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New Research: B2B Video Marketing on the Rise

Authors: Tyler Lessard Tyler Lessard
Posted Under: Social Media
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New Research Report Suggests B2B Video Marketing on the Rise

Consumer brands have long understood the importance of using video content as a marketing tool to deliver key messages to their audiences and to build brand affinity. Video marketing has been growing among B2B organizations as well.

New survey results show that trend is likely to continue, and that the potential return on investment is significant for those brands that can overcome initial hurdles in building a storytelling culture.

Although four out of five B2B marketing professionals reported their video marketing efforts were successful, budget, resources and the ability to produce quality content continue to get in the way of good work, according to the results of a new survey from Demand Metric, a leading analyst firm for research and best practices for the Marketing industry.

The good news, the analysts said, is that those barriers are becoming less challenging and that those who overcome them realize significant returns. Products and services for video marketing are becoming more affordable, and organizations are putting more resources toward video and content development as they realize it deserves more attention.

In the survey of more than 100 professionals, 82 percent said they considered their video marketing strategies successful, including 15 percent who said they were “very successful.” That’s good news and shows that video can be an effective part of your digital marketing strategy.

Let’s take a look at the reasons why some of those surveyed are struggling with the video marketing efforts:

Screenshot 2014-07-17 14.34.03We can all relate to these challenges. Budget is an ever present obstacle regardless of the digital marketing strategy. Lack of in-house resources and need for more compelling content are also common, but they are becoming less so as we see more organizations invest in video and building a storytelling culture. The fact that just 12 percent said lack of management buy-in is an obstacle shows that video is getting more respect and the potential value is well understood.

In fact, Demand Metric found that just 5 percent of those surveyed plan to decrease their budgets for video in the next 12-18 months while almost two-thirds plan to increase budgets. As Demand Metric notes, it’s safe to presume that the lack of resources we mentioned above will be less of an issue a year from now.

One particularly interesting finding worth discussing is around the channels where organizations distribute their video content and how effective they are. Eighty-one percent said their own company website is their most used channel for distribution, compared to 73 percent for video sharing sites such as Vimeo or YouTube and 49 percent for social networks. However, 26 percent consider sharing sites the most effective distribution channels, compared to just 22 percent for company websites.

This is where I’d like to offer a little guidance. While YouTube can be a useful distribution tool, it is rarely better than using your company website if lead generation and conversion are your primary goals for video marketing.

First of all, sending viewers to YouTube means you are missing that traffic on your own site. Second, and more importantly, YouTube isn’t in the business of promoting your content. That means while your prospects are watching your video, YouTube is tempting them with other videos in the margins. At best, they may be off topic. At worst, they may be your competitors’ videos.

Video marketing in B2B is maturing quickly, and there is still a lot to learn about how to get the results that will have the biggest impact for the business. Based on these results, there is a lot of reason to be optimistic for the future.

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