Except for one big thing.
(and several other important factors)
If you are hoping use your videos to drive results on your website- to increase traffic and engagement, nurture and convert leads, build your email list, or support your customers, there are better solutions built for your needs.
This is not to say that your videos should not be on YouTube. It comes down to your goals and strategy. Investing in video production and video marketing should be thought of just like the rest of your marketing investments. You get the best results by taking a step back to think strategically about what tools and tactics will give you the business results you want. Choosing the right platform will have a huge impact on your ROI.
Have you ever looked at your YouTube analytics? Have you ever tried to track what people have done after watching your video? Find out anything about how they engaged with your videos? Tracking meaningful interactions is tough on YouTube. Sure, there are some metrics and you can create goals using Google Analytics to track things like plays and views on a web page but not too much after that.
Views are nice but what does a view do for you? Data is key to driving marketing results, and here YouTube lacks enterprise features most businesses need. With solid data, on the other hand, you can:
- Better understand your market
- Tailor videos to your sales funnel
- Target your video marketing to your most profitable customer segments
These tactics will, in turn, get you better returns from your video investment.
Full disclosure, we’ve aligned ourselves with Wistia. We wanted to make a deeper commitment to the success of our clients’ video marketing. So, we did our homework and enthusiastically chose Wistia. It came down to our understanding that Wistia is not only an outstanding product but that more of our clients, from smaller businesses and nonprofits to enterprise level clients, would be able to take advantage of its powerful features, and appreciate its very reasonable cost. However, we will readily work with either of these three leaders. In the end, it’s about choosing the best one for your needs.
Again, they are not free, but ask yourself this: what is the cost of a lead or sale?
A Wistia account can be opened for free. It gives you to up to (3) videos with the Wistia branding on the player. The next tier costs $99.00/mo. for as many videos you need and gives you a clean player without Wistia branding. It includes 10 free videos. It’s $.25 for each video after that. There are two advanced tier plans with custom pricing. They offer the same core features but are tailored to advanced needs and add things like one premium integration with HubSpot, Marketo or Pardot, priority support, technical account setup and a dedicated success manager. The point is, there’s a plan for every business who is serious about results.
- Powerful video-specific analytics
- SEO tools for driving traffic to your website
- Advanced customization & control over videos
- Email collection tools & integration with email marketing providers
- Ability to create clickable calls-to-action in videos
- Ability to track users, engagement & interactions (incl. conversions)
- Integration with CRMs and marketing automation platforms like Hubspot, Marketo, Salesforce, and Pardot
There’s one more thing we love about Wistia. As a video production company in Boston, we like to “shop local” when we can. While Wistia’s reach is global, they are based in Cambridge, MA.
Your goals should be different. If you are prioritizing your website, you will want your YouTube content to be a little different – at least with different titles and descriptions. You don’t want the two to cancel each other out when it comes to search and social.
We’re incredibly passionate about both video production and video marketing at Motivity. If you’d like to learn more about how to get the most of your video content and make the switch to a hosting and video marketing platform like Wistia, we’d love to have a conversation with you.