Study: Video Marketing Most Effective When Measured with Advanced Analytics

November 29, 2016

Matt Habermehl

Organizations embracing video as part of account-based marketing and personalization strategies

Video expanding beyond marketing departments

KITCHENER,Ontario – November 29, 2016 – Video remains the hottest and most effective form of marketing content, but many marketers are missing out on returns because they aren’t adequately measuring video performance, according to a new survey from Demand Metric.

For the third consecutive year, Demand Metric partnered with Vidyard,the video platform for business, to produce “The State of Video Marketing Benchmark Study Report” with the goal of understanding how video performs as a content type. It also investigates new trends around video personalization and use of video with account-based marketing strategy, as well as examining video’s spread beyond marketing departments.

The return on investment of video marketing has remained consistent over the last three years that Demand Metric has asked about it. Nearly half of participants report ROI is improving but a quarter say they don’t know what the returns are. Determining the ROI of video is a direct result of tracking metrics on video performance. Respondents who use advanced analytics are twice as likely to say their ROI is better and more likely to increase their video budgets year over year. Just 14% use advanced analytics, and that percentage has been constant for each year of the study.

“The use of advanced metrics has become imperative for organizations that produce higher volumes of videos annually, as these metrics enable optimizing performance and understanding the true ROI of their investment,” the report said.

Viewing data is important for ROI because it also gives marketers insights about their audience and where they are in the buying journey. Integrating viewing data with marketing automation and CRM systems leads to deeper understanding of a viewer’s interest in making a purchase, but those integrations continue to lag. Just 13% of respondents reported they have integrated their data and are taking advantage of it.

Other key findings:

• More than 90% of the study’s participants said video marketing content is becoming more important, a consistent three-year trend.
• More than half of participants produce 11 or more videos per year. Large companies produce the most videos.
• The average number of participants saying that conversion performance for video has stayed the same or gotten better is 96%, which is consistent with previous years.
• The use of advanced analytics remains at 14 percent, unchanged from previous years.
• Using video to support account-based marketing is just emerging with fewer than 10% using it.
• Nearly half of respondents said they use internal staff and resources to produce videos, up from 38% a year ago.
• 50% said they plan to use a third-party video hosting or video marketing platform vs. YouTube or Vimeo, up from 38% last year.

“While many brands continue to chase the viral video hype, this report makes it clear that videos don’t need to go viral to be successful,” said Michael Litt, CEO and co-founder of Vidyard, which sponsored the survey. “In fact, it’s becoming clear that personalized, targeted videos used throughout the sales funnel are more engaging and more effective at turning viewers into customers.”

Video, Personalization and ABM

This year’s survey explored the relationship between video, personalization and ABM for the first time. Amplifying the effectiveness of video through personalization and ABM is a natural progression, Demand Metric found. More than half of the study’s participants indicated they use personalized video content, which is believed to have an impact on content effectiveness and ROI. In fact, 58% of those using personalized video reported improvement in ROI compared to 43% of those who don’t use personalized video.

Demand Metric found that video has a growing role in ABM, a strategy for targeting prospective customers at the account level rather than the individual lead level. Just 8% of respondents this year reported using video with their ABM strategy, but another 6% say they plan to add video to ABM. Similar to the tie between analytics and ROI, the survey also found that inclusion of video with ABM is facilitated by integration of video viewing data with marketing automation and CRM systems.

Video Going Beyond Marketing

The power of video as an influential medium has helped it move beyond the marketing department to nearly every other function in an organization. However, marketing remains the primary user at 86%, followed by internal communications (19%), sales teams (15%), executive teams (11%), support teams (11%), human resources (8%) and others (11%).

This year’s survey was administered online during the period of October 5 through October 28, 2016 and includes responses from 289 people, primarily in marketing and sales departments at B2B companies, but B2C companies were also included.

To view the full survey report, click here: /resources/state-of-video-marketing-2016/

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About Vidyard

Vidyard (Twitter: @Vidyard) is the video intelligence platform that helps businesses drive more revenue through the use of online video. Going beyond video hosting and management, Vidyard helps businesses drive greater engagement in their video content, track the viewing activities of each individual viewer, and turn those views into action. Global leaders such as Honeywell, McKesson, Lenovo, LinkedIn, Cision, Citibank, MongoDB and Sharp rely on Vidyard to power their video content strategies and turn viewers into customers.

About Demand Metric

Demand Metric is a marketing research and advisory firm serving a membership community of over 40,000 marketing professionals and consultants in 75 countries.  Offering consulting methodologies, advisory services, and 500+ premium marketing tools and templates, Demand Metric resources and expertise help the marketing community plan more efficiently and effectively, answer the difficult questions about their work with authority and conviction and complete marketing projects more quickly and with greater confidence, boosting the respect of the marketing team and making it easier to justify resources the team needs to succeed.  To learn more about Demand Metric, please visit: www.demandmetric.com.

Media Contact:
Brad Hem
Phone: (281) 543-0669
press@vidyard.com