by Tovah Coldham
Scroll through Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, websites, your email, whatever it is, and you’ll see that video is dominating visual content.
Social video generates 1200% more shares than text and images combined. Companies that use video enjoy 41% more traffic. And a landing page with a video on it produces up to 80% more conversions than one without.
But you don’t need to be convinced that video is a powerful way to stand out in a world saturated with content. That might not mean you’re jumping right into video creation, though. After all, it generally takes far more time and resources to craft a compelling video than a blog post.
Luckily, more user-friendly video tools are emerging on the market, which means even if you’re the one-person marketing powerhouse of your company, you can create shareable, memorable videos that drive engagement and conversions.
In this post, we’ll walk you through the metrics you should be tracking on your videos, the crucial elements of an on-brand video, and exactly how to post and promote your video on every channel using HubSpot.
Which Video Metrics are Important?
Savvy marketers are concerned about the ROI of each of their marketing efforts. When it comes to video, that means they need to consider statistics from the top to the bottom of the funnel. Focusing on the number of views is not enough.
- Frequency: The average number of times an individual user has viewed your video.
- The average percentage of video viewed: The average percentage of the video your viewers watched. This is a good metric for measuring how engaging the content is.
- Link click-through rate: The number of clicks from your video to your desired destination, whether it’s a landing page, a blog, or your website.
- Leads: The number of people that either signed up or opted into a gated piece of content, like a free ebook or newsletter, after clicking through from the video.
- Cost per lead: How much each of these leads costs relative to the cost of your video and promotion efforts.
It’s also important to analyze which parts of the funnel are “broken.” For example, if you see that your viewers are watching nearly the entire video but it isn’t generating any leads, you may need to add a clearer call-to-action so that it’s easy for viewers to take the next step.
If there’s already a related CTA in place and you still aren’t seeing an influx of leads, that might mean your video is engaging but isn’t attracting people who match your ideal buyer persona.
Many of HubSpot’s video-related integrations allow you to see viewing data on an individual viewer level.
Creating an On-Brand, Share-Worthy Video
Define your audience.
Your audience’s preferences should inform your video production and strategy from start to finish. That means you need to dedicate time to understanding their needs, where they’re looking for video content, and what their routines are. Where do they get their info, and who do they trust to deliver the info they’re searching for?
Is your audience a small subset of your contacts database that’s already well-informed on the topic your video explores? Perhaps it’s worth making a longer video that goes into detail about a new development in the field or the steps required to complete a certain task.
For shorter campaigns focused on lead generation, you should aim to make evergreen content that will convert today or a year from now. That means appealing to your audience’s core concerns.
Make sure you’re keeping your viewers in mind as you consider each of the following important elements of an engaging video.
Establish a tone.
Identify whether your audience connects more with a literal portrayal of your brand and product or something that appeals to their emotions. If the content is intended to be helpful rather than highly emotional, you’ll want to make sure the topics covered are laid out explicitly at the start of the video and that a viewer can walk away at the end of the video with a thorough understanding of that topic.
On the other hand, if you decide to use storytelling to craft a memorable and emotional viewing experience, it’s important that your footage helps evoke a particular emotion — whether it’s humor, suspense, or curiosity.
Choose an appropriate length.
The length of your video should depend on a few things.
If you’re doing a larger, top-of-the-funnel brand awareness campaign with a longer video as the centerpiece, try breaking down your video into 30-second teasers to distribute on Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram, and longer 60-second clips on Facebook, publishing a small snippet each day leading up to the launch. Keep your social videos short. Videos less than one minute maintain 80% retention for the duration of the clip, while videos that are two to three minutes drop to 60%.
The optimal video length varies for each distribution channel. Keep an eye on the research that’s now coming out surrounding video length and algorithm updates on every social media site. For example, you wouldn’t want to push out a long explainer video on a social media site that people scroll through quickly.
Customize the thumbnail.
Create buzz from the very first impression. Get the viewer hooked by uploading a custom thumbnail and making sure the first frame and featured frame are intriguing.
Make it look like a pro produced it.
If you’re looking to make branding videos, social videos, or video ads, it’s best to use the professional footage. Working with a content provider like Promo by Slidely will give you access to millions of clips from which to choose and help you piece together a professional-looking video. If you’re producing the video yourself, check out some of these tips.
Enhance viewability with captions.
Add captions. This may not be obvious, but given that 85% of videos on Facebook is played silently, you need to make sure viewers can read your content. Make sure the captions don’t interrupt or blend into the footage and that the font is easy to read on all types of devices and screen sizes.
Keep your viewers engaged with the right music.
With even the greatest footage and on-point copy, a video can flop with the wrong music selection. The music must compliment your overall theme and propel your video in a memorable and cohesive way.
Make sure to match your music to the emotion you’re trying to portray, for example, no horror movie music in a product video. While pop songs are great, they typically have a complicated structure with four to five parts. Try looping a part of the song that suits the flow of your video.
Keep background music in the background. Background music often ruins videos by distracting the viewer from the clips and content.
Add a call-to-action.
A proper CTA invites viewers to respond to the video they just watched. There are three main places you can add a CTA in a video: the post text above the video, within your video, and the last slide of your video. Make sure you maintain the same tone, look, and feel on whichever page to which you point viewers for the smoothest user experience.
Where and When to Post and Promote Your Video
The beauty of video is that its mileage is a lot better than more traditional forms of content. Place your video on your site, in a blog post, and on your social pages — all you have to do is adjust your video slightly for each medium.
Don’t forget that you play the most important role in creating the initial buzz that will get your video shared. Hit it hard on all your owned channels simultaneously when you launch the video and consider promoting it using social media advertising. You might want to try and get a few influencers on board to amplify your efforts. Once you get some positive momentum going, it’s easy for the campaign to pick up.
Always optimize for mobile, regardless of the distribution channels you choose. With 52% of mobile search for videos, and 92% of mobile users sharing videos, mobile is an absolute must.
Where should you post your videos?
As Facebook’s algorithm starts to favor video over other content forms, and channels like Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram become more video- and ad-friendly, social media is probably the easiest place to publish your videos. These platforms give you so much flexibility that you’ll be able to stretch your video content farther than you expect.
Posting in HubSpot
You can post a video to Facebook from within HubSpot by clicking on the video play button when you’re posting to Facebook from the in-app social tools. When you click on the ‘play’ button, a window will open and you can either find a video file or simply drag and drop one into the publisher. Once the file is uploaded, you can post it to Facebook. The video will post like a native Facebook video.
Another pro tip: Don’t forget one of the most underrated networks under the “social” umbrella — YouTube. Posting your videos on your business channel will help you centralize all of the video content you’ve created and grant credibility to your brand. It also helps to build your audience.
Landing pages are great places to push your videos. By incorporating a video into your landing page, you’ll give the page more traffic and authority since most search engines are starting to prefer video. Adding video to your landing pages has been shown to increase conversions by 80%. When it comes to landing pages, branding videos or customer testimonial videos are often the way to go. They’ll help your visitors learn more about your business in a simple and engaging way.
Blog posts that incorporate video attract three times as many inbound links as blog posts without video. For blogs, choose social videos or explainer videos to hold onto your readers’ attention.
Diversified video distribution will not only make your videos and campaigns more likely to go viral but will also attract more valuable traffic and even more conversions. You just need to choose the right channels and start pushing them out.
When should you post your videos?
Post when your target demographic is online. This may take a bit of market research, but if you know what your personas are on Facebook late at night, that’s when you need to be posting.
Any evergreen video content you create should be promoted on a regular basis, particularly if you’re strapped for production resources. Many prominent brands continue to promote their videos for months after publication, simply by adding new videos into their content schedules as they’re created.
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