It’s hard not to be envious of Travis Chambers’ resume.
At age 25, Chambers led distribution and content strategy for Turkish Airlines’ super-viral video featuring Kobe Bryant and Lionel Messi. The campaign smashed records with 145 million views, 1.5 million social shares, and 2,000 press features. It was also named YouTube’s “Most Viral Ad of the Decade.”
Since then, he’s built a new social video agency called Chamber.Media and racked up a consistent portfolio of viral hits.
But when it comes to the future of brands and advertising, Chambers isn’t betting on helping brands go viral. Instead, he’s been building a new formula: scalable social videos. He believes this is a much more sustainable strategy, especially as organic reach on Facebook slumps further.
In this article, you’ll get an inside look at one of the most creative—and effective—approaches to social videos I’ve seen. Chambers explains how he and his agency build social video funnels and the lessons he’s learned creating videos that have generated over 100 million dollars in sales.
Bonus: Download a free guide and checklist to help you convince your boss to invest more in social media. Includes experts tips for proving ROI.
Why virality is dead
“A few years ago, we were in the business of making viral videos,” says Chambers. “But now Facebook is like CBS in the 1960s. Your brand isn’t going to get placement without paid. Virality is dead. It’s not a sustainable or predictable way to earn revenue.”
But when it comes to the future of social, Chambers is optimistic.
“Any company under $50 million should make social their first point of spend. Social lifts everything. It drives up your branded searches. It lifts your website orders. This is a sustainable, predictable, monthly strategy.”
Chambers’ key takeaways:
Build a social video funnel—Don’t just create one social video or a few pieces of content. Instead, create a sequence of content similar to how marketers build website funnels with a mix of top, mid, and low funnel content that can be segmented to different audiences via remarketing.
Break best practices (and know how to sell)—Social gurus will tell you to create short videos and to avoid pitching on social channels. But Chambers’ agency breaks these rules—and has $100 million in trackable sales as a result.
Integrate influencers into content—Facebook does not prioritize branded content in the news feed. To gain traction, you need to integrate influencers into your content and distribution strategy.
Look beyond Facebook for true ROI—Social media is the heart of digital. But only measuring the specific channel impact of social (such as how many orders were generated by a UTM code) misses the bigger story. To see the true impact, you need to look beyond social as an isolated channel.
Combine exceptional creative and world-class optimization—To win at Facebook advertising, you need to invest in exceptional writers and world-class advertising optimization. It’s this marriage of creativity and optimization that gives your brand a sustainable way to increase revenue.
Here’s more detail into each of these components.
#1 – Build a social video funnel
“A lot of companies make really small bets on social. They create a few 15-second Facebook videos. Or boost a bit of content. But this quickly leads to content fatigue,” says Chambers.
“We’ve taken a completely different approach. We don’t just create one top-of-the-funnel video. We create a sequence of creative content—a complete buying funnel on social that is capable of handling large spends on social.”
In a recent campaign, for example, Chambers’ team built a full funnel with more than 50 pieces of social video content.
“People watch the first high-level…
