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THE SOCIAL VIDEO MASTERCLASS FOR BUSINESS

bsp-admin-1 on April 19, 2019

Scroll through any social network today, and it is quickly apparent that social media—and maybe the internet as a whole—belongs to video. By 2022, research suggests that 82% of global internet traffic will come from video. Billions and billions of those video views are coming from social media. Everywhere you look, content that used to be shared in a blog post or text post is now being shared in video format. And it’s no wonder—videos perform better and are more engaging than text-only or image posts across all the major social networks.

So how do you get a slice of that engagement for your brand? We’ve done months of research on what makes some videos perform better than others.

VIDEO ON TWITTER

Twitter is well-suited to audience awareness and engagement—especially if it relates to current events—so leverage brand stories and your most timely content. It’s also a fantastic network for brands who want to take a stand. Consider Gillette’s “We Believe” video ad—it generated 13 million views the first day it went live on Twitter, and was closing in on 30 million views within a week.

VIDEO ON FACEBOOK

Facebook is home to a totally different type of video content than Twitter. Users engage with videos of their families, causes they support, cute animal videos, and carpool karaoke. Keep in mind the type of content you’ll be surrounded by in this context, and produce videos that are innately shareable, down-to-earth, and personal.

VIDEO ON LINKEDIN

Video has taken LinkedIn by storm, and it’s a particularly valuable audience for B2B marketers. Think about it—45% of LinkedIn users are upper management, meaning they’re the decision-makers you want to target! Videos on this channel should provide professional value to the viewer: help them become better at their job in some way, whether it’s a video that shows them how to be a power user of your product, or a video that explains best practices in your industry.

VIDEO ON YOUTUBE

You didn’t think we were going to skip YouTube, did you? YouTube is now the second-most trafficked website in the world after Google, and it’s an excellent tool for being discovered through search (no accident, considering it’s owned by the world’s largest search engine). Long-form content is a natural fit for YouTube, since the average viewer sticks around for over eight minutes. Aim for a friendly, conversational tone and consider putting some of your company’s most engaging personalities in front of the camera. It should be fun to watch!

LIVE STREAMING ON SOCIAL

Live streaming is the next frontier for social media marketers. Some key best practices that apply across the board are:

  • Tailor your production level to the content. The most casual live streams can be just you and a mobile device. The most extreme involve broadcast-level set-ups.

  • Engage your viewers with specific calls-to-action. Example: A simple “Hit ‘like’ if you agree” can send your reaction numbers sky-high with minimal effort.

  • Stream for at least ten minutes. Most live streams pick up new audience members as they go, meaning you’ll miss out on viewers if you cut the stream short.

HOW HENNGE CREATED MORE VIDEO CONTENT WITH FEWER RESOURCES

bsp-admin-1 on April 14, 2019

If you are in charge of marketing or sales promotion, you are likely to face problems such as how to make use of leads that have stopped being followed up on, or production resource issues, but HENGE’s practical example shows that these problems can be solved by successfully introducing video marketing. The company focused on a new approach method, and without using any special technology or hiring new staff, they succeeded in reducing the number of “dead leads” that were piling up, mass-producing high-quality content, and automating lead qualification. How did they achieve this?

ISSUES: ACCUMULATING “DEAD” LEADS, LACK OF RESOURCES

HENNGE is developing various digital marketing measures with the aim of acquiring new inbound leads. In addition, in order to acquire more leads, they are also simultaneously implementing outbound measures such as cold calling. For the leads they gathered, sales representatives would quickly arrange appointments for initial visits, but after the initial visit, leads that were deemed to have a low probability of becoming projects were rarely followed up on. Due to the nature of the product, the percentage of leads that became projects was around 10%, and in fact, 90% of the leads were left unused and accumulated as “dead leads”. The company, which was aware of the issues and possibilities in this situation, turned its attention to a new approach method that combined video content and MA tools.

Measure 1: Utilizing existing content

In this situation, the company’s attention was drawn to the seminars it held several times a month. Hiroaki Mizutani of the company’s Cloud Sales & Marketing Division says, “The idea came from the simple concept that if we recorded the seminars and made the minimum necessary processing as video content, wouldn’t it be much easier to mass-produce content than to create white papers and web content? In fact, once we had decided on this policy, we were able to quickly put together a large quantity of content with a small amount of resources.” Because the seminars themselves were well-planned and well-developed for customers, they were able to produce a large quantity of high-quality content by making effective use of them, and at the same time, they were also able to solve the problem of human resources.

Measure 2: Automate distribution and accumulate insights


Once they had built up a library of recorded seminar content, HENGE needed to get it to the right audience. When considering a platform for distributing videos, the company’s main requirement was that it should be able to link with the MA tool “Marketo”. The company had also introduced Salesforce.com for CRM, so they also placed importance on being able to link with that. “If you just want to distribute videos, then a free video distribution platform will do, but by tracking who has watched how many videos and storing that data in a database, you can use it to your advantage in various activities. We looked for a platform that would make this possible and also allow us to develop it quickly.” If too many resources are taken up by sales activities, it will have an impact on the closing rate for high-quality deals. Therefore, a new dedicated inside sales team was set up to re-approach the 90% of leads that had been abandoned, and the MA tool “Marketo” was introduced as a system that would enable them to approach customers at the time they needed. In addition, by using videos, they are not only tracking each lead’s web browsing history, but also the viewing history of the video content they have mass-produced this time, such as “who has watched how much? they are able to determine when, to whom, and with what kind of conversation to approach each lead. The company places particular importance on the length of time spent watching the videos. Based on the hypothesis that leads who spend a certain amount of time watching the videos are highly interested in the service and have a strong desire to purchase, they prioritize making calls to leads who have watched more than 50% of the videos they have provided.

By tracking who has viewed what and storing this data in a database, it becomes possible to advance various activities in a favorable way.

Hiroaki Mizutani
General Manager, Cloud Sales & Marketing Division, HENGE Corporation

RESULTS: REDUCTION IN UN-FOLLOWED LEADS, AND TRIPLING OF INSIDE SALES TELEMARKETING SUCCESS RATE

Mr. Mizutani explains the benefits of this system: “When we call leads who have watched our videos, we get a good response from them from the very beginning of the conversation. The conversation flows more smoothly, and because the hurdle for sales activities is lowered, it becomes easier to get appointments, and our telemarketing success rate, which was 5% before, has risen to 15%.” After introducing Brightcove’s Video Marketing Suite (VMS), the company says it has gained value and satisfaction from being able to visualize who has viewed what, the ease of use of the UI and the time and effort saved on video uploads, the ability to categorize videos by content, and the ease of creating gallery pages. Those in charge of marketing and sales promotion tend to face problems such as how to make use of leads that have stopped following them and production resource issues, but the HENGE case study shows that these problems can be solved by successfully introducing video marketing.

INCORPORATING CUSTOMER VIDEO INTO YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY

bsp-admin-1 on March 22, 2019

Customer stories can be extremely valuable assets when it comes to establishing trust and moving contacts along the sales funnel. Interested in learning more about how and where to incorporate your customer story content? Read on for our tips and best practices.

CASE STUDIES

A great place to start is with case studies. Once you have a customer who’s willing to be featured, conduct an interview with them that focuses on the ways in which your products and services have helped them to reach—or exceed—their goals. Whenever possible, incorporate direct quotes from the customer, as well as specific statistics that prove that your partnership has helped the brand grow and succeed. Doing so will make your case studies increasingly powerful.

VIDEO TESTIMONIALS

By adding a video testimonial into the mix, you can make your case studies even more engaging. In these videos, your customer contact can specify—in their own words—how your products and services have helped them to streamline a particular process, boost sales, or achieve another exciting accomplishment. By allowing your audience to see and hear your customer speak about the value of this partnership, the message will resonate on a more emotional level. To increase your reach, you can even share clips of these video testimonials on your brand’s social channels.

TARGETED EMAILS

Incorporating customer stories into your marketing emails and nurture campaigns is another effective way to leverage this content to move prospects and current customers along the sales funnel. Call out impactful statistics and proof points in the subject line and beginning of the email to capture your audience’s attention—and keep the message fairly short so that you keep them engaged. Be sure to include a call to action that drives readers to your product or service page.

WHITE PAPERS

Are you creating a white paper or guide to gain leads and highlight your team’s subject matter expertise? Consider driving your points home by incorporating relevant customer stories. For instance, our team recently created a guide to sports video, and we added various customer stories that highlighted how our products empower our sports clients to deliver broadcast-like sports streams and a professional OTT experience. This is a great strategy for calling attention to the solutions you offer in your thought leadership content.

EVENTS

If your company hosts an online event, consider inviting your customers to participate in panels or lead breakout sessions. This can be a powerful way to get your success stories out there to a wider audience. And since most—if not all—of your team will be at the event itself, it will be even easier for a prospect who’s intrigued by a customer story to connect with you and learn more.

THE VALUE OF INCORPORATING CUSTOMER STORIES INTO YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY

Sharing these stories benefits both your brand and your customers. At the most basic level, this content sends the message that your company is not not just “tooting its own horn.” Success stories that come from a customer’s words and point of view are increasingly believable and authentic. And, on the customer’s side, telling their stories on a variety of different channels can help to increase their exposure and brand awareness.

In addition, this content can be really powerful when it comes to converting leads. You can even incorporate these customer stories into your ABM campaigns. When a prospect learns the specifics of how you’ve helped a similar company achieve their goals, they will feel more confident that you can do the same for them—helping you to establish trust amongst your target audience.

Overall, it’s clear that customer stories can and should play a meaningful role in your marketing materials. Which story will you share first?

TIE VIDEO TO MARKETING AUTOMATION

bsp-admin-1 on March 20, 2019

According to Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing in 2019, 91 percent of marketers consider video an important part of their strategy. However, most companies are still manually tracking their video data, rather than integrating it with their MarTech stack. However, automating video and tying it to the rest of your marketing campaigns makes your life easier. Done effectively, it can even take your ROI to the next level.

WHY VIDEO?

Video is more engaging and more effective at converting viewers than most text assets. According to our research with YouGov, 45 percent of adults say that video is more engaging than other content, and 76 percent of them have made a purchase after watching a video. Video is also easier for your audience to consume than long-form copy, and easier for marketers to set up. Think about it: using a video platform like Brightcove, you can easily drop a video thumbnail into an email (which increases your click-through rate by up to 50 percent, according to Campaign Monitor) and create the associated video landing page with one click. Compare that to setting up a landing page with a custom form, and then tracking form submissions.

WHY AUTOMATE VIDEO DATA?

Let’s say you used Brightcove to drop a video thumbnail in your email, which then leads to a landing page where the video can be viewed. Do you have time to manually track engagement statistics on that video, let alone follow up with every lead who watches it? Of course not.

Because videos are so engaging and effective, capturing details about the people who view them is essential. We use our own analytics and tracking tool, Brightcove Audience, to tie the metrics of our videos—SDR outreach videos, product videos, webinars, etc.—into Eloqua, which is then tied to Salesforce. This means we can track view activity without gating every piece of content. It improves our users’ experience and helps drive more leads to sales, which increases our funnel. Not only that, but the increased visibility into engagement metrics helps our creative team learn which types of videos are most effective, so that they can optimize for conversion.

Marketing automation makes it effortless to capitalize on the power of video. When your stack works together seamlessly, your sales team gets leads that they can follow up with—or your leads can enter an automated nurture track (yes, more automation!). Here at Brightcove, we have over thirty different nurture tracks which can be triggered by activity on our website, event attendance, users’ job titles, and more. Automating those nurtures makes our job easier, and by connecting Eloqua to Salesforce, it also makes our sales team’s job easier. They can effortlessly see which content their prospects have already interacted with, and where their interests lie, before starting a conversation with them.

Hopefully by now, I’ve convinced you that video marketing automation is a no brainer. Looking for a tool that will do all the work for you? Check out Brightcove Segment Sync, our video marketing automation solution.

DRIVE REVENUE WITH E-COMMERCE VIDEO

bsp-admin-1 on March 15, 2019

If you want to continually increase your cart value and boost online sales, it’s no longer optional for you to incorporate video into your e-commerce strategy. According to the results from our 2018 Video Marketing Survey, 76% of consumers report purchasing a product or service after viewing a video. As e-commerce video continues to play a major role in today’s customer life cycle, it’s more important than ever that brands understand how to use video assets to drive brand engagement and increase online sales.

Here’s a quick overview of the types of videos that will help you drive purchases—and tips on how to take your campaigns to the next level.

CREATE PRODUCT DEMOS AND HOW-TO VIDEOS

Today’s consumers want to be able to see your products in action before they click “add to cart.” Demos and how-to video content bring online customers closer to an in-person shopping experience, and empower them to make informed purchase decisions. Leverage this type of content to highlight the best, most desirable features and benefits of your products.

LAUNCH VIDEO PORTALS

Once you have published a handful of e-commerce videos, you can increase customer engagement even further by delivering interactive digital experiences through video portals. With Brightcove Gallery, you can launch a branded portal in minutes—leveraging our suite of in-page layouts and easily implemented interactive elements. You can then embed these layouts in your email campaigns, blogs, landing pages, and websites.

DEVELOP INTERACTIVE VIDEOS

Interactive videos can be an extremely powerful tool for driving purchases. By adding calls-to-action and add-to-cart functionality, you can increase cart value and ultimately, convert more viewers into buyers. Companies around the world are seeing amazing results by adding this kind of interactivity into the mix. For example, Endeavour Drinks Group’s shoppable video campaign, Global Christmas Menu, empowered them to drive huge holiday sales. In fact, a whopping 41 percent of viewers used the video’s add-to-cart functionality.

LIVE STREAM EVENTS

Today, an increasing number of e-commerce brands are adding live streaming into their marketing mix. Whether you decide to live stream your fashion show like HUGO BOSS or create live versions of your product demos and how-to videos, live streaming empowers you to create an immersive video experience that will boost engagement. Once you have a few successful live streams under your belt, you can take your content to the next level by integrating interactive elements into your live-streamed events.

ANALYZE VIDEO ANALYTICS

Make sure to track and measure the performance of your e-commerce videos so that you can understand the type of content that is resonating best with your audience—and which assets are worth your investment in production time and money. These analytics will help you uncover purchase behaviors that empower you to make strategic decisions to increase cart values.

SET UP INTEGRATIONS

By integrating your videos with your marketing automation platform (MAP), you can generate and access detailed viewing analytics for individual shoppers. Once you have these metrics, you can score and segment prospects—and send personalized communications. Similarly, by integrating your e-commerce video analytics into your customer relationship management (CRM) system, you can develop a better understanding of what interests your customers and how they’re interacting with your content.

In today’s growing e-commerce marketplace, video is a powerful tool for cutting through the noise and engaging customers on a deep, personal level. By incorporating video into your strategy, you can get viewers closer an in-person shopping experience at home.

AMP UP YOUR EVENT CONTENT STRATEGY

bsp-admin-1 on March 8, 2019

Throughout the year, industry leaders and innovators come together at major events and conferences to share insights and learn more about the future of their space. While it’s always valuable to have some of your team members on the ground to discuss your brand and offerings at these important industry events, a successful, comprehensive marketing strategy involves more than just the right in-person talking points.

In order to establish your brand as a thought leader and maximize your opportunities to connect with prospects, you need to create and distribute the right event content before, during, and after a conference takes place.

BEFORE THE EVENT

When it comes to the biggest and most important events in your industry, you should start publishing relevant content weeks (or months) in advance. By establishing the right strategy here, you can take advantage of the opportunity to increase your site traffic and brand awareness.

BLOGS

There are two main approaches you can take when it comes to pre-conference blogs. One option is to create a post that focuses on the future event itself. This kind of blog can cover what attendees should expect, the themes of the conference, session highlights, and other relevant information. These posts are also the perfect place to call attention to any panels or sessions your team will be involved in.

Another option is to create blog content around the key themes of the upcoming conference. For example, imagine that you work in the e-commerce space and interactivity is going to be a major topic at an upcoming industry event. Consider developing associated interactivity 101 and roundup posts that empower you to define your brand as a leader in this space. Getting in on a trending conversation in this way can give you an organic search engine optimization (SEO) boost.

WEBINARS

Similarly, you could create webinars that focus on the major themes and topic areas that will be discussed. By having one of your internal subject matter experts (SMEs) lead the webinar, you can further highlight your team’s expertise—making prospects even more interested in connecting at the event itself.

ASSETS REQUIRED FOR SCHEDULING MEETINGS

Is your team planning on hosting meetings with customers and prospects while they’re at the event? If so, you should develop a landing page where users can book a specific time slot. And don’t forget to create various marketing assets that will drive your audience to this page.

One particularly engaging content type to use for this purpose is a short promo video. These videos can be shared on social and included in any pre-event emails you send out to prospects and customers. A straightforward, simple formula to use here is to leverage b-roll event footage from previous years to make up the majority of the visuals. You can then incorporate on-screen text or a voiceover to explain that your team would love to connect at the event—and provide all the pertinent information about scheduling a meeting. If you have the necessary interactivity integrations in place, you can even add a call-to-action (CTA) at the end of the video with a link to the landing page where individuals can book a specific time slot.

DURING THE EVENT

Some of the most exciting and impactful event content is published or distributed during a conference. This content serves one of two purposes. The first is to share first-hand insights and exciting reveals with those who could not make it in person. And the second is to provide your marketing and sales team with physical assets that they can distribute.

SOCIAL POSTS

Live tweeting has become a hugely important part of every event content strategy. Once you have a plan in place for which team members will be attending a particular conference, consider who will have the time and social media expertise necessary to be in charge of live tweeting. Make sure to limit this responsibility to one or two individuals—and clearly define who is in charge of posting about each session. In particular, powerful social content can incorporate photos taken during the event itself and inspiring quotes pulled from speakers.

LIVE STREAMS

If you want to take your event content to the next level, consider incorporating a live stream into the mix. Depending on your technical capabilities and integrations, you can stream this content on a hosted site or your social channels. If you have the necessary permissions and access levels, you can potentially stream panels your organization is involved in—as well as unique content, such as in-person interviews your team conducts.

VLOGS

Daily vlogs are another type of valuable video asset you can create during an industry event. These videos can fuel social content and serve to recap what’s happening on the show floor each day. Overall, this content can provide your audience with a first-hand visual peek into what it’s like to be at the conference.

DATASHEETS

If you have a booth or other space where prospects and customers can arrange to meet with your team, you should come prepared with printed assets to distribute. Datasheets that highlight the specific features, advantages, and use cases of your products can be a really valuable tool to drive these in-person conversations and encourage new contacts to follow up with your team at a later time.

PRESS RELEASES

If your team is planning on making any big announcements during an industry event, you should make sure your public relations team has an approved press release that’s ready to go live right away. These announcements may revolve around new product releases or updates, new executive leaders of your company, and other exciting changes.

AFTER THE EVENT

Don’t let the conversation end after a conference is over. There are a variety of different ways you can leverage content to keep the momentum going.

RECAP BLOGS AND VIDEOS

Consider developing blogs and videos that summarize the most exciting announcements, trends, and themes that your audience should be aware of moving forward. This content will be particularly enticing for those who couldn’t make it to the conference, but the assets will also be valuable recaps for those who were there.

In particular, an event summary video can be a powerful and engaging asset to include in any follow-up communications you send out. This may include a post-event thank-you email to new contacts who took the time to meet with your team.

REPURPOSED CONTENT

Some of the content you create prior to or during an event can be repurposed down the line. For instance, if one of your team members gave a presentation, you can incorporate their slide deck and insights into blog content, LinkedIn posts, and more. You can also repurpose any live-streamed content by turning it into video-on-demand (VOD) assets. If you can find a way to make some of these assets evergreen, you can leverage this content for even longer.

WEBINARS

After a major industry event, you should have a solid understanding of some of the biggest trends that will be shaping your space for months to come. Capitalize on these trending topics by creating associated webinars. Is there a new type of technology that’s changing the game? Create 101-style webinars that introduce the basics. Is your target audience facing a new challenge? Develop product webinars that highlight how your offerings can help them overcome this hurdle.

It’s clear that content should play a major role in your overall event marketing strategy. By creating and distributing the right assets before, during, and after a conference, you can establish your brand as a thought leader and maximize your opportunity to connect with prospects.

CREATING BUSINESS VIDEO FOR SOCIAL MEDIA: MISTAKES TO AVOID

bsp-admin-1 on February 27, 2019

In today’s marketing landscape, video plays an increasingly powerful role in brands’ social media strategies. Often considered to be the most engaging form of content, short, captivating videos flood various social channels on a daily basis.

So, how can you deliver top-notch social videos that drive followers to engage with your brand? You can start by avoiding these three common mistakes when creating video content for social media.

1. FORGETTING TO PROVIDE VIDEO CAPTIONS

Over recent years, various social platforms have incorporated auto-mute functionality for video content. This means that in many cases, your followers won’t hear the audio associated with the social videos you upload unless they actively unmute them.

Of course, this poses a variety of challenges for marketers. In order to capture your audience as they scroll through their feed, you need to optimize your social videos for sound-off viewing. One way to do this is by adding captions—allowing your followers to experience the script and get a better sense of what’s happening while the content is muted.

There are a variety of different benefits to keep in mind here. For instance, when you add closed caption files to your videos, the search engine bots that crawl the internet will index and weigh these files in your search results—providing you with a search engine optimization (SEO) boost. And captions make your social videos more accessible for those with hearing impairments.

Thankfully, transcribing and delivering captions can be a seamless process that doesn’t require a heavy lift on your end. By integrating with a company like 3Play Media, you can process closed captions and multilingual subtitles quickly and easily.

2. LINKING TO A VIDEO HOSTED ON ANOTHER SITE

In order to fully reap the benefits of your social videos, you must push your content to the channel’s native player—as opposed to linking to a video hosted on another site. Today’s social channels’ newsfeed algorithms reward a native video experience, which means pushing to the native player will give your content the greatest chance of being viewed by scrolling followers. Social networks also build out more analytics and mobile viewing functionality for this type of content—giving you the tools you need to make your videos even more powerful.

In contrast, posts with external links will take up less visual real estate, and add an extra click between your follower and the video in question.

Recent research has also shown that native social videos lead to increased engagement. According to quintly’s Facebook Video Study, native Facebook videos receive an average of 530 percent more comments than YouTube videos.

3. MISSING OUT ON DATA INSIGHTS

In order to create the kind of powerful social videos that your audience is seeking, you must refer to your video analytics on a regular basis. Doing so will help you understand what is—and isn’t—working, providing you with the insights you need to make strategic decisions.

Once you’ve created and shared a variety of different social videos, evaluate your data to determine which type of video content earned the most views, comments, and shares. By examining your analytics in this way, you can identify patterns that will help you nail down the types of videos that will resonate best with your audience.

While it’s always a good practice to keep testing out new content types and strategies, it’s important to focus your energy on creating more of what has been proven to work. Doing so will help you ensure that the associated video production time is worth the results you gain.

When creating video content for social media, there are a variety of different factors you must keep in mind. By avoiding the three common mistakes outlined above, you can be one step closer to creating powerful social videos that will lead to increased engagement.

3 points to get started with video advertising [Beginner’s Guide]

bsp-admin-1 on February 20, 2019

The video advertising market is growing rapidly today, and there are various new opportunities for advertisers. According to a report by eMarketer, the digital video advertising industry in the US is expected to grow by more than 10% between 2018 and 2021, eventually becoming a market worth more than 2.2 trillion yen. To keep up with the world of digital advertising, we have written some tips and points to keep in mind below.