Haul videos are an incredibly simple concept. They are also very effective in promoting your products and overall brand. Straight-forward, cost effective and also incredibly useful for bolstering your sales around the Christmas period, haul videos are well worth tapping into.
What haul videos are in essence, is short YouTube videos of shoppers unpacking their purchases from particular eCommerce sites and then uploading them onto Social Media. Many of these shoppers tend to be female and buyers of fashionable items, such as clothes and accessories. If one of your consumers creates a haul video, you are set to gain increased levels of traffic and vital brand exposure. The videos are naturally tagged with relevant keywords, which might include your brand name or unique product names. One of the reasons they gain so many hits online, is down to the fact that consumers are curious as to how items look when they are delivered, how the packaging looks and how they are presented etc. Similar to instructional videos that demonstrate the use of products, haul videos show consumers unpacking and examining items at home. They are personal, intimate portraits that allow other potential consumers to get up close and personal with your products and get a feel for them, before they consider buying them or not. If you stock products popular with the YouTube generation, consider getting on board with the haul video trend.
Getting started
To get some branded haul videos made for you, you could consider offering free products to certain YouTube users with high levels of followers, on the condition that they upload a video of themselves, opening one of your products along with the relevant brand hashtags. The more similar to your target audience these YouTube user’s followers are, the better. You want your intended audience to get a feel for your products when they watch the video, and be influenced by the high-profile YouTube user. Individuals who see the video, will hopefully want to copy it by buying one of your products and creating a similar haul video and hence the cycle of online promotion will continue. Remember that you could be doing certain YouTubers a huge favour, by allowing them to associate with your brand. Many users will get involved because they want to lift their own brand image, by associating it with your company’s brand. Think carefully about who these influential YouTube users are and which ones already have a synergy with your brand.
Haul videos and the holiday season
Haul videos, are particularly effective around the festive period. Christmas is all about gift ensembles and special deals. Haul videos, allow you to showcase gift-boxes and bundles intended for the Christmas period, to your target audience. You can give YouTubers special coupon codes just for their subscribers to use on your site, to increase sales. YouTubers, love giving back to their loyal subscribers, so they will relish the opportunity to give away your free promotional codes at the end of their videos. Also, users are more than likely to click on videos when they feel like they might get a freebie. If you have a group of products intended to be bought as a collection, as you often will around Christmas, then haul videos can help you showcase these items as an ensemble. When a haul video creator opens a collection of your products, viewers will instantly realise the benefit of buying a series of similar items, which they may not have seen an obvious connection with, when initially glancing through your product pages. Haul videos, often feature buyers, gushing about the excellent price they got for a product. Indeed, this is often why online shopper go onto YouTube around Christmas; they want to be pointed in the direction of a bargain. So, if you have a few items on promotion, encourage influential YouTubers to upload videos of themselves opening your promotional deals.
Final thoughts
Even if your company is selling products that do not involve teenagers and young adults, just about everybody is influenced by recommendations from their peers. Although traditional haul video creators tend to be millennials and female, finding enthusiastic buyers that that will use YouTube to promote your product, will always be beneficial to your brand. Videos in which consumers talk about their positive experiences with your products, is the ultimate seal of approval.
Haul videos work because they are more than just testimonials, they have the added dimension of the intrigue and spontaneity, of a home-made video. Once created, the videos promote your brand to a huge audience, via shares to various Social Media channels. If they go viral, the brand impact can be enormous. Traffic to your site will inevitably increase, along with a spike in sales. Haul videos are a great way to promote your brand and products, to your target audience.
