With over 70% of executives preferring to watch videos over reading boring text, video is a B2B marketer’s best friend. Video is an underutilized tool because it is expensive to make and it takes significant time to create, though with services like http://rawshorts.com these barriers to entry go away. Now video is increasingly a key component of a lead generation campaign and you must use every advantage available to make it work best for you.
The primary reason that B2B marketers avoid using YouTube videos is that promoting them on YouTube sends traffic to YouTube and not their own video lead generation landing pages. It is hard to monitor the effectiveness of a campaign when you cannot measure many metrics since YouTube does not provide all of them.
Even if the video is embedded in the B2B lead generation landing page, B2B marketers still have some issues associated with using the YouTube video in their lead generation campaigns. Following are 5 difficulties encountered with use YouTube streamed videos in corporate video lead generation landing pages.
1. Many Enterprises Block YouTube
Fortune 500 and other large enterprises frequently block access to YouTube to protect their network and save money in bandwidths cost. There is also the issue of productivity when employees spend more time watching funny cat videos then working. So using an alternative affordable video platform and increase the effectiveness of the video since the video in the lead generation page will likely not be blocked. The key feature of a video lead generation landing page is to deliver the video and let it convert viewers but if the video is blocked the page is virtually worthless.
2. No External Clickable Links
While YouTube does allow URLs to be posted in the video description it does not allow for clickable links that can lead to a call to action such as the purchase of a product or service. YouTube has sponsored ads that allow this but of course that cost per click. By having a video service that allows for such links a better conversion can be achieved. B2B marketers much consider even the smallest advantages when creating their B2B lead generation campaigns.
3. Limited Branding Capabilities
YouTube is not built to brand businesses except for huge businesses that spend over $250,000 with them. Branding the channel and adding useful links on each video display page is virtually impossible with YouTube. Also it is very hard to change the video thumb (the still image that is shown for the video) other than by choosing one of the images from the video itself. The thumb images that YouTube offers are usually not the best to impart the message well and so having options for these things is very important.
4. Questionable Streaming Performance
YouTube sometimes gets overloaded and streams quite slowly. There is not much you can do to complain about it as it is a free service. However as B2B marketers we need to have high performance and reliability for our videos in our video lead generation landing pages or they simply will not work well. When YouTube slows down and start buffering impatient browsers will exit your page rather quickly and you can lose a great lead.
5. Lack of Customer Support
If something goes wrong with your video and you are a Fortune 500 company spending $250K or more with them, do not expect any expeditious assistance with a problem. What is more their limited video analytics are not as useful as other paid streaming services. Bottom line reliability and responsiveness are needed for you to generate leads and you will not get them from YouTube.
Having said all of this does not mean that your video should not be in YouTube, it absolutely should be. The important message being delivered here is that for reliability and responsiveness a very affordable streaming service is advisable so you can rest assure that your video will not fail in the video lead generation landing page and miss your leads. YouTube is the second largest search engine and definitely needs to hold your videos for potential customers searching inside YouTube but for your lead generation landing pages, it is advisable to use a more reliable video streaming service.
