App makes it easy to create video clips from longer content, and share them on social media
Launching a new marketing tool in 2020 is a brave endeavour. Scott Brinker, the American technologist who keeps track of the market, says there are now 8,000 software tools aimed at marketers. More than 1,500 were launched in the past year alone.
You might look at his notorious martech supergraphic, which attempts to visualise all the available tools, and think there can’t possibly be room for any more.
But that’s where you’d be wrong, according to Clipshare, a four-person software startup at Falmouth University’s Launchpad incubator. They believe they’ve found a gap that no other marketing tools fulfil, and say early feedback on their Clipshare app bears out their hunch.
“Clipshare is a tool for marketing video content,” explains Giz Edwards, the team’s head of marketing and the originator of the idea. “It lets creators break their videos up into smaller pieces, to turn them into ads they can then schedule for posting on social media platforms.”
A much-needed tool for YouTube content creators
It sounds simple, but Edwards says that for one demographic in particular, it meets a need that’s not well served by any other tool. “Clipshare is primarily aimed at pro-amateur YouTubers,” he says, referring to creators who earn part of their income from ad revenue generated via their YouTube channels.
“YouTube has a volatile payment structure, and generating ad revenue can be difficult. The more eyes you get on your content, the more you can earn. So being able to market that content is vital.”
It’s a problem that Edwards has experienced firsthand, having run a video media agency before co-founding Clipshare. “The process of marketing the content was so time-consuming it got to the point where I didn’t want to do it anymore,” he says. “In the end I had to hire someone to help me.”
Encouraging signs from the first public release
Now, with Clipshare’s first public release, the team is keen to find out how many YouTubers will see its value. So far, the signs are encouraging. “We went live yesterday with our first release, and our monthly active users have gone through the roof,” says Alex Redman, Clipshare’s head of strategy. “We’re well on target to reach our first month’s target just in the first couple of days.”
The company says it’s seeing interest from video content creators in the UK, USA and India. And it’s not just YouTubers who are signing up for Clipshare. “I was talking earlier to a social media agency and their closing comment was ‘where has this tool been all my life?’”, says Redman.
Post-COVID video marketing could spur demand
The rise of video marketing is one factor that could spur Clipshare’s future success. Even before COVID-19, Scott Brinker had noted a 26% increase in video marketing tools over 2019. Since then, the pandemic has seen video replace many face-to-face marketing activities.
“We’re one of the few propositions that hasn’t been forced into a massive pivot right now,” says Redman. “The key test now will be to see whether we can actually become a revenue-generating business.”