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ENGAGING AUDIENCES WITH INTERACTIVE VIDEO: REPORT SUMMARY

bsp-admin-1 on April 21, 2016

Communication habits are changing. We want bite-sized, to-the-point content, preferably on-demand. As a result, knowing your audience, appropriate timing, and on-point messaging has never been more important.

To engage short attention spans, marketers are using videos with a compelling twist. They’re adding interactivity, marketing automation, and personalization to build out a more advanced feedback loop, creating robust conversations with prospects and customers.

Demand Metric and Brightcove, in cooperation with our interactive partners, surveyed interactive video users about how they currently employ interactivity in videos. For marketers looking to get started, or expand their interactive video offerings, use these benchmarks guide you.

You’ll learn the following things about interactive video:

  • Use cases
  • Marketing results
  • Ownership and responsibilities
  • Budgets

Which Types of Interactive Video Should You Create?

Which types of interactive content are marketers using? Turns out, all of it. Once the barrier to entry is removed, more and more interactive video is produced. But as with any piece of content, have an objective. Depending which stage of the customer journey is being targeted, your purpose will differ. Need some inspiration? Check out the list below:

  • Awareness video. Q&A with an industry leader, providing in-video question selection allowing viewers to create their own content path.
  • Engagement video. Post event wrap-up with an in-video satisfaction survey to attendees.
  • Conversion video. Product demo with chapters and in-video lead form.
  • Retention video. How-to/tutorial with hotspots for deeper dive information.
  • Advocacy video. User-generated content promoted on social with annotations linked to relevant content.

Do Marketers Who Use Interactive Video Drive Better Engagement?

Engagement means going beyond just a video view. True engagement means forming a connection and, in digital marketing, this must solicit a trackable action. Video is well suited to telling stories that garner a reaction, and interactive video compels these exchanges, putting the viewer in control. In fact, interactive video users receive a 66% uptick in video interest while 28% of those surveyed consider interactive video technology a competitive differentiator. Interactive videos drive measurable actions, so what are some of the other positive effects you can expect for your brand?

Benefits of Interactive Video Survey Results

Who Should Oversee Interactive Video Content within Your Organization?

Ownership is important. You now know which types of interactive video to create and the performance indicators to monitor. But who will determine interactive content strategy and drive projects forward? According to the Demand Metric report, this responsibility currently lies heavily with marketing execs, creative directors, content managers, and video editors.

Interactive Video Ownership Survey Results

Keep interactive video ownership within one team, but don’t hesitate to pull in the expertise of others. Could sales and support teams lend a hand to inform the subject matter of this content? Align goals across your organization and create video content that drives these objectives.

Will I See Results with Interactive Video?

Often when testing the waters of a new technology or marketing tool, investments can be small as adopters wait to see a return on their investment, or indications of promising growth.

Interactive Video for Engagement Survey ResultsInteractive Video for Conversion Survey ResultsInteractive Video ROI Survey Results

Interactive video users measure engagement at every point of interaction. How to assess where interactive video aids in conversion or calculating total return on investment, however, seems to be a bit of a gray area. The average planned spending on interactive video over the next 12 months falls within a range from $30,000-$39,000 for our survey respondents. Interestingly enough, of those using interactive video, 33% don’t know how interactive video converts, and an additional 34% doesn’t know the ROI. This suggests that there is a measurement gap. Close the loop on interactive video by integrating a marketing automation platform with your online video platform. Aligning your marketing automation platform, interactivity, and CRM tool is vital for measuring the effectiveness of interactive video.

What is the Future Importance of Interactive Video in Marketing Strategy?

Bite-sized and on-demand? Absolutely. Interactive video delivers. Marketers get it, as 70% of the video produced by study participants is interactive video. They understand that interactive video delivers unique, customized experiences. Furthermore, the additional insights that interactive video provides enable highly personalized campaigns. You can now double down on successful video content, repurposing in a way that delivers the kind of insights marketers dream about.

FOUR WAYS TO CONVERT VIDEO VIEWERS LEADS

bsp-admin-1 on March 31, 2016

All marketers should have a comprehensive video marketing strategy in place. With consumers watching more video content than ever before, businesses recognize the unique ability of video to drive tangible results.

Your video marketing strategy should address two crucial questions:

  1. Where should my video content be available to provide my audience with compelling experiences?
  2. What actions do I want viewers to take after they’ve watched my video?

Brightcove Gallery, our video experience publishing module, offers beautiful templates and marketing tools to help marketers achieve measurable results. Gallery’s user-friendly publishing tools enable you to create internal and external video experiences in minutes—no technical expertise required.

Here are four ways Gallery helps convert video viewers into leads.

1. ON-PAGE CALLS TO ACTION

The conversion rate of calls to action (CTAs) is a key measure of any marketing campaign’s success, and video is no exception. After watching your video, your audience is primed to act—so why not make it easy for them? Brightcove allows you to embed CTA buttons directly on your Gallery page. For example, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra uses CTAs to encourage viewers to donate without interrupting their experience. Remember, as marketers, it’s our job to ensure awesome videos drive meaningful results.

2. CUSTOM END SCREENS

What happens after your video ends? If the answer is “a blank screen,” you’re missing a critical opportunity to engage viewers. Brightcove lets you create custom end screens to guide viewers to their next action. Options include a “Thank you” message with your logo, a prompt to share the video on social media, or fully branded buttons for additional engagement. Whatever action you want to encourage—sharing, exploring, or purchasing—Brightcove makes it possible.

3. LEAD FORMS

Grow your database and qualify your audience with customizable lead forms. These forms can be displayed before, during, or after a video, capturing crucial information such as names, email addresses, and company details. Brightcove’s custom lead forms allow you to configure when and how they appear, ensuring you gather insights while maintaining a seamless viewing experience. Captured data integrates directly into your MAP or CRM system, turning viewers into qualified leads and increasing conversion rates.

4. RELATED LINKS

As marketers, it’s our job to guide prospects and customers through the entire lifecycle: awareness, engagement, conversion, retention, and advocacy. Related links are an effective way to direct viewers to content relevant to their interests, strengthening their connection to your brand. For instance, if a viewer watches a video about a specific product, you can include a link to the product page for more information or purchasing options. Related links not only guide viewers toward desired actions but also reinforce brand perception.

TURN VIEWERS INTO LEADS

Incorporating these features into your video marketing campaigns can significantly enhance viewer engagement and conversion rates. The next time you create a marketing campaign with a video experience, use Brightcove Gallery’s call-to-action features to turn your video viewers into leads and achieve measurable success.

MOBILE VIDEO PLAYER SUPPORT FOR GOOGLE AMP

bsp-admin-1 on March 24, 2016

After Google announced Project Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), Brightcove quickly developed a component for its video player to support the shared goal of delivering blazing-fast mobile experiences.

By early 2016, Google’s mobile search results began directing users to AMP-compatible publisher landing pages optimized for the AMP specification. Below are two mobile searches that generated results showcasing key Brightcove clients, including Time Inc., The Atlantic, Gannett, Vox, and Forbes.

AMP optimizes how page elements load, ensuring the best possible viewing experience. The Brightcove AMP component is an alternative player embed code we provide for use on AMP HTML pages for customers who want to support the initiative. This component ensures the player complies with the AMP specification, allowing pages using it to be recognized by Google as AMP-compatible.

“A central goal of the AMP project was to make the mobile web experience blazing fast while preserving the amazing diversity of tools that the open web has to offer,” said David Besbris, VP of Engineering at Google. “It has been great to see the expertise that Brightcove has brought to the AMP open-source project.”

As of this writing, AMP is set to launch worldwide by the end of March 2016.

One of our EMEA customers already using AMP with the Brightcove player is La Stampa. Giuseppe Covato, Director of Technology Innovation and Development at La Stampa, said: “We know our users appreciate experiences that look great and load quickly on mobile, so we were excited to join Google’s AMP initiative. Brightcove’s development of an AMP component for the video player we use ensures that our video pages are also fast and AMP-compatible.”

HOW TO PUBLISH CUSTOM STILLS AND VIDEO THUMBNAILS QUICKLY AND EASILY

bsp-admin-1 on March 10, 2016

Thumbnail images are an important visual draw for people to watch your video content. As such, the image choice can have a huge effect on the success of your videos. Brightcove offers two ways to create custom still and thumbnail images: one is quick and easy and the other allows you to create a custom image using a graphic design application.

Having a quick and easy image option that you can adjust at a later date is necessary for many enterprise video use cases. Let’s say you’re streaming a live event or publishing videos that are time sensitive. Maybe it’s a news story or product announcement. You’re probably familiar with the tug-of-war between getting content live quickly and making sure it looks right. Let me show you a good way to effectively manage both these needs.

Quick Thumbnails

When you upload your video to Brightcove, the system automatically grabs the frame at the 50% mark. This frame may or may not be what you want. If it’s not the frame you want, you can play your video and pause it on a more appealing frame. Click “Capture” to quickly save this as your new thumbnail image. Now you’re able to immediately go live with an acceptable image.

Customer Thumbnails

Ultimately, you want your video to have a polished, premium, and click-worthy still image. This may require grabbing a still image, color correcting it, and adding some graphics. This all takes time. Since you already grabbed a still image from the video using the quick method above, you have a little extra time to create your beautifully crafted custom image by using your graphics application of choice. When you’re done, simply click the “Edit” Button in the still image section of your video in the Media Module and upload your image.

Here’s the real magic: Your new image will be processed and automatically become the video thumbnail. No need to re-publish.

This hybrid approach of capturing a frame within Brightcove and later uploading a custom image allows you to publish quickly, gives you time to craft your custom image, and lets you simply upload that perfect image when it’s ready.

VIDEO SEO: 3 ON-PAGE TACTICS AND HOW TO AUTOMATE THEM

bsp-admin-1 on March 3, 2016

SEO is more than simply doing keyword research and selecting the most relevant keywords for your content. It’s about giving search engines what they want in the format they want. If you can provide the right information, in the right format, then your content has a better chance of ranking.

The good news for those in video marketing is that search engines love video pages because people love video pages.

Video content offers an added opportunity to provide search engines with the specific information they’re looking for. While there’s no way to ensure your videos show up first in search results, there are some proven strategies that can increase your click-through rate.

To have a successful video SEO strategy, you need three main things:

  • Unique URLs for each video on your site domain
  • Schema tags for each video on your page
  • A video sitemap

1. Unique URLs

A single unique URL means you can share the unique URL via sitemaps, emails, or social media networks. That allows the search engine to follow and track that URL and to determine its value. Essentially, you’ve given your video its own address so search engines can track it no matter where it appears.

Creating unique URLs can be challenging as it requires you to re-structure how your webpages are named and built. This step can be troublesome as you’re probably not the only person or division with your company that uses your website.

2. Schema Tags

Some time ago, the major search engines agreed upon a standard set of tags, called schema, that you can use to describe the videos on your webpage. These are tags that you add to the code of your page in a specific format. This step allows the search engines to gather data from your website in a predictable and structured format (simply known as structured data).

We have a great tool that will pull metadata from your Brightcove account and add it as schema tags for you. However, this means that you’ll have to do this for each new video you embed on your site and re-do it for any existing videos.

3. Video Sitemaps

You can compile a list of your videos with their unique URLs and submit them as a sitemap to Google and other search engines. This action will trigger their bots to crawl your website and confirm that your videos are indeed on that page. If they happen to find schema tags on those pages, they’ll collect those additional details as well.

Once created, the next step is to submit the sitemap to Google. The challenge is as soon as you post a new video, you’re going to need to update and re-submit your doc to Google.

How to Automate Video SEO

Now that you understand the importance of unique URLs, schema tags, and sitemaps, the question is: How do you implement and maintain them (especially at scale)? Honestly, if you do this on your own, it’s going to take some work, but it will be worth it. Or you could simply let Brightcove Gallery manage all three of them for you.

Not only can you host and publish video portals, but any Brightcove Gallery site will automatically compile the video titles, video descriptions, and other metadata into a video sitemap and keep it up to date. It will also automatically embed schema tags on each page and give each video a unique URL without interfering with your corporate website. Many publishers report measurable improvement in their video discoverability after launching a Gallery page.

Whether you take a DIY approach or leverage Brightcove Gallery, unique URLs, schema tags, and sitemaps will help you optimize your videos and keep your brand in front of viewers when using the major search engines.

HOW TO CREATE VIDEO MARKETING CONTENT FOR SOCIAL MEDIA

bsp-admin-1 on March 2, 2016

Social media and the effective use of video on these platforms present an unparalleled opportunity for marketers to increase reach and brand awareness. These channels are essential components of a well-designed video marketing strategy. However, many marketers ask how to align social media videos with content hosted on their own platforms. Below, I’ll share tips on creating social media video content that complements your main videos and drives users back to your website.

Think of social media as a marketing “fishing net.” The wider you cast it, the bigger your potential audience. Establish a presence on the social platforms where your prospects spend time. Ultimately, though, the goal is to funnel traffic back to your website, where you can control the user experience, access better analytics, convert prospects into customers, and foster long-term loyalty.

Social media demands a different style of video content—short snippets, partial stories, or live event highlights—that grabs attention and encourages viewers to visit your site for more. Consider these videos as trailers that complement your primary content. Creating social media video content is less daunting than it may seem and should support your broader video marketing activities rather than being treated as a standalone task.

HOW TO CREATE SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT EFFECTIVELY

I’ve experienced the challenges of creating additional video content firsthand. Initially, I hesitated to produce social media videos because my primary content was time-consuming and costly. However, upon closer inspection, I realized the extra effort was minimal, and I discovered some tricks to simplify the process. Ultimately, social media content proved to be an invaluable tool for driving traffic to my website.

Here’s the most important lesson: Plan for social media content from the start. Before you begin shooting or even writing a script, decide what your supplementary videos will look like. Once you’ve set up cameras, lights, and actors, it takes very little additional effort to shoot versions tailored for social media. Often, marketers think about social media marketing after the fact, leading to rushed, less effective content. A bit of forethought can save you significant time and effort later.

TIPS FOR CREATING SOCIAL MEDIA VIDEOS

 

1. EDIT TRAILERS OF EXISTING VIDEOS

Editing a trailer or a shorter version of a video is easier than you might think. Most of the work is already done, and an editor can quickly produce a condensed version alongside the original.

2. CAPTURE BEHIND-THE-SCENES FOOTAGE

Behind-the-scenes content—like bloopers, outtakes, equipment shots, or partial scenes—can make for engaging social media videos. These clips pique interest and encourage viewers to check out the final product.

3. LEVERAGE LIVE EVENT STREAMS

Live events provide excellent opportunities to create social media content. With tools like the Brightcove Live module, you can mark edit points in the long-form video, save shorter clips directly to your Video Cloud account, and post them to platforms like YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter. During the event, take notes on interesting moments in the live stream to quickly create impactful social media content afterward.

4. PLAN AHEAD

The key to all these strategies is preparation. Video production professionals know that investing time in pre-production prevents problems later, saving effort in post-production. The same principle applies to social media marketing. A little planning ensures you can effortlessly create and distribute engaging content that aligns with your business goals.

By planning your social media strategy in advance, you can efficiently produce high-quality, shareable videos that drive traffic to your website, enhance your brand’s online presence, and ultimately support your broader marketing objectives.

Calculating the ROI of interactive videos

bsp-admin-1 on February 16, 2016

Despite the surprisingly high evaluation of marketers regarding the effectiveness and satisfaction of interactive videos, marketers still cannot give a clear answer to the simple question of “what is the ROI of interactive videos?”.

AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING PROMOTES ACCESSIBLE E-LEARNING

bsp-admin-1 on February 11, 2016

The internet has become a global educational boon, offering students and teachers unparalleled access to resources worldwide. Gone are the days of relying solely on outdated textbooks or browsing through school catalogs. Instead, millions of online resources are now available, bridging the gap between those with extensive access to educational tools and those who have traditionally been underserved. This progress is particularly significant for individuals with visual and hearing impairments, a group often overlooked by educational initiatives. In Australia alone, approximately 4,000 blind and partially sighted children benefit from these advancements (according to Media Access Australia).

Online video is playing a pivotal role in improving access to educational resources for these students. A prime example is ABC Splash, a free digital educational platform from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). ABC Splash provides educational content for students of all levels and abilities, featuring a mix of online articles, podcasts, and, most notably, interactive online videos. With around 2,500 videos available and new content added daily, the platform offers an engaging and visual way to learn.

What sets ABC Splash apart is its commitment to accessibility. The platform features advanced access tools that cater specifically to users with visual and hearing impairments. Brightcove has a long-standing partnership with ABC and now works closely with its education division to enhance the accessibility of ABC Splash. Through Brightcove, users can access videos with features such as closed captions, transcripts, keyboard controls, and screen reader support. Additionally, the entire site adheres to accessibility standards, ensuring that more users than ever can benefit from its content.

Brightcove’s Dynamic Ingest technology enabled the rapid ingestion of ABC’s entire video library, ensuring that all content was ready in time for the platform’s launch. This included optimizing workflows to accommodate both geographically restricted and unrestricted content within the same account and integrating with ABC’s content management system (CMS).

ABC Splash exemplifies how Australian content providers are leveraging advanced technology to reach broader audiences and promote accessibility, particularly for marginalized groups. This initiative is a groundbreaking example of how online video can provide barrier-free access to educational resources for an ever-expanding audience. Brightcove is proud to support ABC Splash in this important project, which makes learning more inclusive and accessible for all.