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Trends in MarTech: Video

April 4th, 2016 12 min read

The role of video in marketing was a theme among vendors at this year’s MarTech Conference. We talked to three video platform vendors (Brightcove, Vidyard and HapYak) about the evolution of video marketing—from a brand awareness effort with questionable ROI, to a highly sophisticated, targeted content method that can drive measurable results.

Meet the Vendors

Brightcove is an online video platform with two main lines of business: media companies looking to monetize video through advertising and other methods, and organizations looking to leverage and measure video content as part of their digital marketing strategies. The company was founded in 2004 and has 5,500 customers.

Vidyard is a video marketing and analytics platform for businesses, allowing for hosting, distribution, management and measurement/analytics of video content. The company was founded in 2011, has 700 customers, and recently raised $35 million in a series C funding round.

HapYak is an interactive video platform that allows users to add interactivity – such as chapters, clickable buttons, text annotations, quizzing, branching, etc. – to existing videos. The product works with any online video platform. The company was founded in 2012 and has several hundred customers.

Video Marketing Trends

1. Video is now being used across the funnel

Unsurprisingly, all three vendors said video content is (a) being adopted by more and more organizations, and (b) expanding in use across all stages of the buying cycle.

“Video was traditionally seen as top-of-funnel content, used primarily for brand awareness. Now we’re seeing video proliferate throughout the funnel, from product demos, to onboarding, to customer support. It’s being embraced by more and more constituencies throughout the organization.”

Jeff Gadway, Former Director of Product Marketing at Vidyard

“Organizations that never had a video department are starting to add a video person, at least part-time. We’re seeing people being dedicated to the development of video content for that organization. We’re also seeing organizations expand the ways they’re using video, such as customer testimonials, how-to videos, etc. We have customers that use it from an initial awareness about a product all the way down to development, support and training.”

David Zampese, Former Director of Marketing at HapYak

“It’s becoming a lot easier to create video. So many of our customers have hundreds if not thousands of video titles. But some of them might just have a handful, and it’s really effective for them as well. You don’t have to be as polished to create videos for your partners and employees. And the rise of user-generated content is making customers more comfortable with creating video.”

Caren Cioffi, SVP & GM, Digital Marketing Business at Brightcove

The CMO at Salesfusion, a marketing automation vendor also exhibiting at MarTech, explained why she thinks video is a growing trend. (Salesfusion uses Wistia as their video platform.)

“What’s making video so intriguing is that as society we have evolved to where we need information really quickly, and we need it to be very engaging. So the idea of really quick videos that get the message across in an entertaining and engaging way, is what audiences want today.”

Malinda Wilkinson, Former CMO at Salesfusion

Adoption of video is growing among organizations in part because of how the buyer’s journey is changing.

“More and more of the purchase process happens online. So it makes sense to invest in content marketing and digital strategy. And none of those tools is more measurable than video.”

Jeff Gadway, Former Director of Product Marketing at Vidyard

“The stats exist that 70 or 80% of executives in B2B organizations view videos as part of their decision making process in the consideration stage. So video is a powerful mechanism to bring people not only through the buyer’s journey, but also to actually convert executives. Executives are more likely to watch a video than to read at this point.”

David Zampese, Former Director of Marketing at HapYak

2. Marketers are going beyond vanity metrics to understand the true ROI of video content

Rather than focusing on vanity metrics such as the number of views or reach, marketers are starting to quantify the ROI of video content by tying it back to desired actions. All three vendors say they offer strong analytics features to help companies measure the value of video.

“There’s a misnomer in the industry where engagement metrics for video are based upon the total minutes watched. It’s a rouse. So if someone watching a 3-minute video understands exactly what the video is trying to do within 20 seconds and goes to buy the product – by traditional methods of engagement, that’s viewed as a negative, because they didn’t view the full 3 minutes. When really, someone who watches the full 3 minutes but doesn’t take an action – that’s the failure. By embedding interactivity around the video and having the analytics around that, and then tying that back to actual actions around the video, too: That’s the real way to measure engagement and the value of their videos. It’s incorrect to measure value based upon how much of the video they watched.”

David Zampese, Former Director of Marketing at HapYak

HapYak can track individual actions based on the interactivity features it provides. Brightcove and Vidyard both provide integrations with marketing automation platforms, so that engagement with video content can be tied back to the individual.

“Before, you used to say, this campaign drove 200 views. Now you can see, of those 200 views, who are the companies that actually viewed it, and how engaged were they. If you’re getting your exact target market, all of a sudden those 200 views can be tied to an opportunity or a sale, and you can measure the actual dollar value of the content that you’re putting in the mix. You can see who is engaged 100% with that content and if it’s relevant to your buyer, and who are you losing. Before, we used to have engagement metrics that would say x% of your audience watched the video halfway or more. Now, with the marketing automation partnership, we can say this particular person watched it 100%, and this particular person dropped at 10%.”

Caren Cioffi SVP & GM, Digital Marketing Business at Brightcove

The information can factor into lead scoring, lead nurturing campaigns, and it can go right into the CRM to set up a task, e.g. if somebody watches a particular video, you might want to call them right away.

“If you came to my website, I can identify you, see what you watched, which parts you watched, which ones you weren’t interested in, and I can take all of that digital body language and pump it into my other systems like Marketo, Eloqua and Salesforce. If I had a lead record or a contact record, I could see what you engaged in, and really focus my efforts.”

Jeff Gadway, Former Director of Product Marketing at Vidyard

3. Video plays an important role in personalization

All three vendors say marketers are interested in personalizing customer experiences or serving up the right content at the right time, and video can play a key role in that.

“As consumers, we want to get relevant information. It’s about helping our customers get the right content to the right users at the right time. As marketers, we’ve been saying this for a long time, but now we are using data to drive the experience. People are trying to figure out what personalization really means. Whether it’s, ‘Hi so-and-so,’ or if you’re the CMO, I’m serving up the right video for you, or if you’re the marketing ops practitioner, I’m giving you the right piece of content that’s relevant for you.”

Caren Cioffi, SVP & GM, Digital Marketing Business at Brightcove

“It’s difficult for marketers to cut through the noise and get into inboxes. Video increases click-through rates on email campaigns by 2x. What if it wasn’t a generic thumbnail? What if it had your name on it? We have technology that allows a marketer to deploy a mass personalized email campaign. Each person gets their very own video customized for them – with name, job title, company name, picture of their website, etc. Customers that have started using this technology over the last four to six months are seeing a 500% increase in click-through rates.”

Jeff Gadway,  Former Director of Product Marketing at Vidyard

“Organizations can turn linear videos, which are sit-back-and-watch, into clickable videos that users can lean in and engage with. Interactivity enables the viewers to personalize the experience. Usually a video is a one-to-many piece of content. But with interactivity, a single video can adapt itself to be one-to-one. Viewers can navigate through that video to directly engage with the content that’s most relevant and pertinent to their needs.”

David Zampese, Former Director of Marketing at HapYak

 

Interested in learning more about trends in MarTech? Read Trends in MarTech: Analytics – What Stops Marketers from Being Truly Data-Driven?

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