As viewers increasingly resort to TikTok, Reels, and live videos for entertainment, product discovery, and even to learn about intriguing new businesses, social media platforms are prioritizing video content more than ever on their feeds.
And for marketers, utilizing video not only provides the highest return on investment (ROI) of any media medium but also significantly aids in achieving marketing objectives.
Our partners at HubSpot surveyed video marketers to learn about their tactics and how they can help your business thrive in a digital world.
Once you begin to get views, you’ll also want to build on your strategy by looking at and improving on a few other metrics.
Among video marketers, video engagement, conversion rate, and click-through rate are among a handful of other KPIs marketers look at, with engagement rate being prioritized by 60% of marketers, and conversion and click-through rates being a focus of 56% and 52% of marketers respectively.
According to 60% of video marketers that HubSpot interviewed, engagement is the most important metric to watch. After all, when a video sees high engagement, that means it is resonating with your audience enough to make them want to drop a like, write a comment, or share it with their friends.
Conversion rate comes in at #2 and can be a great indicator of how successful your video is at getting viewers to take the desired action.
Click-through rate (CTR) comes in at #4 and can tell you how effective your thumbnail is at getting people to watch the video in the first place. Before watching a video, your audience is also seeing the title or caption attached to it, which your CTR will also reflect.
If you are gaining followers/subscribers from a video, that means it’s resonating with viewers and they want to see more from your brand.
If one of your videos grows your following more than usual, try to think about what set this video apart from the rest and replicate it. Also, check your analytics for helpful information on how these new subscribers/followers found your video. How can you keep providing them with valuable content?
Average view duration is key to understanding which parts of your video are highly engaging and which sections needed more work or should have been cut out entirely. While the overall average can offer useful insights when comparing similar-length videos, if possible, check the percentage of viewers watching at key moments throughout the video.
For example, if a high percentage of viewers stick around through the introduction, you successfully hooked them. However, if you see a huge dropoff halfway through, the video may have been too long.
A whopping 96% of marketers told HubSpot they agree that the optimal length of a marketing video is under 10 minutes. However, you should do a variety of video shorts and longer videos and see what resonates with your audience.
The top three video marketing goals include increasing revenue (focused on by 33% of respondents), raising brand awareness, and advertising products/services (with 32% of marketers focusing on each).
More than one-fourth of marketers are also focused on improving customers’ understanding of products/services, while 23% want to improve customer service and retention with video.
The most important factors for creating effective marketing videos are effectively promoting your video, capturing viewers’ attention in the first few seconds, and keeping your videos short/concise. Also, 55% of video marketers leverage a mix of organic and paid content when posting videos on social media, while 24% use organic only, and 21% use paid only.
The most effective video promotion strategies are sharing them on social media, adding videos to your website/blog, running paid ads for your videos, optimizing your title/description for search, and integrating videos into your email campaigns.
Instagram is the top social media platform for ROI, engagement, and lead generation for sharing marketing videos.
While YouTube comes in at #2 behind Instagram for ROI and lead generation, it is the most used app for video sharing, with 70% of video marketers leveraging it.
Facebook is used by 60% of video marketers when sharing marketing videos (tied at #2 for usage with Instagram), though it comes in 4th for ROI, engagement, and lead generation.
Reddit, Tumblr, Twitch, Snapchat, and Pinterest are consistently the worst channels for sharing marketing videos.
Content showcasing products/services is the most leveraged type of video content and has the highest ROI of any content type, with 66% of participants reporting high returns. It is also the most effective at generating leads and gets the 2nd most engagement of all content types HubSpot asked about.
Content that reflects a brand’s values is the second most leveraged type of video content and the 2nd most effective for generating leads and engagement.
People generally don’t want to watch videos that feel out of date or out of touch, but they’re drawn to videos that discuss topics that they’re currently interested in, like trends or news related to their industry or hobbies. This is likely why “trendy content” has the second-highest ROI and gets the most engagement.
Relatable content will see the newest investment in 2022, with 40% planning to leverage it for the first time, while 12% will invest more in it than any other content type.
Both funny and interactive content have high ROI and will be leveraged by 29% and 27% of video marketers for the first time in 2022, respectively.
The biggest benefits of creating marketing videos are that they help customers understand a product/service, get more engagement than other marketing content, and lead to more sales/conversions than other marketing content, according to HubSpot.
While this seems perfectly in line with video marketers’ goals, those benefits also come with a few challenges.
The biggest challenges video marketers face are a lack of time to create video content, difficulty creating an effective video strategy, and inadequate budget to create video content.
The great news is that video marketing is simpler than ever, with 57% of video marketers describing video marketing as easy.
Whether you’re just getting started with video marketing or a seasoned video professional, keeping up with the latest trends and marketing strategies is key.
While video marketing is currently one of the top marketing strategies, there are a few others that have even better ROI – luckily, you can incorporate most of them into your video marketing strategy for even better results.
If you’re ready to take your video marketing strategy to the next level, call Advent Trinity. We’ll help you create high-quality videos that will resonate with your audience.
