Remember that one kid in class that always threw off the score when the professor graded on a curve? Not cool, Brad; not cool at all. Just like the grading curve, early adopters of video are making it harder for everyone else to succeed. We can’t blame the Brads of video marketing for doing it right. But we can start thinking differently about how to compete with these mavericks. Survival over the next five years may very well depend on one thing: tag-teaming with a video marketing company.
Early video adopters are driving marketing teams into the hands of expert third-party partners because the skills and experience gap is too wide for novice video marketers to close alone. What’s worse, this gap is widening every day.
To understand just how profound this gap is, let’s take a look at the four major advantages early adopters have and how they are working against less experienced or limited marketing teams.
More Platform Experience
Video distribution is half the battle, and early adopters are most familiar with the lay of the land. They’ve toyed with video platforms like Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook and Wistia. They know how to use many of the features in each platform strategically, and they recognize the power of newly released features, which puts them in a position to capitalize before anyone else.
Early adopters also know the trends unique to each platform. For example, did you now that 85 percent of Facebook videos get watched without sound?
If an early video adopter did their job right, they’ve aggregated data. Months or even years of data. Not just any data, either. A history of video data that reveals more about audiences than static content.
Articles, eBooks and infographics tells us a decent amount about a visitor, like click-through rates, time spent on-page, return visits and conversions. But analytics can’t say much else about how a visitor spent their time with the content or, more specifically, what parts of the content earned their attention. Did the visitor read the entire article? Did they re-read or gloss over parts?
Video tells us exactly what information audiences absorbed by detecting engagement. How much of the video did a viewer watch? Where did the video lose their attention? Did they re-watch the video in its entirety or just particular segments? Early adopters can analyze this data for individual viewers and identify specific information the viewer liked or disliked. This insight can then be used to explicitly inform lead nurturing efforts.
Video data also helps create a history of trends that will impact future decisions. For example, if early adopters were paying attention, they probably recognized that millennials watch the most online video, especially millennial men.
With experience, data and audience insights, early adopters of video have the foothold to start, spot, and leverage trends faster and more effectively than novices. Take the release of Facebook Live in 2016, for example. A marketing team with limited video experience isn’t going to choose live streaming as their warm-up. There’s no editing; no redo button. But early video adopters had the skills and confidence to jump in headfirst. As a result, they capitalized on some serious live audience love.
Video helps brands grow at a rate that’s 49 percent faster than brands that haven't incorporated it into their strategies. In other words, early video adopters hit their goals more frequently and help to increase revenue. Consequently, C-suite allocates a greater percentage of the overall budget to marketing efforts. According to Adweek, digital video spend rose by 85 percent in just two years.
Surprisingly, this final advantage might be the Achilles heel your marketing team can strike to pull ahead of competitors. Rapid business growth is difficult to manage. It’s even more challenging to sustain. Growth is a delicate journey and—like Mt. Everest—it’s laden with tests of strength and stamina. This is your opportunity to enter with fresh energy, stake your claim in the market, and join (or exceed) the front-runners.
Video marketing companies—especially those who can build video into your current digital strategies—can bridge the skills, experience and resource gaps between your team and industry frontrunners. Together, you can determine what strategies are lacking, and amp up those areas to improve performance and outpace even the most experienced video marketers in your industry.
