During a 10-hour day of shooting photographs and attending a marketing conference, there are a few people who stick out in your mind after the event ends. Casey Henry’s definitely one of those personas. From photo-bombing my candid — well, and posed — shots to posing cheesily while assembling his taco lunch, he sure seemed to have a lot of fun during his “off” time at the 2015 MnSearch Summit.
But enough of the silly moments — let’s talk about this dude’s marketing qualifications. Casey started out as a search engine optimization consultant and developer before strutting his stuff at Moz, where he spent several years as the director of inbound marketing. He’s now currently managing SEO, PPC and data analysis efforts at Wistia.
Wistia — a video marketing platform — hosts 4+ million videos. Safe to say Casey’s probably been there, done that when it comes to video knowledge.
Here’s a recap of Casey’s MnSearch presentation:
Using Video to Create a More Efficient Funnel
Casey says 2015 is (finally) the year of video marketing… but why is that?
- Reduction in cost of equipment
They practically hand out dSLRs to newborns at the hospital nowadays, so just about anyone has access to decent video-making cameras. - Availability of Success Metrics
I.e., the days of play/view counts are over! - Native Facebook/Twitter Video
- Faster Internet Speeds
No longer are we waiting for big sister to get off the phone with her boyfriend so we can dial up and wait for 3 hours on a video to load.
Video Marketing in Your Content
Let’s talk about videos as they pertain to your marketing content. What’s some video marketing you know?
Some videos you might be familiar with are Moz’s Whiteboard Fridays with Rand, or even the how-to cooking videos on AllRecipes. And, while videos can be helpful and fun, they often can’t stand on their own in the world of marketing.
Video and Site Metrics
Video takes time to get right…so test it! Video builds emotional connections. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg..
Video Marketing in Your Funnel
Video and The Fold — above or below?
You might be one of those marketers who thinks the fold is dead — but I (and Casey) assure you, it’s not. And placement of video upon your page does matter.
Think of each portion above, below and enveloping the fold as existing in a certain Zone. Within each Zone on the page, there’s a correlating rate at which videos are played. Lower down on a page your video is embedded, the less likely visitors are to play it.
There’s also a correlation between video width and height to play rate.
Thumbnails and buttons also come into play in regards to video views. When you use custom thumbnails, you can see a 35% increase in play rate. Likewise, when you use custom play buttons, you can see a 19% increase in play rate.
Prospecting & Video
Let’s talk preroll videos. You know, when you cue up your favorite music video and golldurnit, you have to wait until that $@!%^ preroll ad counts down to the “Skip Ad” option…
…which always gets clicked. I mean, who actually watches those preroll vids, anyway?
Facebook Prospecting
Use RHC for sales material; use newsfeed for content material. Facebook’s ad exchange rules make things semi-difficult; native Facebook video defaults with no sound.
SEO + Video
Remember these days?
Video marketing is about more than just video snippets!
What about YouTube?
Wistia has recently noticed a difference in the way Google displays videos in the SERPs: namely, they’re no longer showing video snippets (minus YouTube and a few other big-name brands). Regardless of whether or not this is a test or a long-term change, it’s probably time to re-assess how to optimize our videos for SEO.
Create & Measure Video KPIs
Go where your audience is.
What’s left of video SEO?
- meta tags needed for context
- iFrames
- video search tab
- enjoy structured data for now
PPC + Video
How are companies using video with paid landing pages?
Wistia checked out the following…
…to see what these PPC campaigns were doing in regards to video. 13% of the 375,000 landing pages were from the big names of Walmart, Amazon, JCPenney and Target.
Out of 145,000 domains looked at…
…only 0.25% had video (938 pages total).
Videos can help increase those conversions, so be sure to give a clear call-to-action (CTA) when the video ends!
Your Funnel & Video
Limit video use in your funnel. Videos should convey different messages — i.e., product explainer videos increase conversions by 35% for those that complete it.
Retargeting + Video
Retargeting is about segmentation. You should fire the pixel on completion of video play: 15-20% increase in conversion after visitors viewed first video and were retargeted.
Social + Video
Video is about connecting to your audience…
…and then driving them to your website for conversions after the connection.
Get to the network where your customers are!
Use video to tease out your content.
With native video, Facebook is more cost-effective; Twitter’s new autoplay feature may help.
Wrapping It All Up
Video’s primarily being used for blog content. But…
…we are in the early stages of something big.
Video for paid campaigns is still underutilized. Now’s the time to get the upper hand on your competition with video!
Author: Sarah Danks
Courtesy: www.thinksem.com
Image credit