Nick Barber, Senior Analyst at Forrester

My name is Nick Barber. I'm an analyst at Forrester and a video content expert. And today we're going to be talking about how video across the customer lifecycle drives revenue. This is one of the things that is so important to brands in today's space. And I want to start out with a story that perfectly illustrates this. A couple of weeks ago, I was traveling to Europe, as I do a lot for my analyst work, and I flew on Lufthansa. And it's very clear what Lufthansa's business is. Just last year, they flew 130 million passengers. This year, I was one of them. It's very clear what their product is, air travel, what their service is, which is serving customers both on the plane, before and after. But the content piece is a little bit more unique for Lufthansa. And those three pieces, product, service, and content, make up how we experience brands. And for Lufthansa, their content, I experienced when I was flying. I turned on my seat back entertainment, and instead of watching a feature length film, I consumed some of their content that they created about their brand. And in fact, one of the videos was very cinematic. It was a story about a flight attendant and how she has a passion for surfing. And whenever she has a flight to California, she brings her surfboard along with her. But one of the things that that video did for me was it really humanized the brand. It humanized Lufthansa through this storytelling, through this piece of content that was so powerful that told me a little bit more about the brand than just the fact that they fly airplanes. So that was one of the perfect examples of how big brands today are using content to connect with passengers and customers in an emotional way, build empathy, and really drive that connection beyond just the product and the service piece. And Lufthansa and so many big brands today realize that content is king. We did a survey of about 1,100 marketers and found that they want to better understand customer needs. They want to create more rich media content when we ask them, which of the following are your organization's top content priorities over the next year? They also said they want to develop new content. They want to experiment with new formats like virtual reality, augmented reality, or 360 degree images and video. They want to develop a user generated content program because we know that advocates of the brand are so strong and especially video when that can be conveyed through video, that's even stronger. But there are some brand safety problems when it comes to user generated content. You want to make sure that you can preview and moderate that content before it goes out in the wild. Companies also want to refresh aged content and taking a strategy that allows video to be a little bit more modular and being able to replace different pieces of that video content can be so important to refreshing that age content. Content creation is so important for brands and in fact, 86% of brand marketers continue to invest in content development. But with this idea of investing in content development, brands struggle to scale their content without necessarily scaling their staff. So how do they do that? Do they just create more video for video sake? Do they augment their staff on even small budgets today? We're seeing challenges here, especially with pushing out content to a multitude of channels. It's no longer just web and mobile, but it could be web, mobile, could be those VR and AR devices that we talked about. It could be kiosks inside of a store or an airport. There are such a multitude of channels. It could be connected cars that brands are struggling with this idea of delivering content to the omni-channel. And we see that, for example, with YouTube. YouTube isn't the core of your video strategy or shouldn't be the core of your video strategy. YouTube is a delivery channel. For example, just in the last couple of months or a few years, we've seen brands start to pull back from YouTube. For example, AT&T and Johnson & Johnson pulled all of their YouTube advertising because there were some brand safety issues. Advertisements were appearing before videos that they didn't necessarily want to be associated with. So there's a challenge here when you don't own the channel of having your videos appear by content that you don't want to identify with. First of all, YouTube is a channel, not necessarily a strategy. And let me outline why there are some issues with using YouTube as the core of your video strategy. First, it lacks the security of a dedicated online video platform or video marketing platform. So when we talk about security with video, first of all, with YouTube, anyone can go on there and take the video and do with it what they please. Yes, there are copyright guidelines, but the people who are stealing your content don't care about that. YouTube isn't the most secure place to store your video content. Second, it lacks the flexibility to distribute content to a wide audience. We talked about this idea of omni-channel content, of getting all of your content to all of the channels that they need to be consumed on. And YouTube just doesn't do that. It serves web, it serves mobile, and in some senses, it serves OTT. But there are multitudes of channels that it doesn't serve. YouTube lacks the integration with key CRM, marketing automation, and analytics tools to drive and measure engagement. One of the most important connection points for online video platforms and video marketing platforms are CRM and marketing automation. Because then we can start to understand who is watching the content rather than just how many people are watching the content. And when we can start to understand who is watching the content, we can deliver more content that resonates with them, and we can start to understand where they are in their overall purchasing decision. And lastly, YouTube lacks the ability to deliver video content to every stage of the customer lifecycle. What is the customer lifecycle? The customer lifecycle are the six stages that customers go through as they interact with brands. If you've made a considered purchase recently, you've probably gone through all six of these stages. Discover, explore, buy, use, ask, and engage. And in all six of these phases, we can deploy video strategically. Some immature brands, as it comes to video, basically do video as a one-size-fits-all proposition. But the more mature brands we're talking to are creating video content that fits into each of those individual stages. In the discover and explore phases, they're casting a really wide net to start to fill those funnels. They're doing video to drive lead gen. They're doing video that's flashy and engaging, and they're putting their budgets towards working with third parties like freelancers and agencies. In the buy phase, they might be deploying video that has an interactive element around e-commerce. We're going to talk about shoppable video and interactive video in just a moment. In the use and ask phase, they're creating quick start tutorials for their new customers. They're using video in a customer service environment. And then in the engage phase, that's where they're starting to assemble that user-generated content program to take advantage of all of the content that their brand advocates are creating, assembling that, curating that, and then use it to drive that next generation of engagement and that next generation of customer engagement. So we talked about video in the buy phase of the customer life cycle. I want to give you two examples here of how video can directly impact conversion. For example, outdoor retailer REI found that when customers watched a video about a product, the conversion rate doubled compared with customers who didn't watch a video. So we can see here very clearly the power of video as it relates to interactivity, as it relates to learning about a product. Because when you're buying a product online, one of the things you can't do is hold, see, touch, interact with that product. But the video is a way to get just a little bit closer to that overall experience. And that's why when REI associated video with a product, they found that the conversion rate doubled versus products that didn't have video associated with them. In a second example, luxury retailer Ted Baker saw a 5% to 6% conversion rate for shoppable, interactive videos versus a median desktop conversion rate of 2.9%. So again, they're seeing about double the uplift there on increase in sales versus content that doesn't have video associated with it. So right there in those two examples, we can see the power of video as it helps online buyers understand a little bit more about the products that they potentially may purchase. One of the things we discovered about video was that it appeals to a wide variety of consumers. When we took a look at which generations preferred video, we found that the numbers were roughly the same across generations from Gen Z in 18 to 29 to the golden generation at 73 plus. This speaks to the power of video content in that all generations like to consume video. We also discovered that video is among the top five forms of content where buyers prefer to get their information. So we know that video is important throughout the customer life cycle. We know that it resonates with all ages. And now we find out that video is among the top five pieces of content that really engage buyers. So along with things like imagery, infographics, short form research reports, video is right up there with all of them in terms of how buyers like to get their information. It's because video is so visual. You can convey so much information in such a short amount of time that video is a great digestible format to engage those buyers. And in the advertising world, video content is the only content that is steadily increasing when we look at it versus things like text ads, static images, or rich media that doesn't include video. So we know that buyers prefer it. We know advertisers like it. And we know it resonates across the customer life cycle. So now that you know about video and its power, let's talk about how you can deliver it to your customers. We talked about YouTube and how it's really just a distribution channel. So what should you be using in place of it? We think online video platforms or video marketing platforms are the way to go because they can do six different things as it relates to video. They can help your team ideate around video content, sort of brainstorm, see what content is performing really well and capitalize on that. It helps your team create content. So being able to create content inside of that online video platform or video marketing platform is really key. Talk about moderating and previewing user generated content inside of there. That's one of the ways that OVPs and video marketing platforms can help. It helps you manage your video content. So at any given time, you can see where are all of your video assets, where are they being delivered to, how are they performing on those individual channels. It helps you craft an interactive experience. When we talk about interactive experiences as it relates to video, video is not just a static lean back medium. We want our buyers and prospects to really engage and lean into that experience. And we do that through things like creating interactive elements inside of our videos, clickable calls to action to drive that next best action to drive that lead to do something powerful. Then it's about the delivery of that video content. How do we get that video from our online video platform or video marketing platform out to our buyers, consumers, prospects. It's all through that platform and it does it in a way that gives your buyers a consumer grade experience. Everyone now has very high expectations of how video should be. It should feel like Netflix. It should feel like Hulu. It should feel like their number one online streaming platform in terms of the technical experience. So limited amount of buffering and also the content experience. What is that content experience like when we interact with videos as it relates to brands? And the last piece is the analysis. What can I know about how that video is performing? And it's not just how many people have watched it, but who is watching it? How much of it are they consuming? Where are they dropping off? That's something that's really, really important to know about video because it helps us create better videos in the future. So if I know that early stage in my funnel, people have a short attention span, maybe late stage in my funnel, people have a longer attention span based on the analytics I get from my online video platform, I can start to tailor my content to those trends. One of our other trends includes this idea of convergence and consolidation. Ultimately, for buyers of the technology, buyers of these online video platforms and video marketing platforms, it makes it easier. It reduces confusion. And in fact, we're seeing convergence of a variety of technologies that enterprises are using for video. We're seeing a convergence of online video platforms or video marketing platforms to deliver content to external audiences, those buyers and prospects. With enterprise video platforms, video platforms that deliver content to internal audiences, employees for town halls, training and HR, things like that. With live content, so live streaming, webcasting and webinars with video conferencing technology, those four areas are quickly converging. And it's really great for buyers because now they can buy one single platform instead of four. And in fact, that's something we discovered in our digital experience survey. 73% of digital experience professionals prefer solutions that have easy integrations versus 45% that want best of breed point solutions, basically creating more silos inside of the business versus one that integrates seamlessly across the marketing technology stack. Convergence really eases those integration challenges. If you use an online video platform or a video marketing platform as the core of your strategy, you can deliver content and analytics out to all of those spokes like CRM, marketing automation, analytics, email, learning management systems. Video and analytics can be delivered out to all of those different channels, but you still keep your content and your analytics at the core with your online video platform or video marketing platform. And one of the last trends is this idea of unlocking content silos to really understand return on investment of content. And we're going to go back to the customer lifecycle. We talked about those six stages. Typically, those six stages all have analytics and they all have content related to them. And they all live in their own silo. By unlocking those silos, we can start to get a realistic picture of our return on investment as it relates to content. And in fact, here's an interesting statistic. Only 12% of marketers have optimized their use of analytics to understand marketing success. 12%. That's only one in 10 of you who've optimized your analytics program to measure marketing success. By starting to use an online video platform or a video marketing platform, you can start to take advantage of those analytics across the customer lifecycle. I want to talk about live video because that's one of the areas that's converging with other four that we just talked about. Live video, like webinars, is a great way to engage with customers and prospects. One of the interesting things we discovered about webinars is that they're immune to age. People at the low end of the spectrum and the high end of the spectrum consume webinars nearly the same. They want to engage in that content. And we asked them, thinking about content you prefer to view, how likely are you to engage with the following content? We looked at 30 minute webinars. We said, 27 to 35 year olds, they said 62%. 50 plus said 59%. Nearly the same across all generations. Webinars are a great way to engage with customers and prospects. Now contrast that with short social content. The 27 to 35 year olds said 56% of them wanted to engage with that content. The 50 plus said 32%. So that's a 24 point drop for that short social content. That was the biggest of all of the different types of content that we surveyed. Whereas webinars, there was only a five point drop off. So it's a great way to engage with your customers, with your buyers, with your prospects through that type of interactive content that leverages live video. So as we think about the path forward for video, I want to outline a couple of key points. First, it's you need to create change agents and champions for the content and the technology. This is something that can be challenging at a lot of organizations. Oftentimes when I talk to companies, they're not struggling with the technology challenges. It's struggling with the change management challenges. And you have to have a video first culture. If you really want to succeed with delivering video to each stage of the customer life cycle. Second, you need to adopt an online video platform or a video marketing platform that centralizes content, analytics, and processes related to video. By doing that, you can start to deliver content to each stage of the customer life cycle and understand the analytics and the performance related to it. You need to connect your OVP to other marketing technologies like CRM, marketing automation, and other technologies to enable insight and attribution. That's something that's so important going back to this idea of analytics. For so long, we've been focused on this idea of vanity metrics. Oh, how many views did your video get? Oh, my video got 10,000 views, 100,000 views, a million views. That's how we would gauge success. But if our video got viewed by a million people, you have no idea who those million people are. They're probably not our buyers. It's so much more important to get our video viewed by 10 or 100 or 1,000 people who might buy our product than 990,000 who might not. That's what our marketing automation platform and our CRM can tell us. It can tell us who is viewing our content and where they might be in their purchase journey. You need to create content using a mix of in-house and out-of-house resources. When we talk to brands, we discover that typically in the discover and explore phases, they use out-of-house professionals to create their content. Then they move their content production in-house for the use, ask, and engage phases of the life cycle. And lastly, brands need to fold insights and analytics back into the creation process. If you don't do that, then you will keep going down a path that may not be right for your customers, for your buyers, for your prospects. When you can fold those analytics back, you start to let those content creators understand what's resonating with the buyers, what's resonating with the market, so that you can produce more of that content. As you start off on your video journey, keep in mind a lot of the things that we talked about today. And if there's one key takeaway from the presentation, it's thinking about video in each stage of the customer life cycle rather than a one-size-fits-all medium. Thank you.