Marketing professionals everywhere are adhering to a new motto this year: Facts tell, stories sell.

Video marketing is quickly growing in popularity as marketers everywhere put more emphasis on content that tells a story. Video is the ideal format for captivating busy audiences. By creating strong, storytelling content marketers are able to deliver a short but memorable message that viewers can enjoy – and that maketers can measure.

Finding a way to stand out and entice potential audiences to take notice of your content is more important than ever. 2015 is an era of independent consumers who reasearch online before ever contacting a vendor. Marketers must find a way to engage prospective clients with entertaining content that also educates them about what we do while representing the company’s culture.

Video, once used to enhance websites, is quickly manifesting into a widely-used, strategic marketing tactic. Here’s our prediction on what 2015 has in store for video marketing.

The play button as a call to action. 

Survey says: video marketing is here to stay. According to Invodo, approximately 65% of viewers watch more than three-quarters of a given video. Imagine seeing comparable results with written adage! Over 70% of marketing professionals agree that video converts better than any other medium.

Click-through rates and digital conversations are increasing as a result of video marketing and marketing professionals are taking notice. A surge of strong, storytelling visual content is positioning the play button as the most enticing call to action on the web.

Video marketing is an integral part of email marketing, content marketing, social media, SEO, and lead demand-generation programs. Marketing professionals everywhere are seeing increased results and strengthening brand affinity and customer relationships through video.

Data-driven marketing is in. 

New marketing technologies are making it possible to track the digital interations of online audiences as well as measure the effectiveness of marketing techniques. As marketers continue to incorporate video in modern marketing efforts, video analytics will continue to improve and become increasingly valuable.

Video platforms now offer the ability to track results beyond view count. Accessbility to data like audience engagement and average drop-off rates for video viewers will provide additional insight into the web presence of a video. Now marketers will have more visibility into how each video is contributing to lead generation and revenue.

Video is a lead generation and qualification tool. 

Simple additions to your video can turn it into a great lead generation tool. For example, adding an email gate to the start of your video or a lead collection form to the end will enable you to generate new, well-qualified leads who are interested in your content.

Information received from your video leads can now be tied directly to contact information recorded in your CRM and automated marketing systems, which not only organizes qualified leads, but also ties them back to engagement with your online content. This technology is expected to grow and develop throughout 2015.

Tracking video viewing activities of prospective clients can help you determine who your most promising leads are and increases your conversion rate. As content marketing programs being to rely more heavily on visual storytelling, tracking video interactions will become even more relevant and important.

The ability to track how long an indivual actually remains engaged in a video will allow marketers to more adequately asses how a lead should be treated. Video offers the most reliable means of tracking viewer engagement with content. 2015 will see a boom in video marketing and strategy.

YouTube will no longer be the focus.

YouTube can help you expand your reach and attract new viewers and a larger audience. It is an excellent channel for video distribution, but it should not be the only place that you share content nor should you use it as the hosting platform for videos embedded on your website and various forms of social media.

YouTube is affordable, but it has some serious disadvantages for marketers trying to make video part of your digital brand and content marketing agenda. Marketers are realizing the importance of video as a part of digital maketing and demand generation strategies, and it will become more clear that YouTube is not the best platform for achieving the desired results.

Video analytics in marketing and CRM automation is increasing.

While many marketers agree that video conversion is the technology of the future, surprisingly only about 10% actively demploy video analytics tracking tools. Video analytics will be used to attract and engage audiences, while simultaneously collecting data within marketing automation and CRM platforms to increase results.

Maximizing the value of video is critical to growing a web presence. It provides comprehensive insight into how prospects interact with the brand across multiple channels throughout the sales process. With these tools, marketers can even start reporting on video’s impact on lead generation, pipeline, development, and revenue.

Questions or comments? Let us know what you think! Or better yet – show us!