We increased our clicks by 300%. Here's how you can too

When most businesses drum up marketing strategies, “video” is one of the last items on the list. Somewhere between “newspaper ads” and “sign spinner”, it gets lumped in with a mixed bag of tactics many companies consider irrelevant. This is a monumental mistake.

Not only should video be a part of the modern business’ playbook, it should be front and centre.

I’ll spare you the usual commentary about the importance of digital strategies in a digital age, (although I will give it a knowing nod on the way out). I am not your college marketing professor, begrudgingly acknowledging the existence of social media before sitting down to read the paper. I’m a marketer who’s been around the bend a few times, and knows how to read numbers.

Why you haven’t made video a top priority

Let’s pull back a bit. I know why your business probably hasn’t gone all-in on video marketing. Historically, there’s been no ROI. Online video marketing is just new enough that it’s largely uncharted territory. It’s too new to call “tried and true” by the conventional standard of direct revenue.

Despite this, my company, Superside, began pumping energy into serious, high-concept videos last year. Video for paid acquisition on social channels; video for our organic search playbook;  video for socials; and video to make long-form content such as e-books and guides livelier and more interactive. I could go on, but my keyboard is getting hot.

So, what figures are pushing us to do this if not ones with dollar signs before them?

These ones:

Video makes organic searches skyrocket

Since 2020, one popular search engine has shown video thumbnails in over 25 per cent of search results. That number is increasing, signalling a growing opportunity and competitive advantage for brands leveraging video. It’s been just over a year since my company started pumping out video content at a high level, and some trends have emerged.

We saw an 87 per cent increase in video views, with a 300 per cent increase in clicks on content with video. 63 per cent of our 2022 videos are appearing on the first page of the search engine results, and we’re enjoying more than 31,000 organic video views on the “world’s” biggest video platform this year.

Performance marketing outperforms the rest

By adding a human face and narration to an already well-performing ad promoting an e-book, we improved click-through rates by 48 per cent, and dropped cost per click (CPC) by 62 per cent. Our ads with videos converted 30 per cent more to demo requests (our typical direct-response call to action) than animation-only ads or static ads.

Socials gain traction quickly

For our social strategy, we’ve planted our feet in two hotspots. One is in creating original video content that’s made for socials and which is aligned with, and supports, gated marketing assets. The other is in promotional and repurposed video content from our webinars and summits.

Since investing in video, we’ve seen a 26 per cent increase in engagement across our social channels, with a growing average just shy of 10,000 views a month.

Video drives wins for account-based marketing (ABM)

Our marketing videos help us build awareness across our full buyer committee, sharing video content at all stages of the funnel.

By leveraging the plethora of aforementioned video content in our sales outreach, we’ve enjoyed an eightfold increase in click-through rates and have quadrupled reply rates. 50 per cent of our new opportunities are driven by video.

We’ve generated more than 2,500 demo requests with video since late 2020, with millions of dollars in our pipeline. Yes, I am bragging. This is reach. These are conversions. When B2B peers ask me why I’ve pinned my flag on something that “doesn’t generate revenue”, I have to wonder where they think revenue comes from.

What businesses need for video marketing

An effective video marketing strategy requires three key ingredients:

1. A thorough understanding of the various platforms, their formats and aspect ratios, with an overall content/media strategy that strictly adheres to these.

2. A culture of thinking about video across most of your content marketing and paid media efforts. Make it an involuntary function, like breathing and scrolling. And, most importantly…

3. A dedicated, high-performance video marketing team to develop a winning strategy, imbue novelty and creativity into each asset, and make your voice as loud as it is undeniable. For truly captivating content, few can go it alone.

Put video marketing front and centre – and do it soon

We’ve just wrapped up our second half planning, and we’ve agreed to continue to heavily invest time, effort, brain matter and budget into video marketing. We’re standing out from the crowd, simplifying big concepts and, most importantly, winning hearts and minds.

Infusing video in all our marketing initiatives has drastically improved results across the full funnel. Organic search, performance marketing, socials, emails and ABM… video is the tide that lifts all ships, and is where modern B2B marketers should invest.

If these numbers intrigue you – and as a modern business, they should – let’s talk video at Superside.

By Amrita Mathur, VP of Marketing, Superside