Online and Offline Marketing: Should You Repurpose TV Ads?

When designing content for Facebook or running a YouTube video campaign, it might be tempting to reuse your existing TV ad and run it against your main audience.

Truth is, to actually drive action and get results out of your online marketing efforts, repurposing your TV ads just won’t cut it.

As these platforms become more expansive and the content becomes more targeted, you have to create a native, platform-first approach.

Read on to level up your digital marketing skills and knowledge.

Why Your Digital Channels Need Their Own Creative Strategies

Offline marketing strategies, including TV ads, can generate a long-lasting impression on consumers, nurture trust, and target people offline.

While it certainly offers a number of benefits, offline marketing does have its limitations, including limited reach, high production costs, and limited options in terms of tracking and measuring effectiveness.

Enter digital marketing.

In a nutshell, digital marketing lets you see real-time results and measure ROI using a variety of tools. Unlike most offline marketing strategies, it allows for a global reach, narrow targeting, and direct feedback from customers.

Digital is fantastic at amplifying and reinforcing key messages using different content and formats, but you need to remember that users behave differently on social platforms. This generally means that digital channels need their own, unique bottom-up creative strategies, formed independently of the offline creatives.

Video content is already a wonderful online marketing tool for increasing campaign reach, educating your audience, and fulfilling down-funnel roles – so make sure you are not falling behind.

YouTube ads, tutorials, product demonstrations, and video testimonials are just a few of the ways you can get started with a platform-first approach and leverage video in your digital marketing campaigns.

How Effective Video Content Really Is

Research shows that video content is a powerful storytelling medium that can have a tremendous impact on the success of your content marketing efforts and promotional campaigns.

In fact, here are a few key statistics you need to know:

• Every day, people watch over a billion hours of video content on YouTube, generating billions of views.

• 78% of online users watch videos online each week; 55% of those watch videos daily.

• Viewers say that they retain 95% of a message when obtained through a video.

• 87% of video marketers report that video gives them a positive ROI. 84% of them also say that video has been an effective tool for generating leads.

• 93% of brands landed a new customer because of a video on social media.

How to Create Powerful Digital Video Content

Producing video content for social platforms may seem intimidating if you’re just getting started, but it is much easier than you might think.

But before you get started with creating videos for digital, you will need to identify the best keyword opportunities.

If you’re using YouTube, you can use the platform’s autosuggest feature in the search bar, or you can use a keyword tool such as Ahrefs’ SERP feature filter.

To create a video that’s authentic and compelling you’ll also need to:

1. Identify your audience. Unlike TV ads, online video content allows you to really narrow down your target audience. Knowing and understanding your viewers will guide key decisions about your video content.
2.  Quickly hook viewers in. On social platforms such as Facebook, if you fail to grab the user’s attention in the first three seconds, chances are they will not stop scrolling, regardless of how clever your ad is.
3.  Make it good quality. Remember: good production quality and clear audio are essential for ensuring viewers stick with your video.
4.  Leverage the power of emotion. Essentially, emotions are what drives viewers to follow your call to action.
5.  Add a call to action. CTAs are arguably one of the most critical elements of any piece of content. A good video CTA is specific, aligned with the video’s goal, and is both verbal and visual.

Tune In to Your Audience

Ultimately, marketing is all about connecting with your audience at the right time, in the right place.

Repurposing your TV ads on social media may get you upper-funnel results such as increased awareness, but it will likely not drive enough action and click-throughs.

In this highly digitalized world, you need to design for Facebook and YouTube first because the way people act on those platforms is very different.

Ready to make engaging videos? Head to our blog and discover how to create an effective video marketing workflow that works for your brand.