This blog post is the first in a series of 5 expanding on my INBOUND presentation to help every video initiative deliver better value.
Video is Measurable. Measure it.
In today’s digital world, information is everywhere. Content is multiplying at warp speeds, always on, constantly competing for our attention. VIDEO helps you cut through this digital clutter. Video is human. Video is authentic. Video helps us feel. And more and more, how you make someone feel is the reason they choose to do business with you.
Marketers love video because video works. I truly believe that video is the most effective form of digital communication the world has ever known. But creating great video content and making sure that video drives high return are two different things. Video leaders focus on the business impact of video investments.
The #1 piece of advice I give in today’s data-driven world is to measure the business impact of your video and then double down on what’s working.
Measuring video matters. According to Aberdeen Group, companies using video grow revenue 50% faster than companies that don’t. How can you attribute KPIs and revenue to your video and prove the the value of your video initiatives?
Pre-work: The Data Behind Video
Before jumping into tactics, you need to understand the data involved. When it comes to data, video is unlike any other type of content. You don’t just see what viewers clicked, you also see how long they were engaged.
Think about it - with a whitepaper, you know someone downloaded it, but you don’t know if they actually read it, let alone exactly how much they read. Knowing that someone has watched 7%, 64% or 100% of your product demo video is extremely valuable. When you combine an individual viewer’s video engagement metrics with their other online activity, you get a much clearer picture of their interests, pain points, and needs.
Where marketers fall short with video is we often use it in a silo, disconnected from the rest of our marketing. We spend a lot of time instrumenting our website, our email campaigns, our blog posts, and our whitepapers and e-book downloads. We set up beautiful nurtures and personalized campaigns based on what users click on and download, but we don’t combine our video data with the rest of our marketing programs.
Step 1: Integrate Video With All Other Marketing Efforts
To create a holistic view of your marketing results, you need to integrate your video into your tech stack. Specifically, into your marketing automation platform (MAP) such as Oracle Eloqua, HubSpot, and Marketo and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) such as Salesforce.
What’s important for video marketers to understand is that MAPs are blind to video and its deep metrics. Unless, of course, that MAP is connected to your video platform.
Don’t panic! If you haven’t yet fully integrated your marketing stack, you have company. According to TechCrunch, a Q1 ‘17 survey by CMO Council and RedPoint Global revealed only 3% of respondents felt all of their automation, engagement, and deployment tools were fully connected, with data and insights traveling freely between the various technologies.
The good news is, the fix is easy. Once you integrate your video platform with your tech stack, video data will be added to all your other marketing data, allowing you to read the digital footprint of each individual viewer.
Step 2: Measure More Than Video Hits
Once your video platform, MAP, and CRM are connected, it’s time to ensure you’re measuring the right things. When it comes to measuring video performance, many companies focus solely on the view count. View counts by themselves are essentially a vanity metric - not tied to leads, revenue, or ROI.
It’s not just about how many hits your video is getting, it’s about knowing your viewers. You should be looking at each individual viewer, who that person is, what they watch, and how much they watch. Video data integrated with the rest of your marketing data will give you this invaluable information.
This information helps you deliver the right information at the right time to guide them through the customer journey.
Step 3: Use Video Data to Personalize Communications
When you know who is watching what video for how long, it allows you to personalize their experiences with your brand. According to the Aberdeen Group, video / rich media viewers are 65% more effective at maintaining consistent, relative, and personalized communications with customers and prospects.
Based on what video they watch, you can automate a campaign and lead score model. For example, if a product video is watched 100%, you can immediately route that contact to sales to follow up.
When you tie video to your tech stack, you also tie it to leads, to pipeline, to sales, and to retention. And more importantly, you can attribute your video to revenue.
Here at Brightcove, HCSS is one of many of our customers using their video and MAP integration to drive success. A construction software company based in Sugar Land, TX, HCSS has connected Brightcove to HubSpot and Salesforce, using the data to demonstrate video’s business value to the C-level. Using video throughout the customer journey has allowed HCSS to shorten their sales cycle by 44%! Attributing video to critical business metrics has enabled them to increase their marketing team by 40%, create video programs at every stage of the customer journey, and redesign their website to be video-first.
Step 4: Extend Video ROI Across the Company
Like many companies that begin by using video in marketing, HCSS is also now using video across their organization, including training. The Aberdeen Group reports 98% of video marketers support sales, 67% support the C-suite, and 51% support product development. By tying video into your tech stack, you can prove and improve company-wide results. According to the Aberdeen Group, companies using video platforms used their video-gleaned insights to achieve a 40% greater year-over-year growth in average deal size. They also reduced customer acquisition costs at nearly twice the rate of non-video platform users.
If you’re already doing video marketing, that’s wonderful! This series will help you do even more with it. But before you do anything else, be sure to integrate your video platform with your MAP and CRM. Once you prove the ROI of video, it’s easier to get support to extend your video programs.
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