When it comes to driving awareness for your big idea, thought leadership or brand – there are a lot of different approaches you can take. The two biggest factors for success on thought leadership is awareness of the big idea and engagement with it – so you really have to choose your tactic wisely. What seems to happen across the marketing world is that marketers tend to take a scorched earth approach to any kind of tactic. White papers were a really big thing for a while, then guides and webinars took off. It got to the point where almost every site was throwing some kind of download option at you upon arrival. While this information can be really helpful it can also start to be really difficult to stick out from the crowd. Arguably, any tactic reaches it’s peak usefulness and content types have a certain window for when they feel relevant to an audience.

In this world where a content arms race is taking place it is our belief that there is a total blue ocean strategy for using video mini-courses as a way to differentiate yourself and your big idea from the competition. There are a few reasons why we believe that this strategy will win in the long run:

• Out of all content types video continues to be the one that audiences love the most. As a medium type video far exceeds any other way of delivering content. This really comes down to engagement. Audiences continues to just love it. On social video generates 1200% more shares than text and images combined
• Video gives the most ROI. When used for marketing it grows revenue 49% faster than non video types.
• It is pretty hard to replicate. While video is obviously more expensive to produce than these other content types, there is an actual benefit in this. Less people do it because of the cost and the difficulty which gives you a competitive advantage over you competition.
• Video takes more time to make. While this can feel like a hassle this time hurdle also gives you a buffer between your competition and your brand.
• Due to the above two points of cost and time to create there is a higher perceived value for video mini-courses than other forms of content. This higher perceived value actually drives conversions because the viewer sees this content type as more valuable.
  When it comes to driving awareness for your mini course there are a ton of options available for you at an ad level. Due to the perceived value of mini-courses, they convert really well. So, if you are using your course to drive leads and are putting ad spend behind these campaigns, they convert very well because of the value aspect.

The reality to using content for lead generation and conversions is that this space is getting increasingly more saturated and the tactics used to drive these conversions are also getting watered down. There is going to be an inherent blue ocean strategy though for brands and companies that are willing to invest the time and cost into video to establish a clear competitive advantage by leveraging the medium.

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