If you’re a serious entrepreneur, you know that the right video marketing strategy is central to the success of your brand.
But, what do many video marketers fail to understand in 2022?
Choosing the right hosting platform is just as crucial to your conversion rate as creating engaging and compelling video content. Maybe even more so!
The right video marketing platform will help you go above and beyond your business goals by giving you the tools, features, and versatility you need to stand out from the crowd.
The wrong one can kill your chances of ever getting off the ground, so check out our comparisons below to learn the pros and cons of the top video hosting platforms.
Video Marketing Tools & Strategies- Why Free Hosting Options Will Ultimately Cost you Money
The one thing you can be sure of is that if you’re running a business, you need a premium hosting platform, or you’ll miss out on conversions. Going with a free platform like Youtube or self-hosting on your own website is certainly better than nothing, but your success will be limited.
When you’re considering video hosting sites. Free sites like YouTube might seem like an easy choice.
But, while Youtube is an excellent platform for sharing and browsing videos, it’s not the best platform for increasing your conversions. That’s because when someone clicks on a YouTube video, they are bombarded with ads directing them away from your message. These ads play within or adjacent to your content and often belong to your competitors.
Youtube’s recommendations and autoplay feature and at the end of your video are the elephants in the room that inexperienced marketers ignore.
This is a mistake.
Youtube’s recommendations are likely to distract your viewer’s attention away from your brand. The fact that another video will begin seconds after your video ends puts a severe dent in your efforts to generate engagement and convert traffic.
Another free option is self-hosting, but this too has its drawbacks. The reality is that unless you’re a massive brand, your website’s servers aren’t going to do your video content justice at scale.
Uploading multiple videos to your site can damage your SEO strategy because it’s likely to take your loading speed down a peg, hurting your SERP ranking.
If you’re serious about conversions, you need a feature-rich third-party hosting solution that makes it easy for you to turn strangers into visitors and visitors into customers or clients.
Choosing the Best Video Hosting Service for Your Business
Video marketing has never been more central to your overall marketing strategy than now, and there are more options for you to choose from than ever!
Services like Wistia, Vimeo, Vidalytics, Vidyard, and Brightcove are all sound options, and each has its unique variety of robust features.
Each platform has its own unique features, and it can be challenging to know which one is right for your business. We’ll get into that a bit later.
For starters, here are some of the key features to look for in a video hosting platform:
- The ability to quickly and easily embed fast-loading videos to your website or blog.
- The ability to customize the player settings as much as possible. From matching brand colors to adding branded watermarks or captions to help your videos stand out from the competition and provide a seamless experience for your viewers.
- Look for a platform that offers detailed analytics so you can track things like watch time, completion rate, and drop-off point. Armed with data, you can clearly see what’s working and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly to increase conversions.
- A robust and conversion-focused feature-set with options like:
- Smart autoplay controls
- Play gates and opt-ins
- Optional CTAs above and below videos
- Ability to Hide player controls
If you keep the above in mind, you’ll be well on your way to selecting a platform that suits your marketing needs. So what are your best options?
Let’s dive in!
The Best Video Hosting Platforms in 2022
It took some time, but we weighed the pros and cons of most of the top video hosting platforms for marketers, so you don’t have to.
JW Player is fine if you’re looking to churn out videos but they only recently added hosting to their platform. The platform might be great for publishers but it’s most certainly NOT built with marketing in mind and has one of the least robust feature sets of any platform we looked at.
Similarly, Brightcove is a solid hosting platform but all but ignores marketing. They offer virtually nothing in the way of analytics to help you boost the effectiveness of your videos and their feature set is on the light side.
Vimeo is well priced, but more geared toward videographers looking to highlight their skills. There’s no focus on marketing what-so-ever and the load times are, shall we say, a bit quaint?
Unlike the above platforms, Vidyard is actually geared towards marketing but the price is unreasonably high considering it lacks the advanced analytical tools you need to understand how your campaigns are doing so you can get granular with them and dial in conversions.
That leaves us with just two more options, Vidalytics and Wistia.
Both offer great features like unmute on restart, full-screen on unmute, and auto play, but only Vidalytics has the AI power of Smart Auto Play, a split-test-proven conversion booster.
Both allow you to add play gates and CTAs to your videos but only Vidalytics lets you display an opt-in whenever your video is paused or stopped. This game changer is completely unique to Vidalytics and turns would-be-bouncers into leads.
At the end of the day, the platform with the most potential to boost your conversions is Vidalytics.
Their powerful and exclusive tools tools like Smart Autoplay, Resume Play, Exit Thumbnails and Exit Playgates have the potential to make a life-changing difference in your bottomline. (We’ll get into detail about this shortly).
Vidalytics feels like it was designed with conversion rate optimization (CRO) as its core mission from day one.
After Vidalytics, Wistia was easily our second choice, but Vitalyitics still out-converted Wista by 26% in split testing performed by Golden Tree Nutrition.
All of the sites we mention have powerful features, and some even have features Vidalytics doesn’t. But, Vidalytics has more features, is more customizable and gives you more control, allowing you to connect more perfectly with your target audience to skyrocket your conversions.
So, What Is the Best Video Hosting Solution?
If video marketing is your bread and butter, it’s Vidalytics hands down.
Vidalytics is the only video hosting platform designed from the ground up with conversions in mind every step of the way so you can convert even the coldest traffic into customers.
With Vidalytics, you make more money from the same amount of work to grow your business exponentially.
If you’re in marketing, maybe you’ve heard of Jon Benson?
He’s the inventor of the video sales letter (VSL), and here’s what he had to say about his switch to Vidalytics:
“You should definitely use Vidalitics for video hosting. When I switched over my conversions increased by 30%. This is why I use Vidalytics for my VSLs.” – Jon Benson
Matej Bester of Golden Tree Nutrition also shared positive results from using the platform:
“Good news! We split tested 595,000 sessions with Vimeo, YouTube, and Wistia, and they couldn’t beat Vidalytics.” – Matej Bester
Giving Vidalytics a try is risk-free, so if you’re ready to boost your sales, you can sign up for your free trial here.
So, we’ve established that Vidalytics is a great platform and touched on how it can boost your sales no matter where they currently sit.
Next, let’s look in detail at how the platform’s features give you the edge you need to lock in a consistently higher conversion rate for your business.
But first, let’s briefly examine what is possible regarding conversion rates.
What’s Considered a Good Conversion Rate in 2022?
Only you can calculate the actual cost of a lost conversion to your business, but do you ever wonder what a reasonable conversion rate really is or what percentage of traffic the absolute TOP sites are converting?
According to Wordstream.com, your average, run-of-the-mill landing page (spanning all industries across the board) converts 2.3% of traffic.
Now, consider that according to ExplainNinja the average conversion rate for sites that use video marketing is 4.9%. So, if you’re relying heavily on video for marketing, you’re already on the right track!
But how do you join the ranks of the top 10% who are converting at no less than 11.45%, some of them up to three times that?
With the right tools.
How Vidalytics’ Powerful Marketing Based Features Give You an (Almost) Unfair Advantage Over the Competition.
By now, you’re probably wondering. Which Vidalytics features are most important to boosting my conversions, and how do they do it?
Let’s get into some detail about the most game-changing features Vidalytics offers and how they work.
Smart Auto-Play
We touched on Smart Auto-Play above, but let’s take a look under the hood.
First, Smart Autoplay detects and outsmarts browsers (including mobile) that block autoplay with sound. In these cases, it will play your video on mute while displaying a fully customizable autoplay message on top rather than not playing your video at all like most other hosting platforms.
Second, you’re free to choose from 3 unique autoplay message styles, Loud & In Your Face, Front & Center, and Classy in the Corner, to match your brand’s tone and style.
Third, if a viewer clicks anywhere on your muted autoplay video, it will immediately unmute and re-start from the beginning!
This one feature by itself boosted Brent Messner’s conversion rate by a staggering 49% in split testing! You can check out the case study here.
Play Gates
Sure, many top video hosting sites offer play gates, but none of them give you the flexibility you need to take full advantage of them.
Vidalytics play gates allow you to place contact information opt-ins right above your video. In addition, you can customize your opt-in to gather whatever information is most important to your marketing strategy.
One of the absolute game-changing things about Vidalytics play gates?
The option to display an opt-in whenever your video is paused and to implement an exit play gate!
When someone pauses or stops your video, they are likely about to bounce on you, and you may never have another opportunity to convert them. We’ve all lost customers this way, but what if your viewers were hit with an opt-in or call to action (CTA) every time that was about to happen?
If you think more of them will convert, you’re absolutely right!
Speaking of CTAs…
Call to Actions
Vidalytics gives you the power to make your CTA buttons exponentially more effective.
How?
You can tie Vidalytics CTA buttons to any time in your video, as opposed to any time on site, and make sure they appear where you want them eleven if your viewers hit pause, skip, or rewind.
The key takeaways here are:
- Your CTA button can appear any time your video is paused, minimizing bounces and increasing the chances of a sale.
- Your CTA button can be automatically shown to your return traffic so they can take action without delay.
- You control the look, feel, and copy of your CTA button.
Marketing Automation
The power of this tool is not to be underestimated!
Vidalytics CRM tagging tracks viewers in your email or CRM platform, so you know exactly what videos they’ve watched and up to what point. With this information, you can further personalize your messaging and (you guessed it) up your conversions.
Analytics
We saved the best for last.
Vidalytics’ potent analytical tools are thoughtfully designed to tell you all the most important things you need to know about your viewers and how your marketing strategy is (or isn’t) working.
Here’s a brief breakdown:
Audience Engagement
- Vidalytics shows you precisely at what point in your videos people are bouncing.
Conversion Tracking
- This is effectively your crystal ball showing the exact point in your videos your viewers convert (unlike any other platform). This tool can even track your revenue and ROI dynamically.
Video Heatmaps
- This feature provides you with a visual aid that uses user data to show you where your videos are either super engaging or super dull.
Segments
- How are you going to keep track of all the data mentioned above? This tool allows you to sort and organize all your analytical data into specific groups so you can see exactly what’s working and what isn’t.
Compare View
- Are you into split testing? Check this out: a feature that allows you to compare analytical stats from two videos side by side so you can understand in detail which video converts better and why!
Hide Player Controls
Have you ever wished you could hide some or all of the controls on your videos? With Vidalytics, you can even take away pausing to create a “like-live” feel.
Is Your Video Hosting Platform Built for Conversions?
That fact is that unless you’re already using Vidalytics, the answer is a resounding no. This means you’re leaving money on the table, more than likely, a LOT of money.
So, if you’re looking for a powerful and versatile video marketing platform, consider trying Vidalytics.
The platform will boost your conversions and give you unprecedented insight into your current campaigns that you can use to exponentially improve your future marketing strategies. You can try it risk-free today. Why wait? With Vidalytics in your corner, the sky’s the limit!