• Home
  • About
  • Archives
  • Authors
  • Contact
  • Polls
  • Small Biz Interviews
 

Super Bowl Ads – 6 Steps for Small Businesses and Startups to Get In the Game?

February 9th, 2011 | KikScore & KikReport,Online & Small Business Resources,Small Business,Small Business Tips,Social Media,Videos | 2 Comments »

The Super Bowl was Sunday night and thank goodness the Steelers lost.  Didn’t you just get the feeling when they had the ball at the end of the game that they would yet again pull out another victory.  Good job Packers to play strong defense at the right time to cut that off.  I hope someone from my beloved Browns takes a few lessons from them for next season and maybe we can win a few more games!

Well this post is not about the game, but those commercials.  You have heard about the hype.  There is the yearly run up to each Super Bowl where huge brands (and late stage startups with lots of VC money to blow like Groupon) go “all in” usually to the tune of $3 million bucks for a 30 second ad.  Is it worth it?  Really?  Thinking back over the last decade I was trying to remember what were the best and most memorable commercials that still leave a mark on me.  I could only remember two.  Somewhat surprisingly each commercial was from the career placement and job advertising industry.   They were from CareerBuilder and Monster.com and I included them at the top of the post and below.

So what do these two ads have in common.  Dead simple delivery and execution and story that everyone can relate to.  It helps that they use two main ingredients that are so often successful to any campaign: little children and animals (especially cute ones!).

The point of this story is really not so much about these commercials, but that these days any of us can now try to compete at the level of these large brands in order to spread the word about your product and business.  Here are some steps that can help:

Story Counts Advertising is viral now so take the time necessary to create a good story that is engaging and means something not just to you, but to your audience that you are going after.  Make sure that story is simple in your ad and that people can relate to that story in a real world practical way. Tara Jacobsen from the Marketing Artfully blog has some good tips about making your story funny for your video ad.

Your Own Video Camera Now take that story and it is as simple as getting a decent video camera from Best Buy to film your own commercial. Even better is that most computers now come with video editing software that is easy to use or if yours does not there are a number of vendors online that provide editing software for low prices.

Crowdsource Actors/Actresses Try to look somewhat professional when you are filming. But that does not mean you have to pay big bucks for known actors and actresses. This only means put some real thought into props, actors, actresses that can include employees, friends or even your own pets.  Your costumes for the commercial are as close as your own closet or even the nearby Salvation Army store.

YouTube Once you complete your video ad, upload it to YouTube.  That is your first step and then make sure you title the clip in a way that grabs your audience’s attention.  Also remember to use keyword tags that are relative to the content, your product and company so that the video ad will appear in relevant search results.  This is a key component that will help drive traffic and page views so take the time to think about how people will search to get to see your video ad.  Here is an excellent article from Mashable on Top 10 YouTube Tips for Small Business.

Distribute Your Video Ad After the video is uploaded, create a blog post around the video and give that clip a story and some context in your blog post.  Also post the video on your blog, your website and even try to submit it to other video distribution sites through Tube Mogul.  This helps get your video in as many places as possible. Remember the more places the higher the chance more people will see your video ad.

Social Media Channels Do not stop at your website, make sure you use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other bookmarking sites to get the ad out. That way your followers, customers and friends can help you distribute that ad!  If you video is funny or has a viral element to it, that will give the community even more reason to pass it along to others.

So using the above 6 steps is your first step to advertising with the big brands.  All you need is a video camera, a little creativity and some of your own co-workers, friends, family and pets.  Any startup, small business or even non-profit can use these tips to get the word out about your product, company or cause.  Now I am not promising you huge overnight success with these steps, but what you will get is the beginning of the process for pushing your brand out there.  And isnt Super Bowl advertising all about just that.  So on a slightly smaller level you can do what the big brands do all by yourself.  Who knows, if you are creative enough you may just land yourself a hit on YouTube!

Let us know which Super Bowl ads were your favorite and what video ad you would put together.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Blogplay
  • email
  • LinkedIn
  • Live
  • MSN Reporter
  • MySpace
  • RSS
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

  • Share/Bookmark
 

2 Responses

  1. Good advice for small business. Humor is all the rage in Super Bowl ads. What’s a small business to do to compete? Try and put their on humorous videos out via YouTube or their own site? The audience isn’t always as large, but page views can mount up. Here’s our shot at reaching our small biz customers with info and a laugh http://gogranny.co Just an example of grass roots marketing with humor and excitement

    Thanks,

    Shashi

Leave a Reply to RajMalik