Video has quickly become an essential piece of every successful company’s digital marketing strategy. As internet users’ attention spans get shorter and shorter, the need for engaging content that proves the value your product or service can provide is increasing. One way to solve that is through video marketing.
With so many choices for video platforms out there, deciding which suits your company and meets its needs can be a tough choice. Don’t fret! We’ve put together a list of the most popular ones and weighed their pros and cons to help you make a more informed decision for your digital content strategy going into 2019.
Vidyard
Vidyard is currently paving the way for video platforms geared toward businesses by providing many innovative and unique tools to aid with lead generation, lead nurturing, and customer acquisition.
To help increase traffic and improve SEO for your videos, Vidyard automatically transcribes your video’s audio and embeds it onto each page the video is on. It is the only video platform that automatically A/B tests thumbnails to find the one that drives the most traffic. You’ll also get the most customization capabilities. Place custom call-to-actions anywhere in your video. You can even personalize videos to specific viewers via automated email campaigns or actions taken on your website.
Perhaps most importantly, Vidyard gives best-in-class integrations with marketing automation and CRM platforms to generate more leads via your content, increase conversion rates, and track the ROI on each piece of content.
Unfortunately, Vidyard has no “free” plan and only provides custom price quotes based on your needs. On average, custom plans can cost $1,500/month, with additional service fees for various integrations. You can, however, take advantage of a 14-day free trial to see if the service is worth the investment.
Wistia
Wistia, like Vidyard, markets itself as a video hosting platform for businesses. While not quite as robust as Vidyard, Wistia offers many similar features.
Wistia’s Turnstile allows you to collect email addresses through your videos and import those leads into your CRM. You can also use call-to-actions to lead viewers to specific pages, other videos, or specific parts of your website. Similar to Vidyard, Wistia’s embed codes automate your video’s SEO by embedding the transcript of your video’s audio to your website, thus helping with traffic generation and inbound leads. While Wistia’s customization options are not up to par with Vidyard’s, it does allow you to select the colors and adjust some of the player’s functionality to better match your brand’s image.
Wistia’s platform also provides businesses with analytics tools that allow marketers to see details about each video, including specific sections that are being watched and rewatched the most. You can also key into specific email addresses and see which content they viewed.
For $99/month, Wistia allows you ten video uploads and up to 200 GB of storage per month. You can also add additional videos for only $0.25 each per month. If that’s not enough, you can also pay more for a custom plan based on your needs.
YouTube
YouTube’s audience is one of its greatest assets. With about 1.8 billion users or about a third of all internet users in the world, YouTube commands the #2 spot out of all search engines, behind its parent company, Google. This relationship means that you can improve search rankings, on both YouTube AND Google, by building and effectively implementing a YouTube SEO strategy. Moreover, YouTube’s viewer demographics are quickly spreading through the different generations.
YouTube also presents a few challenges to companies looking to leverage video on the free platform. Depending on the size of your organization, it might be difficult to produce great content consistently. YouTube's algorithms favor channels that post valuable, inspiring, or engaging video content at least once a week. Where most YouTube channels fall short is converting viewers into actual marketing or sales leads, since there's no way to collect viewers' contact information via YouTube. However, with the right strategy, anything is possible! Contact us for more info.
YouTube provides its users with analytics tools such as the number of views, viewer demographics, and originations of views to help you see which content is getting the most views and shares.
In terms of storage, this platform takes the cake. It allows unlimited, free storage for all accounts. But, to offset this, YouTube will most likely place a pre-roll advertisement before your videos.
For those on a budget, YouTube gives you the ability to create and post video content at no cost.
Vimeo
In 2007, Vimeo became the first video hosting platform to support HD video. Since then, video resolution and picture quality have remained a priority, but the other video platforms have closed that gap significantly.
Vimeo’s focus on image quality and integrations with Adobe and Final Cut Pro makes it a great choice for companies looking to sell their own video services or video productions. However, its lack of marketing automation integrations makes it a poor choice for organizations that already have a CRM in place and seek to integrate it with their video hosting platform.
From a marketing standpoint, Vimeo lacks many of the features that make other platforms on this list stand out. However, Vimeo recently added Vimeo Business and Vimeo Premium, which provide some, albeit less robust, marketing features that give businesses some added value, such as the ability to add cards and call-to-actions to your videos, and analytics tools to evaluate each video’s performance.
The basic, free Vimeo account allows you 500 MB of storage per week. If you need more, paying a monthly subscription fee of $50 or $75 each month will give you 5 TB or 7 TB, respectively, of total storage along with unlimited weekly uploads. Vimeo Premium also has a “Live” feature, which allows you to chat with your audience during a live stream.
Which One Should I Choose?
All the above video platforms will allow you to embed videos onto your website. However, the science of video marketing has given rise to platforms such as Vidyard and Wistia, which will synergize with your current marketing strategies and help the pieces of your marketing plan produce a greater whole than YouTube or Vimeo would.
When it comes down to it, your budget for your video marketing efforts will likely be the biggest factor in making a decision on which platform to use. You’ll also have to decide what your goals are for your content, as well as who (and how) you will want them to see it. Before you make a choice, it’s a good idea to ensure a seamless integration will exist between the tools you currently use and the video platform you’re considering.
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