Marketers are becoming publishers and despite efforts to pump out as much content as possible, there’s always the question of whether it’s working. You can share white papers until the cows come home, but there’s no real way to determine whether anybody’s converting based on these types of assets.
Luckily, when it comes to driving results, one form of content is truly your best bet based on the availability of detailed analytics, and that’s video.
Video not only captivates viewers (it’s the next best thing to pitching in person), but it also aligns with the goal of a modern marketer to measure performance and drive ROI.
The growing demand for video
As a hot commodity, it’s not altogether surprising that by 2017 video will make up 69 percent of all consumer internet traffic. It’s engaging, it’s growing quickly, and your competitors may have already beat you to the punch.
But it’s not just the engagement factor that’s driving the need for video, with CMOs set to gain more spending power than the CIO in the coming years, there’s a rising pressure for marketers to justify the spend on content initiatives, all while providing a compelling customer experience. Ultimately you need a deeper look into how folks interact with your content to keep ‘em comin’ back for more.
Video delivers the data you need
While standard content marketing materials including blog posts, guides, and social posts provide basic, “soft metric” engagement data – in that you can see traffic, shares, and subscribers that have opened and allegedly read your content – you have absolutely no idea what resonated with your audience.
Did leads open your white paper and read to the very end? Which parts did they like the best? Did they follow through with calls to action?
You simply don’t know.
Video is different. Not only does video attach identity to viewership, but a good video marketing platform tracks exactly how viewers engage with your content and gives you an in-depth look at what parts of your video are skipped and what sections are being re-watched. This attention span data, combined with your click through rate, gives you a clear picture around general interest and what’s really resonating.
If your video analytics show, for instance, that your viewers drop off after 10 seconds, you can adjust your content to keep leads engaged. Instead of guessing as to what’s working, you have highly tailored analytics you can turn to for improving campaign performance.
Moreover, there are opportunities directly within video as a medium to help you enhance your overall investment. With email-gating features and A/B testing, you can collect data about customers, follow up with those who spend the most time viewing specific content, and even test out different video thumbnails to improve the click through rates on videos you’ve already released.
Integrate with marketing automation & enable your sales team
The whole point of content marketing is to guide your audience through the sales funnel, and when you combine a video strategy with a marketing automation system, you can really enhance ROI.
Early adopters of marketing automation platforms are looking to generate more marketing qualified leads and by understanding viewer engagement statistics, you add a new paradigm to the lead score and can segment and nurture more effectively.
If someone’s watched 3 of your videos about your service all the way through, their contact record will indicate topics of interest for follow up and you can fire off a customized email campaign.
On the same track, video analytics enable your sales team with the unique ability to look into a lead’s video viewing history. Knowing exactly which videos a particular lead has watched provides incredible context when preparing for a sales call.
Optimize future content based on success
Once you have actionable data about viewer behaviour at your fingertips, planning future video content is a breeze. You can determine which leads like which types of content and map this insight to specific parts of the buying cycle you need to address.
If Kevin the project specialist keeps viewing your product demo, he might be building a business case for his boss and simply needs more detailed material to justify the purchase. By visually seeing the engagement generated per video asset, you can create content to address this customer need and drive future revenue based on your video marketing initiatives.
Overall, video provides actionable feedback to marketers looking to enhance ROI. By incorporating video analytics, your content strategy can start to feel less like an awkward mic check (“is this thing on?”) and more like amplifying your message with a perfectly directed megaphone.
If you have any questions on how to get ROI from your video content, please ask them below and I’ll be quick to answer!