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I’ve heard it said that attention is the most precious commodity there is: You can get more of almost any resource — even money — but you can’t get more time. And attention is a subset of time.
In the war to win over people’s attention, there’s an arms race of content. Brands used to be able to create a few commercials a year, but now they need 4,000 pieces of content per year. It’s not even enough to just post a few pictures per week. Now you need daily Instagram Stories. A veritable explosion of content is occurring before our eyes, elevating content requirements to an entirely new level. Content is no longer just a byproduct of brand advertising; it is oxygen for brands.
To stay in the race, a change needs to occur in how content is produced. Brands need fast, scalable and efficient ways to ship high volumes of quality content. Fortunately, technology and the democratization of creativity have provided brands with more modern and efficient methods of producing content for the scale of today.
Here are some efficient ways for brands to scale their content:
Work with Creators.
Creators are talented, versatile, and there are millions of them. Above all, they are affordable. Gone are the days of paying, at a minimum, tens of thousands of dollars for a single video. With Creators, static images can be produced for a few hundred dollars apiece and videos for less than a thousand. Commercial-quality work can be produced for a price that’s 10 times less than it used to be.
Born from social media, Creators are highly adept across social networks and skilled in creating mobile-first content. In a meta-analysis of campaigns, Facebook found that optimizing for mobile creative caused a:
• 27% lift in brand awareness
• 23% higher likelihood of driving message association
Beyond creating mobile-first content at the right price point, Creators can help adapt your brand to other audiences. Because they are power users and early adopters, they typically figure out social trends and new platforms first. When it comes to a new interactive sticker on Instagram Stories or a new social media channel like TikTok, tap a Creator for help! They’ve probably already played with it and know some tips and tricks.
Use software to manage scale.
A downside of working with Creators to produce content at scale is managing the logistics. Deadlines, communication and content requirements (to name a few) become increasingly difficult to track when working with more than a handful of creators manually. Imagine collecting the shipping addresses and ensuring receipt of product for even 30 individuals. With the right type of software, all of this can be automated and organized, saving brands hours of handling logistics and operations when really they should be focused on creating.
Creative has become the single most important differentiating factor in an ad campaign. Facebook recently said, “Despite all the data…about the changes in consumption that are happening in mobile, the one thing that hasn’t changed is that a provocative, meaningful idea is more important than ever.”
Since the price point for branded content has dropped, and targeting on social networks has become so granular, it’s now best practice to create different content types for each audience and message type.
Consider TOMS. They’re not just about good-looking shoes; they also have a purpose and mission to their brand. Using the network’s ad tools, they can specifically target consumers who care about their mission with mission-driven initiatives like “A Day Without Shoes,” where TOMS encouraged its community to go one day without shoes to build empathy for those in need. But for the segments motivated by their love of the look and feel of the shoes, or perhaps the price point, they need different content and messaging to match.
This only expands the need for more content further, making software an essential component of any content development strategy.
Test and learn with paid amplification.
Because content can be created at a lower price point, there’s more freedom to experiment. Brands should consider testing 100 pieces of content versus one highly-produced shoot. Think of content as a portfolio and remember, risk is usually proportional to reward. Experiment! Paid amplification through any of the social networks (depending on your strategy) is a hyper-controlled tactic to A/B test content quickly and effectively. Running multiple campaigns and evaluating your most engaging content helps brands to understand what resonates with their audiences.
What’s next?
The biggest creative challenges facing brands today are agility, speed and scale. In this war to win over people’s attention, it is a daily battle to develop fresh content, and you’ll need more every year. Technology has pioneered the Creator and facilitated new software to support rapid content development. The combination of Creators, software and paid amplification is an excellent solution to produce content that’s native to the medium and effective, yet low-cost and scalable.
Marketing is still a mix of art and science, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to it. But trust me on the content thing — you probably need more of it.
