![Most Widely Used Video Types Used by Marketers [Study]](https://bersondeanstevens.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/harrison-kugler-qNzLI82MAso-unsplash-1080x675.jpg)
by Lori Berson | May 25, 2022 | Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Video, Video Marketing
According to Vidyard and Demand Metric report, more than 8 in 10 marketing, sales, and customer experience executives say that video is becoming more important as a form of content in their organization
Overall Video Creation Increased 178% in 2021 Compared to 2020
Key Takeaways
1. Brand and Social Media Videos Are Widely Used by Marketers
The most common type of videos are brand videos (53%), followed by demo or product videos (51%), social media videos (48%), training videos (45%), and how-to videos (42%). The popularity of social media videos speaks to social’s presence as a leading distribution platform: 63% of respondents distribute videos on social media sites, equal with websites as the top area for posting videos.
80% of All Videos Created in 2021 Were User-Generated, Versus 60% in 2020
The top video types differ by role. For example, a large share of sales teams will invest in user-generated videos, while customer experience teams show a strong inclination to invest in how-to videos.
The Average Video Created in 2021 Was 9 Minutes and 58 Seconds Long
Among marketing respondents, the video types used by a majority are brand (71%), social media (64%), and demo or product (60%) videos, while close to half use training videos (48%) and customer testimonials (46%). Although how-to videos did not feature among the top 5 for marketers in this study, previous research indicates that they are often used by B2B content marketers, who find video to be among their most effective top-of-the-funnel demand generation tactics.
2. Half of The Marketers Say Video ROI is Improving
7 in 10 respondents across job roles said that video performs better than other content types they use or have used in producing their desired results, a figure 10 times higher than the share (7%) who say that video performs worse.
Additionally, two-thirds of respondents report that video’s ROI is either getting better (45%) or staying the same (21%), though 3 in 10 don’t know. Marketers are the most optimistic about video ROI, with about half (49%) saying that it is improving, and another fifth (21%) reporting steady results.
Prior research suggests that videos have performed better than other content types such as long articles, livestreaming content, and podcasts, though fewer content marketers in that study found video to be as effective for them as virtual events and research reports, among others.
3. Video Viewing Data Deemed Important for Lead Scoring and Nurturing
Three-quarters of sales respondents believe that it would be important for the sales team to access video viewing data to qualify leads, engage prospects, or influence specific deals. Marketers largely agree, with two-thirds recognizing the importance of such data to lead nurturing efforts.
Currently, roughly 1 in 5 (21%) respondents say that their sales team uses video viewing data to a great extent to qualify leads, engage prospects, or influence specific deals, while about one-third say the sales team does so to a moderate extent (34%) and one-quarter (26%) to a slight extent.
Integration of this data would help, yet remains in its infancy: only slightly more than 1 in 3 respondents (36%) say that they have integrated video viewing data into their marketing automation platform (MAP) and/or customer relationship management (CRM) system, although another half (49%) claim that they are planning to integrate this data.
4. Video Production Proves Difficult
While various teams within the organization are requesting and creating video content, marketing has the biggest role to play, and is the only team that a majority identified as both requesting (63%) and creating (65%) this form of content.
Although most medium- and large-sized companies use external resources to some degree to aid in their video creation efforts, only a minority of smaller companies do so.
This could prove problematic, as video production is a challenging affair. When asked which barriers or roadblocks respondents are facing in successfully leveraging video to help achieve business goals, the top 4 (equally cited) all involved production to some extent:
- Producing professional quality video that represents the brand well.
- Having a strategy to drive video production.
- Allocating staff time and resources for video production.
- Producing videos that engage.
No wonder content marketers identified video as the number one type of content they would create if more resources were available to them.
Nonetheless, a majority of respondents are very satisfied (7%) or satisfied (49%) with the results they’re getting from their video efforts, with satisfaction rates much higher (67%) among those who use advanced metrics.
With this in mind, it’s perhaps not surprising that video was mentioned as the top area of investment for B2B content marketers this year.
About the Data: The results are based on a survey of 705 executives across marketing (45% share), sales (25%), customer experience (12%), and other (18%) job roles. Almost half (47%) described the nature of their business as mostly or entirely B2B, while another 41% described it as a split between B2B and B2C.
Need assistance with your video marketing? Schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years, including over a decade in marketing and sales automation. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
![2022 Top Marketing Objectives [Report]](https://bersondeanstevens.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Marketing-Objectives.jpg)
by Lori Berson | May 23, 2022 | Marketing, Marketing Strategy
According to the Nielsen 5th Global Annual Marketing Report, brand awareness is the top objective for marketers around the world this year, edging out customer acquisition, which in turn is more important than customer retention.
Nielsen asked approximately 2,000 marketers around the world to rank the order of importance of a variety of marketing objectives for their business from most important (1) to least important (7). Respondents gave brand awareness an average ranking of 3, giving it top billing among the objectives listed.
Next was customer acquisition (3.1), which was deemed a more critical objective this year than customer retention (3.3). This shows a shift from the height of the pandemic when brands tended to focus on retention over acquisition. This latest order of importance is reflected in marketing budgets in the US: the most recent CMO Survey indicates that on average customer acquisition budgets are about 15% higher than retention budgets. What’s more, Nielsen data indicates that “marketing accounts for 10%-35% of a brand’s equity.”
Top Goal: Brand Awareness
Given that brand awareness emerged as marketers’ top goal, it’s also their most important marketing metric. About two-thirds rated it as extremely (30%) or very (36%) important, putting it ahead of engagement (63% extremely or very important), marketing mix modeling (61%), full-funnel media ROI (61%), and viewability (61%).
Even though it’s their most important metric, brand awareness isn’t the one that marketers feel most confident in measuring. 64% rate themselves extremely (29%) or very (35%) confident in their organization’s ability to accurately measure sales. 61% are at least very confident in their ability to measure brand awareness, with similar numbers for engagement (60%) and viewability (59%). The metrics that the fewest are very confident in are full-funnel media ROI (54%) and unduplicated reach and frequency (53%).
About the Data: The results are based on an online survey conducted from December 2, 2021 to January 12, 2022 among 1,943 global marketing professionals at or above the manager level, working with annual marketing budgets of at least $1 million. Respondents were from the auto, financial services, FMCG, technology, health care, pharmaceuticals, travel, tourism, and retail industries.
Need assistance with your marketing initiatives? Schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years, including over a decade in marketing and sales automation. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
![Types of Videos B2B Buyers Prefer [Study]](https://bersondeanstevens.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/VideoShoot-1080x675.jpg)
by Lori Berson | May 16, 2022 | Content Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Video, Video Marketing
According to the results of a Brightcove study conducted by Ascend2, video has a strong influence on the B2B buyer’s purchase journey. Virtually all (95%) of the buyers surveyed for the report said that video has an important role in deciding to move forward with a purchase.
Video’s use in making purchase decisions manifests in various ways, according to the study, though buyers are most likely to find it helpful when learning about a product/service (58%).
Beyond learning about products and services, video also proves helpful to buyers in understanding a problem they have (36%) and learning how to solve a problem they have (40%). Buyers separately said that videos were more helpful than any other content type for creating awareness of business-related problems. Moreover, when comparing solutions to such problems, about 6 in 10 respondents said that video is the most impactful content type.
Video Types Preferred
Almost 9 in 10 B2B buyers have watched a video in the last 3 months for the purpose of learning about a product or service, and almost half (46%) have watched a video at least 5 times in pursuit of product and service research.
Two types stand out as the most widely watched: product reviews and product demos, each by 39% of this group of respondents.
Other popular types of videos watched include tutorials/training (33%), live videos such as webinars (31%), educational videos (30%), and brand story videos (24%).
Almost 3 in 4 (73%) report a preference for video over written communication when being introduced to a sales/customer service representative. And watching a video certainly seems to open buyers up to such communication: virtually all of the buyers surveyed said they were extremely or somewhat likely to be more receptive to sales communication from a specific organization after consuming its video content.
Additional Insights:
- 93% of buyers report that video is important in building trust in a brand.
- Almost all (97%) buyers find video content and communication to be useful post-purchase.
- Video is most helpful in the post-purchase stage for learning about other products/services offered and for training/onboarding.
- About 8 in 10 (81%) prefer video over written content when learning how to use a product or service.
About the Data: The results are based on a February survey of 305 professionals responsible for purchase decision-making within their organization, operating in the business-to-business (B2B) space for businesses generating more than $50M in revenue or more annually in North America and the United Kingdom.
Need assistance with your video marketing? Schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years, including over a decade in marketing and sales automation. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
![B2B Marketers Go-To-Market Top Priorities [Survey]](https://bersondeanstevens.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/b2b_marketing-priorities.jpg)
by Lori Berson | May 9, 2022 | Lead Management, Marketing, marketing automation, Marketing Strategy
According to the recent The State of B2B lead Management 2022 report from LeanData, Sales Hacker, Heinze Marketing and Outreach, B2B marketing and sales leaders found it more challenging to generate sufficient pipeline last year than to pivot go-to-market approaches amid changing conditions or sell virtually with a remote team. Per the study, those same leaders will be focused on generating pipeline this year.
Not only was pipeline the top challenge for 2021, but it’s the leading priority (among 5 listed) for 2022, according to the survey’s more than 1,700 respondents. Almost half (48.8%) named pipeline growth their top priority for their go-to-market organization this year. That’s more than double the share who said that building/staffing teams (22.4%) is their top priority. Other initiatives such as expanding their addressable market (18.3%), accelerating digital transformation (7.1%), and new tech stack investments (3.5%) were lower on the priority list.
The attention paid to pipeline growth, at least for marketing respondents, is understandable given the extent to which marketing is expected to contribute to the sales pipeline. In a recent study, 82% of marketers said they are measured by the sales pipeline they initiate, and 78% reported being measured by the sales pipeline they influence. The good news is that almost 6 in 10 respondents agree to some extent that their sales and marketing are aligned to deliver growth this year.
Although a slight majority agree that their organization’s lead management systems and processes help them deliver an ideal customer experience, more than one-quarter don’t feel that way. Moreover, one-quarter disagree that their current lead management system will support revenue goals this year. And, although almost 2 in 3 feel that they are somewhat effective in achieving their conversion goals with their current lead management strategy, only around 1 in 4 (27%) are very confident in this area.
Lead Routing Issues
The survey indicates that B2B organizations are at times assigning leads to the wrong owner, with 6 in 10 admitting this sometimes happens and another 7% claiming that it happens half or more of the time.
2 in 3 are able to match leads to accounts and are happy with the process. Unfortunately, this leaves many for whom lead matching occurs but is slow or error-ridden (24.3%), and a small fraction who simply aren’t matching leads to accounts despite a desire to do so (4.3%).
Issues with speed may be the result of outdated processes: the #1 method for routing leads is manual, as opposed to other methods such as using marketing automation platforms or native assignment rules in the CRM.
Looking forward, the top lead management capability that respondents would like to have but currently don’t is more automation and fewer manual processes.
About the Data: The results are based on a December 2021 global survey of 1,732 B2B sales, marketing, and operations professionals, with technology the most heavily represented industry.
Need assistance with your go-to-marketing strategies, and sales and marketing automation? Schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years, including over a decade in marketing and sales automation. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
![Most Important Martech Features [Report]](https://bersondeanstevens.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Martech_600px.jpeg)
by bersondev | Feb 26, 2020 | customer acquisition, Data, Digital marketing, Marketing, marketing automation, Marketing Strategy, marketing technology
As companies continue to increase their investment in martech, especially in North America, making use of all these technologies as well as having them work together efficiently is a hurdle many firms are still working on. Two-fifths (39%) of the 265 marketing professionals surveyed for a Ascend2 report say they are currently working on implementing a martech stack strategy, while 1 in 5 (19%) are still developing such a strategy.
When creating a martech stack optimization strategy, improving marketing efficiency is a key priority for more than half (55%) of those surveyed. Marketers are also hoping that optimizing their martech stack will help with improving customer experience (51%), which is an area for which more than one-third (35%) of retail marketers feel their marketing technology is currently doing “very well.”
Although many marketers set increasing marketing ROI (45%) as a martech optimization priority, fewer cite improving marketing personalization (29%), improving attribution of revenue (27%) and improving data management & security (26%).
Notably, improving marketing efficiency is not only the biggest priority for marketers when it comes to martech stack optimization; it’s also their most challenging barrier.
Important Martech Stack Features
Beyond the priorities and challenges of optimizing their martech stack, what features are marketers looking for in their suite of tools? One of the most important features for implementing a martech stack is data insights and analysis (51%). At the same time, finding people with skills to properly analyze the data provided has been an issue for companies for some time.
Marketers also place importance on features such as real-time processing (40%), data centralization (34%), scalability/flexibility (31%), multi-channel experience (30%) and, to a much lesser extent, artificial intelligence (14%).
Systems integration was cited as one of the most important features for implementing a martech stack by 46% of respondents. That said, integration of disparate systems was low on their list of priorities, with only one-fifth (19%) citing it as a key priority to be achieved by a martech stack optimization strategy. It is also considered to be a challenging barrier for more than one-third (36%) of those surveyed.
In fact, many marketers feel that to optimize their marketing, the technologies in the stack need to improve ease of use (52%) and integration with other technologies (38%).
Martech Investment
Only 14% of marketers say they are not planning to invest in their martech stack this year. Conversely, 7 in 10 say they will continue to invest moderately (49%) or significantly (22%). This comes after earlier data from Ascend2 found that 2 in 5 marketers are investing in more martech on a quarterly basis.
Separately, research from Merkle has found that larger companies (those making at least $200 million in pre-tax annual revenues) are outsourcing about 43% of their marketing technology operations. In this latest study close to two-thirds (62% share) of marketers said that a combination of outsourced and in-house resources is the most effective for implementing martech optimization tactics, with few (24%) preferring to rely on in-house resources alone.
Downloaded the full report.
About the Data: Results are based on a survey of 265 marketing professionals from B2B, B2C and B2B/B2C equally companies. The survey was fielded in January 2020.
Is your martech investment delivering what you need? For assistance with your tech stack, schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
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BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years, including over a decade in Marketing Automation. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
![New B2B Marketing and Sales Strategies for 2020 [Report]]()
by bersondev | Jan 10, 2020 | Advertising, Digital marketing, Marketing, marketing automation, Marketing Strategy, Social Media, Video, Video Marketing
With the end of 2019, it’s time for B2B marketers to look towards 2020 and determine the goals and strategies they’ll use to achieve them. In a recent report, B2B marketing professionals have listed converting leads to customers and increasing sales leads as their top two marketing objectives in the coming year. But how will these objectives be achieved?
Nearly half (47%) of respondents say they will use personalization strategies in 2020, while another 42% will be exploring account-based Marketing (ABM). Although ABM is still a new approach for some, another report indicates that a majority of B2B marketers have been using this strategy, in some variation, for at least 6 months.
Video marketing is another strategy some two-fifths (41%) of the B2B marketing professionals surveyed say they will try next year. Video was tagged as one of the main B2B trends for this year, so it seems that those marketers yet to incorporate it into their arsenal will do so next year.
Marketers are also planning to use other strategies including AI and automation (36%), influencer marketing (27%) and programmatic advertising (19%). Others are exploring newer strategies such as conversational marketing (chatbots; 33%) and podcasts or live streaming (22%). And, although B2B advertising spend allocated for mobile has continued to fall short of that for desktop, 17% of respondents say they will try a mobile-first strategy.
LinkedIn Tops The List for B2B Social Media
Even though marketers are looking into new approaches to achieve their objectives, certain channels, like social media, remain part of their efforts. Nearly half (48%) of respondents say they use paid social media and have seen ROI from it.
When it comes to social media channels, LinkedIn tops the list, with 86% respondents saying they use the channel the most. Prior research has found that LinkedIn is one of the most preferred channels for content consumption for B2B buyers.
Instagram is 5th on the list of most used social media channels for these B2B marketers, with only 3 in 10 respondents (31%) using the platform. Instagram is actually ranked first by respondents among social media channels when looking at engagement, beating out both Facebook and LinkedIn.
Check out the full report.
About the Data: Findings are based on a survey of 100 marketing professionals.
Need help with your 2020 marketing strategies? Schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
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BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years, including over a decade in Marketing Automation. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
