Welcome to the third stage of the Social Video Marketing Funnel! Over the past few weeks, we’ve explored the two upper-level stages – Awareness and Consideration.
Awareness is all about targeting massive audiences and gaining views by entertaining. Consideration, on the other hand, is all about educating those who are evaluating several brands.
Today, we’ll walk you through two of the most effective Conversion strategies on social video that will guarantee you to close more sales and increase ROI.
Conversions are all about gaining market share and pushing audiences over the line of sale. To do this, you’ll need to employ the right social video strategy and partner with unique influencers who specialize in closing sales. No more leaving inventory sitting in shopping carts!
See the four-part series:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversion
- Loyalty
Now, let’s explore two targeted strategies to Convert viewers to consumers on social video.
Objective: Utilize consumer insights that tie social audiences to real-world shopping behaviors to identify audiences who are ready to buy.
How to:
- Retarget those recently in the Consideration phase
- Uncover the highest shopping affinity that proves a track record of sales for your specific brand or product category
Signs of a leaky funnel:
- CTAs feel pushy because consumers haven’t been properly nurtured through Awareness and Consideration
Use Case: A fitness brand looking to drive sales
The goal here is not to reach massive audiences and drive Awareness. Nor is it educating viewers who are evaluating several brands. The goal here is to sell!
Influencers who are great at grabbing attention and entertaining the masses are not always the best salesmen, nor are influencers who are great at leaving lengthy opinionated product reviews. Some special influencers have a special talent that is priceless to marketers and that is driving sales.
Without the proper social media analytics, it is very difficult to spot these influencers. But with in-depth Consumer Insights, you can compare influencers to see which creators are driving proven ROI.
In this case study, we compare five different female fitness influencers using Tubular Intelligence and Consumer Insights to find out which are good choices at driving sales.
In the following graph, you can see Unique Viewers displayed on the vertical axis. Pamela Rief has the most at 4M while BodyFit By Amy has the least at just over 300k.
On the horizontal axis, you can see the likelihood of their audiences to shop for exercise & fitness products on Amazon compared to other audiences. While BodyFit By Amy has the least viewers, her audience is the most likely to actually shop! Alternatively, Chloe Ting’s massive audience of 2.75M is the least likely to shop at 3.2x.
Let’s weigh our partnership options:
We have influencers at both ends of the spectrum. Mega-creators like Chloe Ting and Pamela Reif would be excellent partnerships for increasing Awareness, while Abby Pollack and BodyFit By Amy are better saleswomen for fitness brands.
For Conversion, you have several great influencer options and it will depend on your unique company preferences. If you have a larger marketing budget and are willing to gamble on a little on a number of conversions, Whitney Simmons offers a solid balance of massive audiences of 3M matched with a high converting audience at 9.8x. However, if you have a tighter budget and targeting must be spot on Abby Pollock and BodyFit By Amy are your best bets to getting your return on investment.
Objective: Take a competitive angle by tracking your competitor’s partnerships and campaign performance so you can grow market share
How to:
- Uncover creators with audiences that make up a significant share of your competitor’s market
- Benchmark post-campaign success by changes in market share measurements
Signs of a leaky funnel:
- You continue to nurture the upper-level funnel when the object is to drive sales
- Marketers partner with creators their competitors have used, but without consumer behavior data there’s no way to know if the partnership actually drives sales
Celsius Gains Momentum in the Energy Drink Industry
If you don’t already know what Celsius is, it’s an energy drink that’s risen to popularity over the last year. Think of the canned drink like Red Bull’s health-conscious cool younger sister. So how did this young company rise above amidst the thousands of emerging drink brands that are just trying to make it and industry giants like Monster and Rockstar? The secret is in the strategy. Let’s see how they did it.
Celsius piggybacked on traditional industry marketing strategies while also employing new ones and defying standards on social video.
Piggybacking off traditional strategies
Most energy drink brands traditionally target male audiences interested in sports & gaming. Not surprisingly, the top 10 energy drink videos on social are made by male creators and pertain mostly to gaming and sports.
When we looked deeper into the audiences of massive energy drink brands, we found that Monster Energy and Red Bull both have social audiences that are 91% male. These brands are massively successful, so there’s no denying that targeting male sports-centric audiences works for energy drink brands.
In order to gain market share and win over consumers, Celsius needed to partner with the same or similar influencers who have represented these brands in the past.
With Tubular’s DealMaker tool, we can see that Celsius’ #1 partnership is comedian Theo Von. His sponsored videos featuring the drink have won the brand 10.3M Unique Views.
Theo Von is a great partnership choice – he is a young creator with a massive audience that is tied to traditional energy drink audiences. For example, our Audience Also Watches (AAW) tool shows that Theo Von’s audience is also watching creators like Joe Rogan. UFC commentator, Joe Rogan, shares 71% audience overlaps with Von. Not surprisingly, Von’s audience also has a 36% overlap with UFC.
These stats tell us that Von has a very similar audience to Joe Rogans, but he is a younger, perhaps more obtainable version for brands who may not want to shell out the big bucks for the infamous Rogan.
Theo Von is a great partnership choice – he is a young creator with a massive audience that is tied to traditional energy drink audiences. For example, our Audience Also Watches (AAW) tool shows that Theo Von’s audience is also watching creators like Joe Rogan. UFC commentator, Joe Rogan, shares 71% audience overlaps with Von. Not surprisingly, Von’s audience also has a 36% overlap with UFC.
These stats tell us that Von has a very similar audience to Joe Rogans, but he is a younger, perhaps more obtainable version for brands who may not want to shell out the big bucks for the infamous Rogan.
This has been a beneficial partnership for Celsius and a prime example of a piggybacking strategy. Fighting and the UFC are inherently tied to energy drink sales. Consumer Insights indicates that UFC viewers are 4.8 X more likely to shop for Monster energy drinks and 6.3x more likely to shop for sports drinks on Amazon.
By forming this partnership with Theo Von, Celsius has gained market share in the energy drink industry. But, because they are also a brand that prioritizes health, they appeal to more than just what we think of the traditional energy drink consumer base.
Beyond traditional consumers: Targeting women & fitness enthusiasts
Remember how we said our insights showed that Red Bull and Monster Energy have 91% male audiences? Well… Celsius’ audience is 54% female. This is not the norm for the energy drink industry. So how did Celsius target this untapped consumer base? Let’s dive into some of their partnership strategies!
Partnership with Fashion & Lifestyle TikToker
Tubular’s DealMaker tool lets you uncover who other companies are partnering with at the click of a button. We found out that the drink brand partnered with a Fashion & Lifestyle blogger named Alva Blomdahl.
Blomdahl is a smaller influencer with 300k followers. If you’re trying to break into new content categories, it’s often best practice to partner with a portfolio of micro-influencers because they are perceived as more authentic (and therefore are more trusted by consumers).
Alva Blomdahl’s sponsored video with Celsius won over 100k views on TikTok. The video is not a product review. Rather, the creator documents a day in her life where she shows herself waking up, getting dressed, and doing a home workout while drinking Celsius!
Partnership with UrMomAshely
A creator known as Ur Mom Ashley is also a paid sponsor of the Celsius energy drink. Her audience is 87% female. Ashley’s sponsored video is titled “*realistic* what i eat in a day! high protein + easy recipes, my fave workout, & more!”
In the video, she mentions that Celsius is her “go-to energy drink”. She follows by sharing her opinions on Celsius by discussing other healthy diet choices she makes on any given day along with her workout routine. So far, the videos reached almost 300k YouTube views.
These days, you don’t see most energy brands partnering with female fitness-oriented lifestyle bloggers. In fact, many young health-conscious consumers view the majority of energy drinks as unhealthy and filled with sugars and other artificial sweeteners. Celsius is disrupting this norm by positioning itself as the health-conscious energy drink brand — and it’s working.
Let’s review some of the key takeaways from Part 3 of our Social Video and the Marketing Funnel: Conversion.
Consideration KPI: Closing Sales
Strategies:
- Partner with influencers who excel at closing sales
- Retarget those in the Consideration phase
- Uncover the highest shopping affinity that proves a track record of sales
- Piggyback off successful marketing campaigns
- Uncover creators that speak to your competitor’s market
- Benchmark post-campaign success by changes in market share
Thanks for following along with our four-part Educational Guide to marketing funnel success accompanied by real-world marketing examples.
If you missed any of the past weeks, you can find them below:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversion
- Loyalty
Next week we reach the ultimate end goal of marketing efforts: Brand Loyalty!
If you want to unlock insights from all four stages today, download the full report here: Social Video Funnel Optimization: Your Educational Guide to Success.
If you’re interested in staying on the pulse of culture through social video’s single source of truth, it’s time to request a free demo of Tubular. Click below to unlock social in a whole new way.