parent” sheet will act as the primary data source, while the child sheet will pull data from the parent sheet.
We’ll start by building the parent sheet. After opening the sheet, start by renaming the active tab to “Promotions.” Don’t skip this step, it’s crucial for referencing this range in formulas later on.
In your “Promotions” tab, head to the top row and label columns A, B, and C with the headers of your ad customizer attributes. For example, you might have “BrandSaleHeadline” as your attribute in column A, “text” as the Data Type in column B, and “Shop the Collection” as the Account Value in column C.
Once your headers are in place, move to cell C2. Here, you’ll input the expression =lookup(today(),F:G,E:E). This formula will play a key role in dynamically updating your RSA customizer based on the current date.
Next, go to columns E, F, and G, which will be used to manage your scheduling. In these columns, you’ll list out the different values your chosen attribute might take, alongside their corresponding start and end dates. For example, under the “BrandSaleHeadline” attribute, you might schedule various promotional headlines to appear during different sale periods throughout the year.
Here’s how your sheet might look:
Now look back at the first 3 columns on your sheet. They should look like this:
Now create a second sheet. We’ll call this sheet the Child sheet. It’s going to automatically pull in data from the parent sheet you just created, and will be the one you link to Google Ads later on.
Columns A, B and C will be almost identical to the child sheet, but we will be using a special formula later so we can automatically populate this. So, start by labeling Row 1 Column A “Attribute,” then the next column as “Data type,” then column C as “Account value.”
Then go to C2 and use this expression to populate the right account value from the parent document: =importrange(“[PARENT DOCUMENT URL HERE]”,”Promotions!C2″)
Your sheet should now look like this:
We recommend adding a date range with default text for any days you’re not running a promotion. In the example above, we have “Shop Our Collection” appearing as default text.
2. Input attributes
Once you have your feed created, the next step involves inputting your attributes into the Google Ads platform. This can be done either manually or through a bulk upload.
For the manual approach, navigate to “Tools & Settings” in your Google Ads interface, then go to ‘Setup’ followed by “Business Data.” Here, you’ll find an option for “Ad Customizer Attributes.” Click the plus sign to add your attributes. It’s crucial to use the same attribute names that you’ve established in your Parent Google Sheet template to ensure consistency and proper data synchronization.
Alternatively, if you prefer the bulk upload method, again head to “Tools & Settings.” This time, select “Bulk Actions” and then “Uploads.” For this process, you only need to upload columns A to C from your template.
Be aware that it might take some time for your uploaded attributes to be reflected in the business data section of Google Ads.
3. Set up an automatic schedule
At this point, you’ve almost finished scheduling your ad customizers. Navigate to Tools & Settings, then Bulk Actions, then Uploads, then click the Schedules tab at the top. Select your Child Google Sheet as the data source, and share your Google Sheet with the appropriate email.
And there you have it – Google will automatically pull in the data you populated in the sheets into your RSAs.
Common Challenges When Scheduling RSA Ad Customizers
When we test these sheets with our clients in the wild, we’ve uncovered five common challenges. Be on the lookout for these issues – solving them before they happen can save you a lot of trouble down the line.
Not scheduling your upload when the site changes
The first and most significant hurdle is the mismatch between the scheduled data upload and website content updates. For instance, if the Google Sheet is set to upload at 11 am, but the website changes occur at 3 pm, there’s going to be a discrepancy where the wrong message could be displayed for several hours, or new messaging could appear prematurely. Conversely, if the website updates happen before the scheduled sheet upload, outdated promotions might linger until the new data is imported. Synchronizing these schedules is crucial; it’s best to align them so updates occur simultaneously.
Skipping QA during a message change
Another pitfall is neglecting quality assurance (QA) during message updates. It’s vital to regularly check the business data section to verify that the correct values are in place post-update.
Issues with the IMPORTRANGE function
Then there’s the technical aspect of setting up the IMPORTRANGE function correctly in the Google Sheets template. The ‘child’ template must reliably pull data from the ‘parent’ sheet. If this function isn’t configured correctly, data won’t be imported as needed.
Not sharing access of the Google template for automatic uploads
Pay attention to your access permissions for the Google Sheets template. Google will prompt you with the email address that needs permission to access the ‘child’ sheet for automatic uploads. Overlooking the sharing of your sheet with this address will prevent the system from working.
Having date range gaps in your parent sheet
Lastly, a common oversight is leaving date range gaps in the ‘parent’ sheet. Every single date must be accounted for without overlaps. A practical tip is to have an ‘evergreen’ backup message ready, scheduled to run continuously, ideally through the end of the year, to cover any potential gaps.
Conclusion
Leveraging Google Sheets in conjunction with Google Ads to schedule RSA ad customizers is a game-changer for managing dynamic promotional content. This process not only streamlines your workflows but also ensures that your ads remain relevant and up-to-date, reflecting current promotions without the need for constant manual intervention.
By adopting this method, you’ll save significant time and effort, allowing you to focus more on strategy and less on the minutiae of ad copy updates. Give it a try and experience a more efficient way to manage your RSAs, keeping your campaigns fresh and engaging with minimal hassle.
![How to Schedule Ad Customizers for Google RSAs [2024]](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/How-to-Schedule-Ad-Customizers-for-Google-RSAs-2024.jpg "How to Schedule Ad Customizers for Google RSAs [2024]")
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