Paul Andrew said
Hi John - 

I figured to post this in the forum rather than on the weekly call.  Hopefully this is the right place to post this!

I really appreciate the help you've given with this claymation video idea on our weekly calls, and your tips have helped me solidify the mailing list campaign structure.

So, to really quickly sum it up, I've taken screen shots from our upcoming claymation music video.  I turned those screenshots into a PDF book, and I'm releasing it in 4 separate parts to our mailing list...they don't know we have a new music video, and they only know a "musical surprise" will be given to them at the end of the book...when they get to the last page of the book on the 4th day of emails sent out, they'll have to click on the link of the last page, it'll take them to our brand new music video.

On our last weekly call, my issue was that I didn't know how I could break up the 4 mini books in a way that would work in FB ads, to promote to people who didn't open the emails or didn't click over to the book...

You gave tips on how it could be done, sort of spanning out over several weeks, but I realized it would be hard to do, because the song will be released right before July 4th, cause it's called "Countdown to Fireworks", so it's important I get this all out before then.

BUT, I'm wondering what you think of this idea....I decided to recreate the book in FULL, and post all the images on our website, from beginning to end, eliminating the need to have it broken down into 4 parts.  The mailing list will STILL get the emails in 4 separate parts...

But, I'm thinking, for this to work in FB ads, I can start running the ads once I see that everyone on my mailing list has gone through the series of emails...

Then I start running the ads as soon as I know the email campaign is over...that way, people can click over to our site, and see the book in full, scroll through it, and hopefully the people who did not read the emails can find the video this way too.

Hopefully this makes sense!  BTW, this is the link to the story if you wanna see what I mean - https://pintoandthebeanmusic.c.....full-story

So, I'd really love to know what suggestions you may have on how you'd promote that on FB.  And hopefully this all makes sense the way I described it!

And as far as ad objectives go, since I'd be promoting to our FB fans, Instagram followers, and also to our mailing list, wouldn't this be a Reach campaign?  And then wouldn't I also only be spending a few dollars a day max since it's a much smaller audience?

I've gotten so used to promoting to cold traffic that I sometimes get lost in the simplicity of promoting an ad to a warm audience.  
Any help with this would be awesome, thank you!

 

Paul  

Hey Paul,

The video is beautiful and the song is great. Really good stuff and I think people will like it.

I honestly think you'll find that the story is one of those things that will make the whole experience much more meaningful for the fans, but it will also really slow down the total amount of engagement, simply because it requires more work. That said, I still think you should do it. But I'm saying this because I don't think you should be disheartened f the response isn't massive right away. Once you go into full video push, I think people will really dig it.

So to answer your question... the way I would do it would be to try and create the story experience for your fans only, and then go wide with the video once you are done spreading it out for the fans. 

So in other words, I would do the following...

1. Break it up into chunks and email it to your list in whatever intervals make sense, given your timeline. Label them "Part 1 of 4" or something like that and post each chunk separately on your site. In each post have links to go back and review previous parts of the story. 
2. Target only your warm audience (website traffic, social engagements, and email lists) with ads on FB and Insta that take people to each post, run teh ads in real time, as you release each piece. You could even have a link at the top of the story saying something like "Haven't read the previous installments of the story, start here".
3. Once you share the final surprise with the list, go wide with video promotion and promote the video on both YouTube and Facebook, with a teaser on Instagram (which drives people to the full video on YouTube). Target warm and cold audiences.
4. Use a call to action button that takes people to whatever way you are hoping to monetize the video (squeeze page, sales page, streaming site, etc). But just pick one.

That's really all I would personally do. My expectation is that the video will get a huge reaction, and that while the story will really be fun for some people (the people who really count), it won't feel like as much is happening as you hope. But I think it will once you go wide with the video.

This is not the only way to go. It;s just what I would do.

Does that make sense? I feel like I sorta said as much on the call, but I get the impression that something about that advice is not connecting for you. Let me know if I'm missing some important aspect of what you want to accomplish.

Hey Paul,

When it is time to go wide with teh video, I would not use Facebook ads to take people to Youtube. I would publish the video on both Facebook and Youtube and use Facebook ads top promote the FB video, and Youtube ads to promote the Youtube video. Those ads would be "video ads" so there is no need to link to the video Instead I would have a call to action in the text and on the button that tells people to either download, buy, or stream the song, depending on your monetization plan. By which I mean, do you plan to use the video promotion to get subscribers, drive sales directly, or increase your streams. Whichever is teh case would be where I would send people.

Because Instagram won't allow the entire video, I would instead use teaser videos and then probably drive people to Youtube to watch the whole thing (with your text and button call to action). But you could also experiment with driving traffic from the teaser vid to the squeeze page, sales page, or streaming site. Both approaches can work with Instagram video ads.

Hope that clarifies.

Cheers.

Fantastic!

Reach is something I only use sometimes. 

Traffic is a better objective if the actual goal is traffic.

However, there are times when the audience is really small and traffic doesn't work so well, or when you really want maximum awareness while also getting clicks, and in those cases I use Reach. For your situation my first try would be to use traffic. But if I was unhappy with the cost per click I might try reach.

Reach is a great choice for things like funnel support ads where the audience is very small, or when brand awareness is as equally important as the traffic itself.