Targeted marketing is the name of the game nowadays. While an institution could pay for advert space on television, it is difficult to know the right people are watching at the right time. One solution is YouTube. With the help of RBI’s YouTube Top 40, Patrick Brusnahan looks at banks’ use of the social media platform
A successful YouTube channel can garner millions of views with ease.
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According to social agency We Are Social, the time adults spend watching digital video each day rose from 21 minutes in 2011 to 1 hour 16 minutes in 2015. The most successful YouTube channel, by Swedish YouTuber PewDiePie, has 47 million subscribers waiting fervently for each video.
Many have attributed the success of some of the most popular channels to the personal touch; feeling a connection to the person you are watching. If that is the case, how can huge, multinational institutions such as banks even come close to that experience?
Some have managed this with ease. Brazil-based Itaú came first in RBI’s YouTube ranking of views attained with close to 220 million views, over double the second-placed figure.
An Itaú spokesperson tells RBI: “YouTube initially proved to be a hub for our content created for TV. Then we understood that digital was one of the most important ways in spreading videos.
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By GlobalData“This trend in digital consolidated and created an area dedicated to creating language-specific videos made for digital.
“Today, we create content of very different natures, such as tutorials that explain our products, financial education, and editorial content. All this helps us, and we can delight our audiences with the beliefs of the brand.
“The #issomudaomundo series, for example, brings a playful manner to the views of the brand. We have also launched two short films, one to support the strategy of the 2014 Fifa World Cup and, more recently, the short, DAD.”
What strategy has led to such success through a wide berth of content?
“We gave less prominence to the logic of advertising and we thought more of the entertainment industry, in most cases, utilising the documentary style.
“Having seen this opportunity before all other brands assured us to make mistakes and learn before others, which helped us actually enrich our creative online videos on the internet,” Itaú says.
The struggle with advertising on any format is making sure the content reaches the appropriate viewer. It is normal to reach the consumers where they are located; for the millennial segment, this is online.
Wells Fargo, with 39 million views on YouTube and counting, focuses on the channel to attract younger customers.
Speaking to RBI, Michael Lacorazza, executive vice-president and head of integrated marketing at Wells Fargo, says: “It’s really effective. If you look at the generational split, millennials are going on YouTube to watch long-format programming. YouTube has some nice formats, and you can even take over the entire website for a day.
“Google is a master advertising platform. Between Google and Facebook, they have 50% of the share of digital spend in the US. We do spend a fair amount of advertising dollars to amplify video content that we want people to see.”
Even with targeted marketing, it can never be certain that those targeted will watch, or even approach, the content. Luckily, YouTube supplies a large amount of analytics to observe what people are watching, and for how long.
Lacorazza explains: “We can buy and optimise based on completed views, and that’s how we look at it. We can see if people drop out, and if a video is longer, say three to four minutes, we have to be clear with ourselves with what we expect.
“Generally, we optimise towards completed views, and there are some techniques we have with data and how we format content. It’s one of the best platforms for video completion out there, in terms of cost per completed view: It could be pennies.”
A bold, new approach
TSB has decided to take a new campaign to YouTube this year in an attempt to become more relevant to its target customers.
Bian Salins, TSB’s head of social media, says: “Consumers are consuming content differently. Mass media consumption is slowly decreasing, and relevant, interactive content, available when and where you want it, has become increasingly important. Because of this, TSB’s approach to YouTube follows the Hero, Hub and Hygiene approach.
“Our Hero content uses influencers and TSB-branded long-form content to amplify our brand purpose, create transparency and build trust with the bank. Hub content is tips and advice on topics like managing your money or borrowing. Finally, Hygiene content is about how to use our products and services.
“We also use YouTube as a pure media platform, using skipable ads and other formats to run our direct response activity.”
How much success has this had? When RBI collated data earlier this year, the strategy was still in its formative days and TSB’s channel had cumulated over 15 million views.
“It’s safe to say we’ve only just activated our strategy this year, so it’s early days for us to comment on engagement rates. But what I can say is that performance varies depending on what is most relevant to our audiences.
“For example, our best-performing pieces of content range from our Christmas saving tips to our most recent partnership with Trinity Mirror on Pride of Britain and Pride of Sport,” Salins explains.
“What’s important is that we can see people engage with our content through views, likes, shares, and comments and that our subscriber volumes are growing the more we refine our content strategy.”
This is clearly something into which financial giants are putting plenty of time and effort as consumers embrace the digital realm.
Salins concludes: “Video is incredibly important, and is a core part of our brand and marketing strategy. Not only do we invest in the platform as a media type, we know consumers are spending more time year-on-year watching video online so having a strong, clear and consistent approach is fundamental to making it a success and something we are committed to doing.
“We see YouTube as a way to reach new audiences, either directly through our own content but also through a strong influencer approach.
“Saying that, we also recognise that competing for attention is tough – making it both a challenge and an opportunity. It’s something we as digital marketers within TSB look to tackle head-on.”
The RBI YouTube Top 40
