Make more videos now. Your customers are watching social video like it’s no one’s business and you could be missing out. Facebook and Snapchat have both surpassed 8 billion daily video views and YouTube’s 1 billion-plus users are watching hundreds of millions of hours of online video every day.
We are now far from the days when social media marketers viewed video and YouTube as a small piece of their content marketing strategy. No matter what you sell, no matter what you do, if you don’t have a strong video marketing strategy set in place, you are behind the times.
When it comes to food videos people are obsessed. Food is life and everyone enjoys a good food video. But you have to do it right. There is a ton of opportunity in the CPG food space to create cool, fun content that provides entertainment and educational value for consumers. Here are three basic tips to making the most of social video content for your CPG food brand:
Food startups always have the best stories. Even the biggest CPG food brands had humble beginnings with cool stories about an old family recipe or an awesome idea blowing up. Consumers, especially millennials, love to hear the “why” behind a brand and see the people behind the products.
When you tell your founding story through social video you get to share with your audience why and how you started your company and your brand. Maybe it was grandma’s secret recipe that needed to be shared with the world (sorry, grandma), maybe it was just a love of getting your hands dirty and growing things in the soil, or maybe it was just an undying passion for the culinary world.
Our team at StoryCraft, an Austin video production agency, worked with the founding partner of Yeti Frozen Custard to tell her story on camera. She shared why she loves making food and why she’s passionate about the brand and what she does. Real face time with the founder was really important to show the roots of the company and to give the product a soul.
People love to see how things are made. You could literally watch the show “How It’s Made” for hours with the sound off and just be mesmerized by the process behind your favorite products. People are attracted to honesty and transparency in brands. They like to know where their food comes from and how it got to them. There is meaning in that alone. Customers really want that inside look into what goes into the things they purchase.
The process behind the frozen treat is fairly simple and standardized across the industry, but it is mesmerizing and beautiful to see it on video. We filmed the process of the founder making a few batches of different flavors herself using fresh ingredients in a commercial kitchen. The footage is simple, but beautiful and instills trust in the viewer.
People are drawn to content that provides some educational value or that aligns with their lifestyle. See Buzzfeed’s Tasty as an example. Recipe videos are perhaps the most shareable (and shared) videos on the web. You want to provide your audience with tips and tricks for your food product or show them recipes that use your product as an ingredient. This is a classic content marketing move, but video really steps up the game here. Sexy, mouth watering food shots are a must. Food porn is real, people.
The social media videos we made with Yeti were small and fairly easy to scale. We were able to produce a bunch of them in a short amount of time. We shot about seven of the Yeti videos in an afternoon for them to roll out over the next few weeks on their Facebook and Instagram. They built a little more mindshare and brand cohesion with existing fans. A little bit of paid promotion grew the reach and expanded brand awareness without feeling like an ad and more like an organically shared piece of content.
You can never go wrong with creativity and trying new things on social media. There are plenty of social media content rule books, but CPG food brands should really break them if they want to get serious traction. Start making your own rules and people will notice.
To sum it up, video is king. It’s growing and evolving and it is only going to get bigger. All eyes are on things like Facebook video and YouTube and if you’re not a part of it already you should adjust your strategy. Don’t get left behind. Get your food products moving with social video. Talk to the team at StoryCraft about how we can help you achieve awareness and engagement goals with social media video. We are an Austin video production and creative agency and love working with Austin CPG food brands.
Charlie Rall is the Co-Founder and Head Producer of StoryCraft
