Every year around this time, the Path to Purchase Institute hosts a 3 day event for the world’s largest gathering of shopper & retail marketing professionals. The role that social, mobile and WOM continues to play in the shopper journey continues to evolve and with the growing influencer of YouTube content creators, it is no surprise that influencer video played a role in this year’s event.
As the only influencer video platform delivering original content, audience reach on YouTube and ecommerce impact, it was no surprise that the Path to Purchase Institute invited, gen.video CEO, Bill Hildebolt to co-present with our client Hewlett Packard. HP has been a client of the gen.video platform for several years and has mastered the art of tapping into the creativity and expertise of influencers across different segments to develop a breadth of content that can support their various targeted marketing efforts. After all, the way a mom, college kid and tech enthusiast would talk about a laptop or tablet varies significantly. And the key is to ensure that the broad spectrum of potential customers can find the content they are looking for and even better if it is from someone like them.
Videos from YouTube content creators with similar needs bring to life product features and benefits with context, language and visual cues that help shoppers understand how a product fits into their life and solves needs.
Tech Enthusiasts
For PC buyers of all levels of Tech enthusiasts – parents, Millennials and the gadget lovers were all engaged to vary content mix for channel optimization
Students
For a high featured tech accessory, we might contrast different youthful students to show the breadth of appeal and use cases
Small Business
For a small business printer, we’re going to find people with offices & find women who run many small businesses and highlight convenience with less jargon
Family Oriented
For a tablet, we’re going to find families that have varied needs to show off the versatility and utility for people of all ages.
HP was able to successfully engage customers online, where product research begins, and increase credibility through authentic influencer videos. Key take-aways for any brand looking to embrace YouTube content creators to help amplify their story need to consider the following:
- Finding the right influencers and getting them to capture their experiences with the right context, language and visual cues that so that the video will appeal to specific consumer segments.
- Ensure the content strategy has legs. Don’t consider any influencer execution ‘over’ after the video is published to YouTube. How can you bring more value to your business and to shoppers by placing video in the ecommerce environment.
- And don’t forget about your website! Brand sites can also benefit from this content. Influencer video, when placed prominently on brand websites has been correlated with driving lifts in newsletter signups, sample requests and basket size for DTC enabled sites.
For HP, and many other brands leveraging the gen.video platform, influencer video has stepped in to aid the shopper for higher end products that historically required the consumer to “touch and feel” the product prior to purchase.
To hear about the full HP case study, please contact us.