Digital-first publishers around the world have a difficult challenge: they must continuously prove the effectiveness and ROI of their content across brand partnerships.
Not only are they competing with traditional legacy publishers, but they’re also working in a world where there’s currently no measurement standards for video, a key component of social media strategy.
Electric House knows these struggles first-hand, but has found success with many sponsored content campaigns thanks to data-informed decisions and passionate niche communities.
The UK-based publisher creates, produces, and distributes content across its online communities, including its two distinct properties On The Tools and On A Budget. These represent, cumulatively, the household warriors of the UK:
- On the Tools is the largest online construction-based community in the country, and the go-to place for builders and tradespeople to find entertainment, engagement, and industry news.
- On a Budget is a social community for problem solvers and money savers. The On a Budget network helps members save time and money and offer a safe space to learn and share new ideas.
By relying on Tubular’s video intelligence and analytics platform, Electric House has been able to unlock transformative value to progress its business plans.
Electric House CEO Lee Wilcox talked to Tubular about how data has helped Electric House demonstrate to brands why they should work with his company on branded content campaigns across their social communities.
The insights Wilcox provided can help any publisher looking to use a data-driven approach to customer acquisition and delivering value for brand partners. Read on to find out how!
Embrace That Audience Data Is Key in Brand Partnerships
In 2019, Electric House’s On The Tools community was ranked #26 across all UK Facebook publishers and genres. This ranking proves there’s an audience of tradespeople who love engaging with the publisher’s content, and this statistic is one of many which helps to open doors to brand partnerships.
So what is it that makes On The Tools so special?
This is where the publisher pulls segmented audience data to prove that if brands work with Electric House, they’ll truly reach a passionate group of UK tradespeople.
For example, last year On The Tools had the highest percentage of UK audience viewership compared to other UK media giants at a solid 42.1%. If advertisers and brands want to reach a largely male audience, they don’t have to look any further than Electric House.
From this data, it’s clear why brands looking to reach a UK-based audience of tradespeople would pick Electric House for brand partnerships.
“Harnessing the power of analytics to drive forward social media strategies and campaigns for our clients is a vital ingredient to the success of our business,” said Lee Wilcox, CEO of Electric House.
“With so many data points available, it’s really important to us that we understand what works and what can deliver value to our customers.”
Lee added: “The data and insights we are able to obtain via the Tubular platform not only helps us prove effectiveness post-activity, but also works strongly as a sales tool to help us attract and win new business.”
Put Data into Practice: McDonald’s and Electric House’s Success
Electric House used these stats to win new business with McDonald’s UK. In January 2019, the fast-food brand teamed with Electric House to create feel-good social content that not only demonstrated the role its Breakfast Menu plays in tradespeople’s lives, but also conveyed the breadth of breakfast options available.
Using Tubular Labs data from recent successful videos, Electric House were able to confidently judge the most impactful narrative, shooting style, and run time in order to best appeal to the target audience.
Using these insights, the company delivered a thumb-stopping piece of branded content that showed a construction worker at the McDonald’s drive-thru taking on different celebrity impressions (everyone from Family Guy‘s Stewie to Arnold Schwarzenegger!) to order a variety of McDonald’s breakfasts for him and both his colleagues.
The video earned over 6.8M views on Facebook to become the #1 piece of McDonald’s UK branded partner content for 2019, and the 4th most-viewed piece of branded content on Facebook out of all UK entertainment publishers for the year.
The humor and subject matter transcended beyond the construction industry, resulting in 101K shares and McDonald’s UK posting it to their own Facebook Page, too.
Use Data to Create Shockingly Good Sponsored Content
Once Electric House demonstrates the power of its online communities to potential brand partners through data, both parties can move forward confidently with creating sponsored content that gets results, like they did with McDonald’s.
This strategy worked well for Electric House the rest of 2019, as well. The publisher was 2nd for sponsored content views across all UK-based Facebook channels via the On The Tools community. This content earned all its brand partnerships a whopping 93.8M total views!
Through data, Electric House also proves the long-term performance of its sponsored content. For example, the publisher’s videos on average do 2.9x better than sponsored clips by UK entertainment creators as well as the general UK market. The average 30-day view count (V30) of Electric House content lands at around 350K vs. just ~110K from entertainment publishers.
It’s success metrics like this that helped Electric House land the UK’s fourth most-watched Facebook sponsored content campaign of 2019 with On The Tools, as well as claim two of the top 10 most-watched sponsored videos on Facebook in the UK across the media & entertainment genre.
“My advice for anyone working in the media space would be to consider the data points you have available to you, and take the time to invest in those that work and deliver you results, like we have done with Tubular,” Lee said.
Curious to see how another publisher lands approaches brand partnerships?