Most companies recognise the power of video, but many don’t see the results they expected. Tristan Pelligrino offers 4 top tips to getting it right

Several years ago, any company could post a video and rank highly on search engines within hours. Organic traffic turned into hot leads and conversions with minimal effort required. Today, that dynamic has changed. Content saturation is rampant, and decision-makers within companies are more discerning than ever about which content they choose to consume.

It’s not enough to have great content these days — to attract online traffic and turn views into sales, you need

a 


strategy


 driving your content forward

.

Unfortunately, most companies continue to struggle in their video production efforts.

The reasons vary from business to business, but in my experience, two factors are more common than the rest: no clear objective and no distribution plan.

The Two Mistakes You Need to Fix

B2B marketers often set out to produce video but then fail to define what they want their videos to do.

For example, say you wanted to develop a product overview video or services overview video. Where does that video go after production? Do you want it to serve as a sales enablement tool, lead generator, or something else? For your content to help you achieve your goal, you must first define the purpose of that content and implement a corresponding call to action.

You must also create a distribution plan to put that video in front of your target audience.

Video is a fantastic asset because of its interactive, dynamic nature, but without a distribution plan your investment in video assets is wasted. According to the Video Marketing Statistics 2016 report by Wyzowl, 53% of businesses using video have difficulty promoting their content. With more content than ever competing for attention in 2018, the struggle to break through the noise is even tougher.

A single video can live in multiple places: websites, landing pages, social channels, ad channels, email communications, proposals, and more. If you want views and an audience that responds to your call to action, you must develop a distribution plan during the video creation process.

How to Get More From Video Content

Fixing those two mistakes is easier said than done. To stand out from the din of online content and get more potential buyers interested in your video, you must focus on both the content itself and on the promotional channels that deliver it to audiences.

That means that your content now costs more than the price of labor.You not only need to invest in paid advertising, but also in insights that help you put that content in front of the right demographics.

You must study your audience members, discover where they spend their time online, then use that data to determine the optimal approach for your business. If you think social media will do the work for you, think again.

Social sharing of content has been cut in half since 2015, according to

BuzzSumo’s 2018 Content Trends report

. Organic content shares simply don’t have the power they once did. You need more — specifically, you need to incorporate video in your paid ad spending.

Fortunately, video takes ad dollars further than they would go otherwise. In partnerships and other sponsored content, video helps you stand out from your image- or text-based competitors.

Those lucrative partnerships don’t happen on their own though. More than half of B2B companies that think they have a video partner don’t actually collaborate enough to create meaningful growth through their content, according to consulting group North Highland.

So, what should B2B companies do to get their videos noticed and achieve their desired outcomes?

Follow these 4 simple tips:

1. Develop a strategic reporting structure

When you distribute video content across multiple channels (such as your own site, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.), it can be difficult to make sense of the metrics. Use tools to consolidate statistics into a single, easy-to-read view that lets you compare the effectiveness of one channel against others.

Companies like Funnel, AdStage, and Google Data Studio all provide this functionality.

2. Dive deeper into your data

If data was king in 2017, it’s the supreme emperor in 2018. Don’t stop at views when rolling out video content.

Dive deeper, using tools like Wistia and Vidyard, to identify and track metrics such as drop-off rate, engagement, total minutes viewed, actions taken.

Keep up with the latest trends in video effectiveness. Right now, Twitter videos max out at half the length of Instagram videos. The most-viewed YouTube videos are 10 times longer than those on Facebook. The more you understand the data, the more engagement on videos you will get.

3. Repurpose your content

If you create one video and post it everywhere with no changes, you won’t see optimal results. Instead, determine how and where you want to use the video, then adjust your approach based on the audience you want to capture.

Perhaps your CTA on Facebook will look slightly different from the one you use for LinkedIn. Maybe you could link to other YouTube videos on your YouTube post. Perhaps you should try to drive your website visitors to another section of the site.

4. Test, test, and test some more

In order to find out whether your video is actually producing optimal results, you’ll need to test different strategies and see which works best. For example, what happens to your email open rates when you include “[VIDEO]” in the subject line?

In native ads, does an in-stream video or a link to an article work better? You’ll never know what works until you try it, so test out new ideas until you get the results you’re looking for. Sometimes even the smallest changes can make the biggest difference.

TutorVista, for instance, tested its existing landing page against the same page except for one change: a video that auto-played for users visiting the site for the first time. The result? An 86% increase in conversion on the landing page with the video. If your video content isn’t producing the results you want, don’t throw out the camera.

By paying more attention to data, repurposing your video content, designing a distribution plan to maximize your influence, and thoroughly testing your various strategies, you can get more from your videos and

stand out from the monotony

of your competitors’ content.