The reign of video continues, moving beyond its conquest of radio to its next target: conventional online content. It is predicted that by the close of 2020, video content will dominate, accounting for over 80% of all consumer internet traffic. Recognizing this trend, B2B companies are increasing their investment in video marketing strategies, with 71% now integrating video content into their campaigns.
Image source: Content Marketing Institute
However, to fully harness the lead-generating power of video, a robust video hosting platform is non-negotiable. While free hosting platforms like YouTube, with their high engagement rates, are popular among B2B marketers, a closer look at how and where engagement occurs reveals challenges, especially when integrating videos directly onto your website. This post will delve into:
- The advantages and disadvantages of free video sharing platforms.
- The benefits of hosting videos directly on your website with a dedicated platform.
- How to utilize the features of a video hosting platform for more effective marketing.
Finally, we will conclude with a concise list of ten key advantages that video hosting platforms offer to B2B marketers.
A Look at Free Video Hosting Platforms
Just as email marketing relies on platforms like MailChimp and HubSpot, webinars depend on platforms like ON24 and GoToWebinar, and blogs are powered by WordPress and Medium, video content also has its dedicated platforms.
Video hosting platforms allow you to upload and share videos online. There are both free and paid options available. The free platforms, often called video sharing sites, provide basic functionality, while paid platforms offer more advanced features and capabilities. Let’s begin by exploring free video hosting/sharing platforms.
The internet provides a range of options for free video hosting, with many familiar names, such as:
- YouTube
- Vimeo
- Twitch
- Dailymotion
These platforms allow you to upload your marketing videos to your account and generate shareable links for distribution.
Advantages of Free Video Hosting Platforms
The ease of use and high engagement rates of free social video platforms make them an attractive option for B2B marketers. According to G2 Crowd, social video content generates an astounding 1200% more shares than text and image content combined.
YouTube, the second-most popular website in the world, provides a user-friendly, straightforward, and importantly, free embedding experience. Compatible with virtually any content management system (CMS), embedding a YouTube video simply requires copying and pasting its embed code into your website’s editor. For those who like a more tailored look, customization options are also available for the video player and tinker around with the code in order to hide the controls..
For example, Slack customizes its embedded YouTube video, allowing it to pop out and capture viewers’ attention when they click on a purple play icon.
Disadvantages of Free Video Hosting Platforms
While offering convenience and engagement, free video hosting platforms have drawbacks that marketers should be aware of. Using YouTube as an example, let’s explore some of these disadvantages, which often apply to other free hosting platforms.
Decreased Website Engagement
It’s important to recognize that YouTube, like any business, prioritizes directing traffic to its own platform. Therefore, even with code manipulation, a YouTube player embedded on your website can act as an exit point, diverting visitors away from your content. A simple click on the YouTube icon, the share button, or even the recommended video feed at the bottom of the player can lead viewers down a rabbit hole of YouTube content, pulling them away from your website.
Loss of Potential Leads
The related content displayed next to and below your video not only keeps viewers on YouTube but also often recommends videos featuring or even directly promoting your competitors.
For instance, a YouTube video embedded on monday.com’s homepage might be followed by a recommended video showcasing its main competitor, Asana.
Attracting prospects to a website is challenging enough. Creating an easy exit route through embedded videos undermines your efforts to capture their attention and guide them further into your sales funnel.
Limited Viewer Data
Free video hosting methods provide basic insights into video performance, such as total view counts and like-to-dislike ratios. While these vanity metrics might suffice for entertainers, B2B companies require more granular data, particularly insights into individual viewer behavior.
To leverage video for lead generation, B2B marketers need to understand precisely how each viewer interacts with their content. This need for in-depth data highlights the value of a robust video hosting platform.
B2B companies require data that reveals individual viewer patterns.
Advantages of Paid Video Hosting Platforms
For B2B marketers aiming to enhance brand consistency and achieve key performance indicators through video content, a paid, high-quality video hosting platform often proves to be a wise investment. These platforms are designed not just for video sharing but also to empower marketers to extract maximum value from their video content. Let’s examine some key advantages of a paid video hosting platform.
Customization and Control
Video hosting platforms offer extensive yet user-friendly customization options, allowing you to seamlessly integrate video players with your website’s design and branding. With intuitive controls, you can easily customize the player’s color, size, controls, and positioning within your web page – all without any coding knowledge.
Enhanced Security
Security is paramount, and video hosting platforms provide robust security features that grant you complete control over video sharing. These features prevent unauthorized downloads and ensure that your intellectual property remains protected.
Maximum Viewership
Unlike platforms like YouTube, video hosting platforms eliminate the risk of viewers straying from your website. You curate the recommended content viewers see while watching a video, preventing competitor promotion and minimizing bounce rates.
In-Depth Audience Insights
Video hosting platforms provide a comprehensive understanding of individual viewer behavior. Data points for each viewer are recorded and readily accessible on the platform’s analytical dashboard.
Gone are the days of guesswork. You gain insights into who watched each video, their device type, their geographical location, and crucially, their engagement levels (how much of the video they watched).
For example, here’s a glimpse of Cincopa’s comprehensive analytical dashboard.
The level of detail extends even further. The platform pinpoints the exact moments when viewers disengage and re-engage with a video, providing valuable insights into viewer behavior.
Additional features like video heatmaps visualize viewer engagement over specific timeframes, highlighting areas of interest and drop-off points within a video.
This data is invaluable for understanding what resonates with your target audience. For example, significant drop-offs at specific points in a video might indicate a need to refine messaging, adjust the value proposition, or even remove certain segments entirely.
Integrating Video Engagement with Marketing Automation
Executing effective B2B marketing at scale necessitates sophisticated platforms tailored to each stage of the marketing funnel. Most B2B marketers rely on marketing automation platforms to implement, analyze, and optimize their outbound strategies. These platforms capture valuable data about website visitor behavior, including blog post views, link clicks, and form submissions.
Image source: Moosend
Given that video content garners significantly more engagement from website visitors than other content formats most likely to be engaged, a robust video hosting platform is crucial. It allows you to integrate video content strategically, aligning with your audience’s preferences and behaviors.
By integrating your video hosting platform with your marketing automation solution, you can incorporate “video engagement” as a valuable data point. Let’s explore two applications of this integration and its impact on your B2B marketing initiatives.
Lead Scoring Based on Video Engagement
A key aspect of B2B marketing involves nurturing cold leads with engaging content and guiding them towards conversion. Marketing automation platforms allow marketers to establish behavioral thresholds for lead qualification. Prospects receive positive or negative points based on their interactions. For instance, opening and clicking on company emails might earn positive points, while inactivity could result in negative points. Marketing and sales teams usually collaborate to determine the ideal score that signifies a “sales-qualified” lead.
Video hosting platforms introduce the ability to award points based on video engagement. You can define benchmarks and award positive points for viewers who exceed expectations (e.g., watching beyond the first 10 seconds of a landing page video) and negative points for those who fall short (e.g., not completing a form to continue watching a video). Given the high engagement rates of video content, this capability can be transformative.
Video hosting platforms allow marketers to quantify and analyze this engagement, awarding positive points for viewers who meet or exceed defined benchmarks. Given the high engagement rates of video, this can significantly impact lead qualification.
Integrating Videos into Marketing Workflows
B2B marketers orchestrate lead nurturing based on content engagement. Advanced workflows enable the creation of intricate roadmaps that account for various lead lifecycle scenarios.
Integrating your video hosting platform with your marketing automation platform (MAP) allows you to seamlessly incorporate videos into your workflows, using them as triggers for email sequences, personalized content recommendations, and more.
By setting specific video engagement triggers (e.g., a viewer watching a video multiple times), you can initiate personalized follow-up actions, such as routing a lead to a sales representative. With executives showing a strong preference for video content, this approach can effectively channel high-quality leads to your sales team.
Integrating videos into your workflows, using actions like watching a video multiple times as triggers, can enhance the personalization and effectiveness of your outreach.
This image showcases a HubSpot workflow where video viewership acts as both a branching condition and an enrollment trigger.
Key Benefits of Video Hosting Platforms for B2B Marketers
To summarize the advantages discussed, here are ten key benefits of using a video hosting platform:
Maximize Website Engagement: Unlike free platforms that divert traffic, video hosting platforms keep viewers engaged on your website.
Prevent Lead Leakage: Eliminate the risk of losing leads to competitor content often recommended on free video sharing platforms.
Maintain Brand Consistency: Leverage customization features to seamlessly integrate video players with your website’s branding for a cohesive experience.
Ensure Data Security: Benefit from robust security measures to protect your video content from unauthorized downloads and sharing.
Boost Viewership: Keep viewers engaged by presenting video content within a controlled environment without distractions and competitor promotions.
Gain Actionable Audience Insights: Understand individual viewer behavior with granular data, including watch time, device type, location, and engagement patterns.
Optimize Video Performance: Identify areas for improvement by analyzing viewer drop-off points and understanding engagement patterns.
Generate More Qualified Leads: Incorporate video engagement as a valuable metric in your lead scoring model to identify high-potential prospects.
Enrich Lead Nurturing Content: Seamlessly integrate videos into your marketing workflows, using them as triggers for personalized email sequences and content recommendations.
Increase Customer Conversions: Guide leads more effectively through the sales funnel by leveraging the power of video content across all stages, leading to higher conversion rates.
Video’s dominance in the online world is inevitable. B2B companies seeking to unlock their full potential should approach video marketing strategically.
While YouTube offers a free and convenient solution, its limitations, particularly the risk of visitor exodus and limited analytical capabilities, are significant drawbacks. A dedicated video hosting platform provides a compelling alternative for B2B marketers aiming to leverage video for lead generation.
With its customization options, you can seamlessly integrate video content while maintaining brand consistency and control over the viewer experience. Moreover, these platforms provide in-depth analytics for each viewer, allowing you to understand engagement patterns and optimize your video strategy. Through seamless integration with marketing automation tools, you can leverage these valuable metrics to automate and personalize your marketing efforts, ultimately driving better results.