No matter what kind of business you own, video is a marketing trend you can’t afford to ignore if you want to create a successful experience for customers.

With live video becoming more popular on Facebook & Instagram & TikTok exploding into the newest social media video craze, people can’t resist short, engaging clips of everything from celebrities doing popular dances to their neighbor’s cat.

This popularity is only expected to continue—one study claims that in the next 2 years, online videos will make up more than 82% of consumer traffic. To put it mildly, if you aren’t using video content to educate, entertain & excite your leads & customers, you’re missing a huge opportunity to build relationships & create conversations surrounding your brand.

Video needs to be present at every stage in the Customer Value Journey to truly generate engagement. It’s the video testimonials from satisfied customers that you send out via email. It’s the animated explainer videos about your product that you show them after they sign up for a lead magnet.

It’s the “Hello” video you put on your homepage that explains who you are & what your business is all about.

But it all starts with generating awareness of your brand among customers…& that begins with including video in your Facebook ads.

Facebook ads are the easiest, most affordable way to introduce your brand to the widest possible online audience. For less than $1 a day, you can reach your ideal customers through targeted advertising direct at specific age groups, genders, interests, locations & other factors.

While creative uses of all types of Facebook ads can expand your audience, using video ads as an awareness strategy will unquestionably set you apart from the pack.

How Facebook Video Ads Work

First of all, here are some facts about Facebook video ads & why they can help your business.

In 2019, research revealed that Facebook users view as much as 16 minutes of video ads every month & have an 86% higher reach than static photos alone.

And that information was released a year ago. With more people staying home on their phones during 2020, we can only imagine what the newest data will look like.

The reason video Facebook ads work is that they catch people’s attention. They break up the stream of photos you see while scrolling through images of your friends’ pets, kids & what they all did during quarantine.

Their highly visual quality also makes them the most effective at telling the story that is necessary to draw people into your message.

Most importantly, video ads create more conversions. The data doesn’t lie: video ads not only receive 20% more clicks than images, but outperform them by 1200%.

At this point you might be thinking, “Gee, that sounds great…but I’m not a videographer & I’m not sure I have any videos of my product that qualify, or even the money to produce one.”

No worries. Facebook now has a tool that lets you create an animated slideshow of images & text. The movement will grab the attention of viewers & with some high-quality product photos, you can produce a video ad that is engaging & polished.

You don’t need expensive filming equipment or great directorial skills. This technique is easy to put into action & it works.

Unblush: Facebook Video Ads In Action

AMAG Pharmaceuticals was tackling a sensitive topic. It was the kind of thing that’s stigmatized, that you don’t discuss in mixed company.

But the US-based company wanted to create awareness of a women’s health condition in a way that would bring it into the open, creating empowering conversations & dialogue.

Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD) is a medical condition that causes decreased libido in women. 1 in 10 adult women suffer from it, but it is almost never publicly discussed. In an effort to change the conversation surrounding HSDD from shame to empowerment, AMAG created the Unblush campaign.

The goal of the campaign was to reach premenopausal women with educational information about HSDD & show them how to have informed conversations with health professionals to find treatment options & support.

However, AMAG had a problem. Despite HSDD being a common condition, most women have never actually heard of it, even if they were already experiencing its effects. Knowing that they would have to reach a wide range of women, AMAG chose Facebook video ads as the best way to cast a net among women between the ages of 25 & 49.

To grab their viewers’ attention, AMAG put together a series of short videos with clear, punchy messaging that immediately identifies the topic in a way that brings it into the open instead of shrouding it in discomfort.

For example, one video used colorful text with bright colors to state that 1 in 10 women are affected. The video worked together with the ad copy, which talks about HSDD & gives the context for the statistic, to deliver a quick message about the condition & link viewers to the Unblush website.

In the 2 months the Facebook video ad campaign ran, AMAG achieved amazing results. First, the ad achieved close to a 19 point lift in ad recall, a campaign metric that measures the number of people who remember seeing an ad.

It also reached an 8.2 point lift in driving conversations about HSDD among the target audience, leading to meaningful discussion about it as a result of women viewing the ad & commenting, liking, or sharing.

Overall, the campaign also achieved a 5.9 point lift toward HSDD awareness among their target audience—the ultimate goal of the campaign.

AMAG’s success with Unblush is a clear example of the impact Facebook video ads can have. The fact that the campaign dealt with a sensitive, often stigmatized topic & still created meaningful dialogue & awareness is a testament to how successful this strategy can be.

If it can work THAT well for a health condition that isn’t easy to discuss in mixed company, imagine what it could do for your product or service with the right engaging slideshow or footage.

How To Get Started

Facebook ads are an essential part of beginning your customer’s Value Journey with your brand. They create awareness, letting people who are presently complete strangers to your brand know that you exist & persuading them to engage with you further.

A strong ad campaign that uses video as the basis of its creative strategy can go a long way toward getting your name out there.

But just how good is your awareness strategy at present? More importantly, what’s your customer’s overall experience really like?

It is possible to have what you believe to be a dynamite marketing strategy…& yet completely miss the needs your customer has at each stage in their experience with your brand.

We put together a quiz to help you figure out exactly what your customer is experiencing with your brand right now so you can start making your strategy what it needs to be.

The Customer Adventure Score will show you how you match up in each stage of the Customer Value Journey & give you tips & resources on how to improve your results.

Click here to take the quiz!