On Sundays, I spend some time on Quora. Last week when I was there, I saw an ad from Ultratech cement. A video embedded from their YouTube channel with a nice description that explains the ad – optimised for native feed consumption.
No “buy now” CTA, no offer messages, not asking for any other forced action. The humble video play button was there for you to click on it, just to make you watch the video.
I have talked about the state of the online ads space earlier here where it stands. Enough has been talked about those intrusive, buy now, online ads. Let’s skip the ads part and talk about how Ultratech cement is doing fantastic marketing by putting video content as its primary marketing element.
Coming back to the display ad on Quora, let’s see what happens when someone watches the video through ads. When their target audience is looking forward to building their house or repairing their house and is working on related activities buying land, waterproofing, selecting steel, construction supervising tips, choosing good bricks, and so on. It is a good idea to put out content that caters to all the above requirements of their target audience.
If you play the video, there is nil or little messaging about Ultratech, it does this, it does that. Focused on building trust and brand affinity by helping their audience know a few things where their product subtly plays a role.
Let us assume you are the target audience, you’d have consumed their videos a few times(through ads or organic on YouTube), and you might be interested in checking out their channel. Not only that, because of the type of content there in the channel you’d like to not miss out on any other videos they publish, so you stay subscribed. The videos cater for a wide variety of questions a home builder will have.
Now, you stay subscribed, you consume more videos from them all that is fine. One day you decided to visit their website. There, to your surprise, the entire website is focused on you. Given the segment, this is not a small thing. End of the day, your audience (who is an individual, building his home) is going to buy from the nearest hardware/tiles/cement shop.
The idea is to make your audience ask for “Ultratech cement”
The website addresses more of your questions. It is categorised well with further content and How-to videos from YouTube integrated into the website nicely.
That’s not all, there are more – Addressing many of the stakeholders in the process of building a house. Also, retail sales are only a percentage of the total sales, there are bulk sales to concrete plants, sales to home construction contractors, sales to big infrastructure contracts, etc.,
Educating your audience is the opportunity of the decade.
And, it looks like Ultratech is at the forefront of marketing in the segment especially when it comes to retail.
Coming back to the video channel, the videos generate comments that help further to create different videos. When their audience asks a question or engages in a discussion, you know you are in the right direction.
As Rand Fishkin puts and I second it,
Marketing functions best when it’s a cohesive, strategic, thought thorough process.
If we look further at their channel they have videos in many languages, catering to all their target geography. Their website also has the option to see content in different languages.
There is one thing I’d like to see changed, separate video channels for each language. Because language functions mostly subconsciously. In general, the moment a layman sees the content in his language he is most likely going to engage with it. On the other side when the same person sees the video thumbnail in a language he doesn’t understand, it gets out of his consideration instantly.
What happens when he sees many languages in one channel and he has to look for the language he wants to consume? Remember, he took the effort to visit your channel from his video feed or through the ads you have put up. He might feel cheated and likely he is going to go back.
On the other side, what happens when the same person sees the thumbnail in his language? Immediately he scans for the video that interests him. he goes to the next step. The language part is getting out of the way. This is big friction I see and that’s why recommend a separate video channel for each language like what Groww did {I have written about them in Newsletter no: 21}.
It takes time to build a huge content repository that works for your brand for the years to come. It gets built slowly but when it gets built it works nicely. Today, Ultratech has 1000+ videos in their channel talking to their audience and building brand affinity. They uploaded their first video on 18th February 2013. Today, what we have seen is 9 years of consistency.
There is a huge difference between leveraging online platforms for online sales and leveraging online platforms for offline sales. The case of Ultratech is an amazing marketing approach to making offline sales using online platforms, effectively.
It is going to be increasingly important,
Your content and your rate of audience acquisition.
