Video content is no longer a “nice to have” for businesses — it is essential. Videos are now replacing text and image-driven content across marketing campaigns. According to eMarketer, 30% of B2B marketers said that boosting sales and converting customers are among their top priorities when producing content. Demand gen marketers should focus more on video content to promote their brands and drive interest among audiences that can turn into paying customers.
Audiences expect video to be part of their digital experiences. In fact, more than 70% of the US population watches video content monthly, meaning the stakes are higher than ever for videos to capture audiences’ attention. Marketers need to understand the ins and outs of their video strategies to ensure that they’re delivering content that resonates with audiences and most importantly, drives action.
Here are a few reasons why video is essential to demand gen content.
Video can be benchmarked so marketers know how they stack up
Most video platforms or tools available today provide analytics that delivers data-driven insights about how a video is performing, such as how many times a video was viewed, for how long, when people tune out, etc. Although these metrics are important to understand audience engagement, many marketers don’t have the insight to gauge how their videos stack up against the competition or other best-in-class organizations.
Benchmarking is the best way for marketers to understand how well they are performing against competitors in their industries. And in today’s video world, benchmarking is more important than ever, as videos have become such a big piece of the marketing pie. By leveraging benchmarking analytics, marketers can see the metrics that are important to building a basic video strategy, as well as view industry standards to determine what needs to be improved to boost demand gen ROI.
Video enhances the technology stack
Marketers have a lot on their plates when it comes to creating video campaigns. There are so many technologies and data insights available that it can be difficult to understand which platforms and tools are required in order to create and streamline a comprehensive, yet flexible video strategy.
The best solution is to add video to your existing marketing technologies — this enables marketers to have everything in one place and focus on the creativity that’s driving video content instead of the execution and analytics reporting details. Marketers can then easily generate, maintain and optimize campaigns from within one application, and have one dashboard that collects all the information across various videos and campaigns. Whether it is a Chrome extension or seamlessly integrating videos into marketing automation platforms, it is essential that video be scaled, delivered and measured with just a few clicks.
Video helps marketers achieve quality over quantity
Some of the top goals for demand generation marketers this year focus on lead quality versus quantity. This is essential for demand gen, as higher quality leads result in more sales conversions and more valuable business results. Quality of leads and quality of content go hand in hand, meaning when marketers’ output of compelling, engaging content is higher, they see better, more qualified leads as a result.
Creating meaningful demand gen content is simple when the right tools are available, and if organizations aren’t leveraging video already, that is what they are missing from the equation. Video alone can bring a lot of value to an organization, but its ability to be benchmarked, seamlessly integrated into the existing technology stack and ability to achieve high-quality leads and engagement is the most rewarding qualities for demand gen marketers. And as we continue to see video as the foundation of many sales and marketing strategies, there’s no time to waste when it comes to creating more sophisticated and engaging video content today.
Biju is responsible for Brightcove’s global demand generation program. This includes demand generation strategy and execution, account-based marketing, marketing operations, business analytics, and a newly created role supporting field marketing in the Americas. Biju has 15 years of experience marketing leading-edge technology solutions, with a proven record of success in developing marketing programs to acquire new customers and drive incremental revenue in existing customers through up-sell and cross-sell.