Expert Interview Series: Kimbe MacMaster of Vidyard on Best Practices for Video Marketing Posted on May 9, 2016May 27, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Kimbe MacMaster is a Content Marketing Manager at Vidyard, the video intelligence platform. She loves all aspects of content marketing and has a special place in her heart for using video to drive real business results. We recently caught up with her to learn why video is so important to a brand’s marketing strategy and how businesses can do it better. Here’s what she had to say: How important is video today to a brand’s marketing strategy? Video is a critical component of any brand’s marketing strategy mainly because it’s the medium your buyers are craving. More than 72 percent of buyers are watching video throughout the entire path to purchase and nearly 50 percent are watching 30 minutes or more of video content. If you’re not producing video content, then you’re not meeting the content requirements of today’s video-hungry buyers. And they’ll probably go somewhere else to find it. That being said, using video is about more than simply pumping out content in video form on the regular. Today’s high-performing, modern marketers have built a video marketing strategy into their greater marketing plans. They’re using video content strategically throughout the entire funnel by tailoring different content to different personas, using video to increase brand awareness, educate prospects, and lead buyers down the next steps in the sales funnel. What makes video such a useful tool? First off, video provides both audio and visual stimulation, which automatically makes it more engaging for audiences than other content mediums. Video reels viewers in and can communicate compelling stories and evoke emotions stronger than text-based communications like blogs or whitepapers. And we all know that stories and emotional connectivity are the keys to building strong relationships with your prospects and encouraging interest in your company. Plus, video’s linear nature makes it extremely useful for tracking content success and even individual viewer behavior. With a video, you can see how long people are watching for or if they’re dropping off, allowing you to identify problem areas in your video content. (Bet you can’t do that with your latest ebook!) Similarly, you can track individual prospects if you’re using a video platform in conjunction with a marketing automation platform to see things like who’s clicking which video links and then ultimately sending them new content (or over to sales!) based on the video content they’re most interested in. What trends have you observed in how video is being used for marketing right now? When video first came into marketers’ toolkits, it was generally in the form of high-production videos for limited use cases. Most frequently, it was created to describe their company overall on their home page or to generate brand awareness. As brands realized the power of video more and more and recognized the need for more content without the Hollywood production, companies started developing more in-house production teams. They also began to use video throughout the funnel to generate more leads, score those leads, and help nurture buyers towards the purchase decision. Now, the latest trend is personalized video. This isn’t just video that is created for unique personas, but videos that speak to one specific individual. With personalized components like a name, email address, company, job title, etc. right within the video, marketing organizations are using personalized video to connect one-on-one and increase engagement. How can brands measure the effectiveness of their video campaigns? Measuring video success is about so much more than view counts. If 1 million people viewed your video, but no business was generated from it, was that a success or not? I mean, it does depend on your goal for the video, but generally speaking, you’d hope to be influencing some sort of leads, pipeline, or revenue. The top three metrics I would recommend for measuring the effectiveness of your video campaigns are: Attention span: how many of your viewers are watching your video all the way through? Influencing the next step: how many viewers took the next step after your video (clicked the in-video CTA, filled out the form, etc) Video views influencing MQLs, SALs, and won deals: do prospects who watch this video ultimately convert? Why is it important that brands monitor the effectiveness of their campaigns? We call the approach of publishing videos and hoping for the best the “post and pray” approach. This isn’t what you want to aspire to. What if you spent months getting a video campaign ready and out the door, only to find out that it is underperforming on its lead generation goals? You’d want to know that. Especially if the video your team produced in three days has contributed more to pipeline than any other video so far. If you had access to this information, you could produce more of the second videos and less of the first. You’d have (a) more leads and (b) more time! There is no reason we shouldn’t all be measuring the effectiveness of our campaigns. It’s the bread and butter to building a successful marketing organization. Gone are the days of “we’ll do it the way it’s always been done!”. What do you think are the most common mistakes or oversights organizations make when using video for marketing? The biggest thing I would say we see organizations forgetting about is utilizing the data that’s available for individual viewing behavior. There’s so much information accessible that can help you better understand your leads and who’s consuming what video content, which ultimately paints a clearer picture of who’s more qualified to buy. Why is personalization so important for video marketing? Every single person (and even their dog, at this point) receives so many marketing messages every day. So many messages that our attention span is actually shrinking partly because of this. Connecting one-to-one with your audience is really the best way to capture – and keep – their attention. And doing so with video adds that extra boost since it’s already a preferred medium. What can brands be doing to personalize their video marketing? Utilize a personalized video service that automates the personalization process (we offer this at https://www.vidyard.com/personalized-video). On top of being able to customize certain aspects within your actual campaign videos, you can use personalized thumbnails to get prospects to view your videos. For example, using a personalized thumbnail within an email can increase click-through rates by four-and-a-half times.
How to Use Email to Leverage the Promise of Video Marketing Posted on May 2, 2016June 1, 2016 by Jessica Lunk If you aren’t already leveraging video marketing in your emails, you’re behind the marketing curve. In a 2013 ReelSEO study, 93 percent of respondents said they were incorporating video in their marketing campaigns — and 60 percent claimed to use videos specifically for email marketing. Since then, the prevalence — and sophistication — of these video marketing efforts has only increased. The reason for the rise in video marketing is simple: it’s effective and affordable. Research from Diode Digital indicates that video marketing is 600 percent more effective than print and direct mail efforts. However, the wrong strategy can compromise your entire marketing campaign. Harness the power of video and keep the following essentials in mind as you incorporate rich media into your marketing emails: Map out your strategy for using video in your emails. If you have a smartphone, you have the ability to create a marketing video for your business. However, there’s a lot more that goes into video marketing that capturing two minutes of footage. It takes time to script out your video, plan for your shoot and edit your video post-shoot. Then you have to figure out where to host your videos and create the emails that deliver video to your audience. Having a strategy in place before you start production will ensure that you get the most out of the time and resources you put into your videos. Here are some tips for mapping out your strategy early on: Define the goal of your email campaign Decide who your videos are for and the purpose they serve. Goals like: Engage top-of-the-funnel leads. The strategy may be to create a how-to video series or email course – check out our email course for inspiration. Create a sales tool. Your strategy might be to record a product demo or to produce an interview series with your key employees. Re-engage customers. A strategy may be to enhance your customer knowledge base with how-to product videos. Choose a video host Your overall strategy might influence how you decide to host your videos. For instance, YouTube is perfect if you want to reach a large audience and allow others to share and embed your videos. A host like Vimeo is ad-free and offers privacy settings – which may be ideal if your strategy is to create a new revenue stream by offering a video email course. Wistia video hosting tracts engagement stats and allows you to add a call-to-action link at the end of your videos – a great option if your strategy is to create a product video with a call to action at the end. Map out your campaign With your goal in mind, chart out your email strategy. Is it a simple drip campaign that visitors can sign-up for on your website? Or are you adding a video to an existing campaign to boost engagement? Mapping out the email strategy from the beginning can help clarify how to shape video content – which is super important, because you only have 10 seconds to capture your audience’s attention (according to Video Brewery). Keep short attention spans in mind. Email recipients must wade through dozens or even hundreds of messages. They have no time to spare for lengthy videos, but they will set aside a minute or two for a concise clip. The ideal email video is, at most, two minutes long. If you struggle to fit your entire message in just one short video, consider creating a series of videos, with each lasting between 30 and 45 seconds. These short videos can quickly hook email recipients and get them excited for what’s to come. Be sure to let viewers know that they should expect follow-up videos in the near future. Be authentic, but edit yourself. The quality over quantity cliché definitely applies to video-based email marketing. A short video will be completely ineffective if it includes blurry footage, shaky camera work, unnecessary noises coming from offset, or distractions in the camera background. Expensive recording equipment and a dedicated studio are not required, but good video and audio equipment can definitely make a difference. More important, however, is your message, so be sure to edit out any awkward moments. Stay true to your personal brand and your company brand by editing out things that distract from the purpose of your video and your overall message: Avoid unnecessary distractions – like a barking office pet or water-cooler discussion getting picked up in the background. Take note of your surroundings – if filming in your home office, for instance, get that laundry basket out of the shot. Deliver value – Know your message backward and forward and don’t dance around the point you want to make. If your video goes on too long without delivering value, viewers are going to tune out. Now that you have their attention, tell your audience what to do next. Merely linking to video in your emails is not good enough. Your should also feature a call to action, ideally within the actual video or, at minimum, in the email’s text. Video-based calls to action are especially effective, as they encourage viewers to check out other videos, thereby further exposing them to your brand. The easiest video-based calls to action are verbal, with the subject encouraging viewers to click provided links or view follow-up videos. However, brands with more developed YouTube channels can achieve greater response rates by editing in annotations. When clicked, these annotations lead viewers directly to the next video. Additionally, video-based calls to action can include links that encourage viewers to subscribe to your YouTube channel or check out your social media pages and official website. Create your email for the 99%. Now that your video is ready to go, it’s time to add it to your email. With the latest HTML 5 standards, you can technically embed a video in an email that will play right in the recipient’s inbox. And while that seems like a simple solution, keep in mind that email clients are a fickle bunch. What looks great in one email client may appear wonky in another. Email clients are notoriously hard to please, and getting your emails to render correctly across all of them is always a chore. In fact, email delivery service, SendGrid, advises to not embed video into emails. Video hosting service, Wistia, also has some solid arguments against embedding video into your email. Instead, SendGrid, Wistia and most others with authority on email and video recommend simply using a thumbnail or GIF link to your video. As a bonus, when you use a link to your video in your email, you can track who has clicked to watch your video. If your goal is to cultivate a dedicated following, using video in your email marketing strategy can transform any run-of-the-mill email into an effective tool for increasing customer engagement.