In her recent study on video marketing, Maribeth Ross, the Chief Content Officer of the Aberdeen Group, found some intriguing links between using video for content marketing and better overall performance. It’s not common for one strategy to produce such significant results. Additionally, it’s not wise to depend on technology without having the right people and processes set up first. However, video adoption tends to push the need for a strong and effective marketing foundation. Below are three areas of your marketing efforts that should improve (by design) as you enhance your video marketing skills:

Tracking Content Performance:

You can’t improve what you can’t measure. Video, as a format, encourages you to think about measuring content more thoughtfully. Should you only track views? How does that relate to the business’s value? What about video engagement—how long are viewers watching, is the content being shared, should comments be allowed, and are the Calls to Action leading to conversions? In video, almost all the important metrics for tracking content performance come together. This is why the video marketing research indicates that video users in content marketing report a 129% higher ability to track specific content performance (64% vs 28%). Since video is often easily shared across various channels, it pushes marketers to have multi-channel tracking in place, as shown by 43% of video users stating they can capture content metrics across all channels, compared to just 16% of non-video users.

  • The Change Factor: Video forces you understand why content assets matter to your business, how to measure them, and what to do with that data.

The Content You Can and Should Create:

According to a report from Kapost, “32% of B2B marketers are challenged with finding trained content marketing professionals.” You’d assume that adding video to the content marketing equation would only exacerbate this issue. Interestingly enough, however, Aberdeen’s research shows that 83% of leading companies report the ability to generate original video content internally, and 73% of companies who do develop original videos rate their execution as effective or very effective (4 or 5 on a 1 to 5 scale). In other words, leading companies aren’t asking “why” video, and stopping there; they’re asking “how” and finding a way with the people and resources they have in-house. What video adoption does, in this case, is to force marketers to think about what matters to their audience in terms of their content mix, and ensure that they can deliver in that format.

  • The Change Factor: Adopting video makes you question what you can and can’t do in terms of content, while also aligning what you can do to the needs and interests of your audience. This kind of customer-centric approach often yields a distinct competitive advantage.

Lead Management:

How many times have you had Sales ask you for more leads? At times, it may almost seem like a chanted mantra to appease the business gods – “ooom, more leads please… ooom, more leads please…” but more leads, alone, isn’t what Sales really wants. What Sales is actually asking for, and what video measurably delivers, is a flow of leads with a higher likelihood to convert. In fact, Maribeth’s report shows that those who adopt video content report conversion rates that are 65% higher, on average, than those who do not (4.8% vs 2.9%). This kind of effectiveness not only delivers better results outright, it also shines a light on what effective lead management can be. When better leads with a higher likelihood to convert significantly trump the old “more lead” mantra, marketers often start considering what other tweaks can be made to their lead management funnel to achieve even more efficiency. Thus, a cycle of continuous lead management improvement begins.

  • The Change Factor: Video counters the “more leads” business imperative by delivering better leads with a higher likelihood of conversion, thereby triggering an efficiency-oriented focus toward lead management.

Again, let me stress that adopting video isn’t a silver bullet marketing tactic to solve all your marketing challenges at once. If anything, the structural changes necessary for adopting video highlight how important it is to work on continuing to improve the people, processes and technologies you have in house. What it important in closing, though, is to see how interconnected content can be within your business operations, from tracking and reporting to lead management, content marketing practices like using video often span across multiple departments and initiatives.

For more information on video for content marketing, download the free report: The Impact of Video on the Hidden Sales Cycle.