There is a lot of data out there; however, not all of it can be useful to determine the right business strategy. One type of data that you can use to better understand your audience is analytics. This type of data can help you track user behavior and lead generation. Below, you will learn about a marketing study that was done, the key takeaways, and how you can use the information to grow your business.

The Study

To learn more about online marketing and how to best approach it, you can check out this study from HubSpot.com. The purpose of the study was to determine which marketing strategies work best for which niches in an online setting, and which ones are ineffective. To accomplish this, the researchers used Google Analytics to track user behavior, and evaluated various digital marketing platforms, including;

• Blog posts
• Website traffic
• Social media activity
• PPC (paid search) ads
• Display ads (including Facebook, Google, etc.)
• Email marketing
• Remarketing
• Mobile app downloads

The study looked into 20,000 unique website visitors during a 4-week period, who were previously unfamiliar with the brand. To determine the optimal tactics, the team first looked into the types of content that the users were consuming before they came across the advertisement. They also examined the individual users’ journey through the website, looking into pages that had the greatest impact, as measured by time on site and action taken (i.e., a purchase or sign-up, etc.). The results of the study were surprising – the team determined that videos produced by external companies, such as Vox, were most effective at generating user engagement, followed by case studies and product reviews by experienced users.

Key Takeaways

The main takeaways from this study include:

• Videos are the future of online marketing, especially for B2C brands
• Consumers prefer shorter videos – under 3 minutes
• Mobile is the dominant platform for videos, especially for B2C brands
• Consumers prefer shorter videos – under 3 minutes
• Consumers prefer to learn about products through short-form videos
• Product demos and how-to videos increase conversion

How to Use Analytics To Create More Engaged Clients

What can you do with the information from this study? One important thing is to use it to create more engaging customers. To do this, it is important to determine what types of content your audience is consuming, and what types of videos they prefer. By understanding your audience’s needs and desires, you can create videos to match their interests, and provide them with content that is both valuable and interesting.

Knowing that videos are the future of online marketing, especially for B2C brands, it’s important to develop a strategy for creating and distributing them. The study found that consumers prefer shorter videos – under 3 minutes. If possible, you should shoot and upload videos as soon as you have finished your product development phase, so you can start promoting and using them as soon as possible. This also makes it easier for users to find and remember your videos, and for search engines to index and cache them. When developing your video strategy, you should consider using a video hosting platform, such as Hightailor or Bonjoro, so you can easily set up automated campaign schedules.

What Will Your Video Strategy Look Like?

To create an engaging video strategy, you should first determine the main video types you will use, and what platforms you will use to distribute them. Based on the results of the study, the team at HubSpot determined that the following types of videos would be valuable to develop:

• Product demos
• How-to videos
• Reuse content from other areas of your website (including CTAs)
• Short-form interviews – under 3 minutes, ideally
• Customer testimonials
• Video case studies

These types of videos can be used to demonstrate the benefits of your products and services. For example, a video product demo might be valuable for B2B businesses, but not as much for B2C companies, as they are more familiar with the products and services. However, a video case study would be valuable for both.

Once you have determined the key video types you will use in your strategy, the next step is to create a schedule. To do this, you will want to consider using a video content planner, which can help you build out a plan for creating and distributing your videos, and keep track of their performance, like so:

As you can see in the above graphic, with a content strategist, you can set up content creation schedules, so you can have videos created based on your plan, at the time you specify.

With the above strategy in mind, you can start to create videos to support your business goals. Remember to use keywords and tags strategically, so you can include these terms in your videos’ descriptions, and have your videos easily found, by others, and by search engines.