RNIB: If you build it they will come – just possibly not very many of them

This post is intended as an overview of a speaker session at our charity event The modern charity: Using video to connect with current and potential supporters, which took place on 14 July 2016.

Lauren Garland, Social Media Manager and Julie Sander, Audio Visual Producer at RNIB gave a fascinating insight into their strategy, planning, distribution and results from two recent video productions.

• An ‘if you build it they will come’ mentality

• Not a lot of thought about why a film is needed and what they want it to achieve

• Lack of understanding about how social media has developed into a ‘pay to play’ system for brands.

• (We know this isn’t the case for all films…)

• To reach a cold audience to raise brand awareness

• To get people to act after watching or engaging with the film

• To get people to leave Facebook to take action.

This brand animation ties in with our values and develop our illustration style. We used our case study and studios plus shot real life footage ourselves and created something with impact that we could use in other ways. The video was made with social media in mind and the social media campaign was run in-house.

Social media

The aim was to trial video ads to see how we could use them to reach and convert a new audience. With a budget if £1,000, the primary goal was to raise brand awareness, with a secondary goal to grow new enewsletter subscribers

What we did

We promoted the film as a standalone piece of content without a strong CTA, and targeted a relevant cold audience with demographic, geographic and interest based targeting.

We also retargeted people who engaged with the film with a direct CTA to sign up to the enewsletter.

Results

• Organic

  • Reach 6k with 2.4k views

• Paid promotion to a cold audience (£800)

  • 124k reach with 69k views (1p per view)

  • 11.5k 30+ second views (7p per 30 second view)

• Retargeting people who engaged with the film (£50)

  • Reach 300

  • Clicks to website 44 (15% CTR)

  • Sign ups 18 (CPA £2.43)

Inspired by other brands to encourage engagement, we made this film in-house with real people affected by sight loss. This was a low budget production, with the aim to maximise use of the footage.

Social media

With a budget of £8,000, our aim was to improve how we use video to raise brand awareness on social media. The primary objective was to raise brand awareness and engagement, and secondary to encourage people to visit our website and find out more about our reading services.

What we did

Promote the film as a standalone piece of content, targeting a relevant cold audience with demographic, geographic and interest based targeting. Retarget people who had visited the reading pages on our website, and those who engaged with the film with a direct CTA to sign up to the enewsletter.

Results

Organic reach 19.6k with 4.2k views.

• Paid promotion to a cold audience (£5,000)

• 695k reach with 465k views (1p per view)

• 90k 30+ second views (6p per 30 second view)

Retargeting people who engaged with the film (£2,600).

• Reach 62k

• Clicks to website 3.5k

• 77% New Sessions

• 00:03:15 Average time on page

• Teams more likely to think about social media as part of their planning

• Increasing understanding of the importance of promotion

• More understanding of the potential of using video to get people to take action on social media

• We are asked to ‘make it go viral’ slightly less often…