• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, October 27, 2017

According to a blog from Jeff Gadway, Director of Product Marketing at Vidyard, more than 72% of B2B buyers are watching videos to help them make their buying decisions, with more than half watching at least 30 minutes of content before they buy, according to Google Research. And, 90% of a customer’s decision to purchase is made before they come into contact with the sales team, says the report.

Businesses are reacting by using video in their content marketing strategies to build relationships with online audiences. A 2014 report by Demand Metric found that 50% of marketers are producing more than 10 videos per year, and 1 in 3 large companies produce more than 100 videos per year.

Your team probably tracks things like page views, ebook and whitepaper downloads, and form submissions to qualify and score leads, says the report, but video viewing can be tracked down to the second. A viewer who watches a video 100% of the way through, or re-watches certain sections is likely more interested than a viewer that only consumed the first few seconds.

A video marketing platform is a complete solution for the entire video content lifecycle, says the report, with everything a video marketing platform can do:

1 Improved hosting, management and distribution

2 Driving engagement, conversation and optimization

3 Measuring results

4 Generating leads and enabling sales

5 Insights

Hosting, Management And Distribution

While YouTube is the second largest search engine on the web, it began as a hosting site for user-generated video content. Managing a business’ large video catalogue on YouTube can become cumbersome to manage and scale. Plus, there are key B2B markets where YouTube content can be blocked. A video marketing platform can help with many of these challenges, from ensuring global playback of assets across screens (desktop and mobile), to proving better tools for managing videos across multiple teams and users.

Driving Engagement, Conversation And Optimization

A video marketing platform can help optimize video content with tools like A/B testing splash screens for engagement, pushing viewers through the funnel with calls-to-action and email gates, as well as other interactive elements pre-, during, and post-roll.

Measuring Results

According to the report, one of the questions asked of marketers is “Do you get paid on video views or on the revenue generated by marketing?” The majority of people talked to say, views don’t mean much, but some marketers don’t know any other way. A video marketing platform can help better understand engagement by identifying how long viewers are watching, and whether they are converting to leads.

Generating Leads And Enabling Sales

In addition to simply tracking video engagement behavior, a video marketing platform can also integrate with other marketing and sales technologies like marketing automation platforms (MAP) or customer relationship management (CRM) software. By connecting a video marketing platform to your MAP, lead-scoring models can be enhanced by using video engagement data in campaigns to segment customers based on videos watched.

Summarizing, Gadway says “A video marketing platform provides marketers with valuable insights like who is watching and which viewers are converting to leads, helping them make better decisions and show ROI. It will also unlock new insights into which content is more effective at engaging and converting audiences. And lastly, a video marketing platform will show which video assets are generating the most leads, contributing to the most pipeline and closing the most deals.”

To view the complete blog, please visit here.