Conventional wisdom dictates that in order for a piece of marketing content to be effective, it should be presented to the audience on multiple occasions over a long period of time. Otherwise, there is a good chance that consumers will simply forget about your brand. Especially if they have yet to interact with it in some meaningful way. From this perspective, ephemeral marketing content doesn’t seem to make much sense. Why would you want to create promotional material that will definitely disappear after a short while? And yet, ephemeral content is one of the hottest trends in digital marketing today.
Instagram is leading the pack with its Stories feature. It is used by more than 400 million people each day. Followed by its parent company Facebook with a Stories feature of its own (300 million daily active users, Messenger Stories included). And finally Snapchat, the company that started the trend, but has since fallen behind its two main competitors (180+ million daily active users). The bottom line is, the demand for ephemeral content is at an all-time high. And it will continue to increase for the foreseeable future.
If you wish to leverage the popularity of ephemeral content for promotional purposes, check out our guide on the topic in the rest of this article.
Cost-effective Content Creation
Creating video material for marketing purposes used to be quite expensive unless you had an in-house video marketing department (a privilege reserved for large corporations), you had to pay for the recording equipment, hire a filming crew and actors, and rent the appropriate space to shoot the material. Today, smartphones come with cameras that rival professional equipment in terms of the quality you get for your investment. As a result, the costs of recording video are at an all-time low. What this means is that all kinds of videos are now cheaper to produce, especially ephemeral ones. And since the latter is currently in high demand, creating ephemeral marketing video content is now a worthwhile investment. To put it simply, a video can recover its production costs (and potentially make a profit on top of that) even if it's only available for 24 hours. That said, there is no reason not to use them for marketing.
Leveraging the Fear of Missing Out
Why is ephemeral content popular in the first place? Part of it is due to the subject matter it frequently covers, which we will examine in the following sections. But more importantly, ephemeral content is popular because it tends to trigger a reaction known as the “fear of missing out”, a key concept from marketing psychology. In layman terms, FOMO is the feeling you get when you start to think that others are taking part in something enjoyable while you are not around. And since the ephemeral content is perishable by definition, if you miss out on it, there is no going back.
From a marketing perspective, this means that ephemeral content is more likely to produce intense curiosity and desire in consumers. Because they know they only have a short while to check it out, they don’t want to be left out of the conversation. Video production marketing agencies are aware of the importance of FOMO. This is one of the reasons why we are seeing more ephemeral video content on the market. If you want to see how the experts in this field get the job done, browse through this list of renowned video production companies and pick up a couple of tricks.
Providing Authenticity
What makes consumers not willing to miss out on ephemeral content, besides wanting to be in the loop regarding online trends? The quality of the ephemeral content itself, or more specifically the way it feels. And the feelings that ephemeral content is likely to elicit is that of authenticity. Simply put, ephemeral content looks and feels rougher around the edges than other content, which makes it more relatable to the average consumer online. Slick, well shot, and well-edited videos might cause the audience to gasp in amazement. But they are also clear giveaways that the video in question is professionally produced. Therefore it's made with commercial gain in mind, which is why it might come off as disingenuous. Ephemeral content, on the other hand, looks like something an average person can make on their own. And they are more likely to judge it favorably.
Offering a Look Behind the Scenes
The other reason why ephemeral content is so desirable is that it often portrays its producers in a more down-to-earth light. Video marketing content is often perceived as a corporate product, whereas ephemeral content is more likely to be judged as the work of an individual or a group of individuals. In fact, ephemeral content is used precisely for this purpose. That is to give a kind of behind-the-scenes look into the working lives of the people behind the company. The same kind of approach can be applied to the products and services you are offering. We also use ephemeral content to show how a given service works in practice, or how we assemble a product. The content of this sort will go a long way to show your brand in a positive light. And it will portray you as a company that values transparency and customer satisfaction.
Cultivating User Engagement
Another feature that makes ephemeral content marketing an attractive proposal for businesses is its ability to foster engagement and participation. In fact, your ephemeral content marketing strategy can work on auto-pilot if you manage to gather a critical mass of engaged users.
Why is ephemeral content so engaging? Because its limited time-frame of existence will drive people to take action, such as clicking on a link, purchasing a product, or subscribing to a newsletter. One particularly clever way to leverage this is to run a contest for creating ephemeral content. Simply give your audience an incentive in the form of a gift item, a discount, or something similar. Then ask them to create an image or a video that somehow involves your brand, services, or products. By doing this, you can improve your social media engagement rate, while acquiring ephemeral content. You can use these ephemeral content on your channel at a very low cost.
Conclusion
The strategies we have described are just the tip of the iceberg of ephemeral content marketing. New methods and tactics are constantly popping up as a result of technological progress, and industry maturity. But before you jump to use these new approaches, be sure to master the basics firsts.
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Nina is a technical researcher & writer at DesignRush, a B2B marketplace connecting brands with agencies. She loves to share her experiences and meaningful content that educates and inspires people. Her main interests are web design and marketing. In her free time, when she’s away from the computer, she likes to do yoga and ride a bike. You can find her on twitter
