A benchmark study from the Content Marketing Institute reveals that while 70% of B2B marketers use video as a tactic, only 58% believe they’re being effective. This is because many people aren’t optimizing content before it’s released and they are mainly focusing on top-funnel goals like awareness rather than mid-to-late-funnel goals, like lead generation and sales enablement. In short, video can be connected to ROI, it just depends on what you do to optimize your content.
Luckily there are some simple things you can do before and after you release videos to help you attach your content to real marketing goals and the bottom line.
Build Calls to Action
One of the most important video add-ons is a call to action. While you use CTAs in white papers and other text assets, they seem to be missing from a lot of video marketing content. That said, instead of just adding a CTA, why not create a strategic content path and use CTAs to guide your audience through it?
For example, if you create a product tour with a series of four videos, use the first video to lead to the next, and so on. Each video can end with a CTA prompting viewers to watch the next and thereby lead viewers subtly through the buying cycle.
Ultimately, never let your videos fade to black; always give your audience a clear action item that ties to a meaningful, measurable activity (i.e. “Request a demo”, “Start a free trial”, “Download the content package”). This means all of your videos will prompt viewers to consume even more content and become increasingly educated on your offering, all the while you’ll be able to track their actions and how those actions influence closed business.
Connect Your Videos to Your CRM
Perhaps the most clear cut way to see how your videos are directly influencing revenue is to connect your video marketing to your CRM.
With a video marketing platform you’re able to push video viewing history into Salesforce.com and use simple reporting to see exactly which videos perform the best with your leads, how much content they watch, and whether they watch to completion. This information is very valuable because you’ll finally discover exactly what your hottest prospects are interested in based on viewing history, and select reports will show you which videos are generating the most revenue. You can even filter the data by opportunity value to see whether high video consumption rates lead to higher value deals.
Overall, using your CRM with video engagement data is the most simplified and direct way to start tracking how each video your marketing team produces ends up influencing sales.
Use Email Gates
Another simple way to connect video to measurable activity is to use an email gate at the front of your content. An email gate is attached to your video even when shared over social channels and acts as a great way to collect new lead contact information, and confirm prospect’s interest in your content.
While you don’t necessarily want to gate top-of-funnel awareness videos, you will want to gate highly detailed, specialized, or personalized product demos lower in the funnel. By gating content, more qualified leads will have to raise their hands and then you can send them even more content that’s targeted to their interests.
For example, if someone watches a gated demo on your tax software, you can push that lead’s viewing history into your MAP and automate more content about that particular software offering to hit their inbox immediately after they’ve watched the video. This means you’re able to follow up while you’re top of mind and you’ll be using video for lead generation rather than mere entertainment.
Analyze Your Performance
Fnally, after you’ve released your optimized, purposeful video content, it’s important to review your performance with detailed video analytics. In 2013 over 70% of marketers failed to deliver measurable results because they were merely trying out new media techniques and didn’t quantify their success, but as the CMO gains more spend than even the CIO in the next three years, marketers must account for video’s impact on the bottom line.
To find out whether your content is working, you need to track:
- Audience attention span
- Drop off rates
- Click through rates on CTAs
- The device types used to view video content, and
- The geographic location of viewers
By interpreting how your prospect’s interact with your content, you’ll get incredible insight into their digital behavior and which parts of your content need to be modified to suit their preferences.
For instance, if drop off rates are high at a certain point in your video, you may want to consider whether something disruptive or potentially boring is going on during that particular time. Video data can help you realize new things about your target audience and you can continually adjust your content to maintain their attention with each new video you release.
Overall, even though many marketers have historically swept performance under the rug, you must get comfortable with data and optimization techniques to see success with video. Moreover, because there are so many easy ways to start seeing real results with your video content, there’s absolutely no reason to wait. Start implementing email gates, calls to action, automated nurturing with your MAP and CRM, and attach your mid-funnel videos to measurable goals, and I guarantee you’ll see improved ROI in no time.
