“The play button is the most compelling call to action on the web.”

On this, video marketing pioneer Michael Litt has been proven right time and time again.

For modern B2B marketers, it’s no longer a question of whether to use video, but how to do it effectively and efficiently. In 2024 and beyond, the power of B2B video marketing continues to grow, giving businesses new, meaningful ways to connect with their audience.

Here at Goldcast 👋🏼 we live and breathe video content. Our experience has solidified that online video is a crucial component of any data-driven marketing strategy.

Below, we’ll explore the latest video marketing statistics and trends, so you can go into planning mode with all the info you need. Let’s dig right in.

Okay, video is more pervasive than ever—but can brands get away with excluding it from their marketing strategy? In a word, no. Take a look at these video marketing stats on adoption and production.

It’s clear from the data: Video marketing is more prevalent than ever. Here’s the latest:

• 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool (Wyzowl)
• 81% of companies have a marketing budget solely dedicated to video (HubSpot)
• 93% of businesses say video is an important part of their marketing strategy (Wistia)

In other words, if you’re not using video in your B2B marketing strategy, you’re falling behind the competition.

Today, production is shifting from in-house to external partners. Specifically:

• 38% of video marketers create their content in-house—down from 60% in 2023 (Wyzowl)
• 24% of video marketers outsource video content to external vendors—up from 11% in 2023 (Wyzowl)
• 38% of marketers rely on a mix of in-house and external teams to create video content—up from 29% in 2023 (Wyzowl)

• Video marketing is now table stakes, with more than 90% of businesses using it
• There’s a shift toward hybrid production approaches combining in-house with external expertise
• A dedicated video marketing budget is now the norm

Understanding your audience is critical for creating engaging video content—but we don’t have to tell you that. Here’s what the data says about audience preferences and behavior.

When it comes to length, short-form videos are often better. According to Wyzowl, marketers swear by the following video lengths in this order:

• 30-60 seconds (39%)
• 1-2 minutes (28%)
• 30 seconds or less (18%)
• 2-3 minutes (10%)
• 3 minutes or more (5%)

Engagement numbers seem to back marketers up on this (Wistia):

• A <1 minute video has an engagement rate of 50%
• 1-3 minutes: 48%
• 3-5 minutes: 47%
• 5-30 minutes: 39%

These points suggest that while there’s a place for long-form video, focusing on concise, impactful content can yield better engagement rates.

Your video itself isn’t the only thing that influences engagement. With a multichannel video strategy, accessibility and captions play an important role.

• Adding captions boosts viewer affinity by 95%, recall by 58%, likability by 31%, and uniqueness by 25%. On TikTok, add text descriptions throughout your video that offer value or context, in addition to closed captions. (TikTok via Wistia)
• 78% of video marketers use some combination of accessibility features for their videos, including transcripts, captions, audio-description, and accessible media players (HubSpot)

• Aim for shorter videos (30-60 seconds)
• Don’t ignore accessibility features like captions and transcripts
• Consider platform-specific features like TikTok descriptions to maximize engagement

All video is special but for meeting your marketing goals, all video is not created equal. Let’s check in on which types of videos are delivering results today.

According to HubSpot, marketers say these types of video content yield the highest ROI:

• Content showcasing products/services (66%)
• Trendy content (55%)
• Funny content (53%)
• Interactive content (52%)
• Behind-the-scenes content (52%)

This diverse range suggests that a varied video strategy can help you connect with your audience in different ways. It all comes down to your relationship with your target personas.

What’s the latest when it comes to video format? According to Wyzowl, marketers are creating:

• Live-action videos (48%)
• Animated video (24%)
• Screen-recorded videos (22%)

• Consider diverse content types, including product showcases, trending topics, and behind-the-scenes glimpses
• Live-action remains the most popular, but don’t sleep on animated explainer videos and screen-recorded content
• Video type boils down to what fits with your products, services, target audience, and marketing funnel stages

With so many video platforms out there, planning for distribution can leave you with analysis paralysis. 🥴 Whether you’re running video ads or looking to boost your organic reach, here are some insights to guide your strategy.

In the realm of video consumption, social media platforms reign supreme.

• 63% of marketers believe social media is the most effective channel for promoting video (HubSpot)
• YouTube is the most popular video marketing platform, used by 90% of marketers (Wyzowl)
• YouTube is followed by Facebook (86%), Instagram (79%) and LinkedIn (76%) (Wyzowl)
• The top 3 most effective video marketing platforms according to marketers are YouTube (78%), Facebook video (71%), and Instagram video (64%) (Wyzowl)

While these stats provide an overview, always remember that the best channels for you depend on your industry, audience, and goals.

• Social platforms are crucial for video distribution, with YouTube leading the pack
• LinkedIn is totally on the table for B2B
• Always tailor your content to each platform’s unique features and audience expectations

Measuring the return on investment of your video marketing is vital to justifying your budget and improving your strategy. Here’s how other B2B marketers are tackling this challenge.

Consider these insights from HubSpot:

• 41% say that overall ROI from video marketing is high
• 32% claim that video ROI is better than other types of content
• 45% of marketers who own their equipment say the ROI of video is “high,” while only 29% of those who rent describe it that way

This data shows how investing in your own video equipment upfront can lead to better ROI in the long run. Of course, this depends where you fall on the in-house/outsourced production spectrum discussed earlier.

Marketers use lots of different metrics to measure their video marketing success. Here are some common KPIs:

• 60% of video marketers quantify ROI through video engagement such as likes, shares and reposts (Wyzowl)
• 42% of video marketers quantify ROI through customer engagement and retention (Wyzowl)
• 40% of video marketers quantify ROI through video views and 39% quantify ROI through brand awareness/PR (Wyzowl)
• 32% of video marketers quantify ROI through bottom-line sales (Wyzowl)

And here are a few outcomes and benefits on marketers’ radar:

• 88% of video marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service (Wyzowl)
• 87% of video marketers say video can directly increase sales (Wyzowl)
• 82% of video marketers say video has helped increase dwell time on their website (Wyzowl)
• 66% of video marketers say video has helped them reduce support queries (an increase of 13% from last year) (Wyzowl)

Analytics are crucial to measure ROI, but they also play a vital role in your quest for continuous improvement. Understanding how different video content performs against your digital marketing goals helps inform your decisions on future video creation.

Consider these essential video metrics for optimization:

1. View count
2. Engagement
3. Click-through rate
4. Conversion rate
5. Play rate
6. Completion rate

If you don’t have a long video track record, here’s a shortcut to some of these insights. Look to other similar content formats to figure out what will work well in your video marketing strategy.

For example, let’s say you hosted a product demo webinar. (Spoiler alert: That’s video content! 💁🏼‍♀️) Take a look at your event’s engagement and conversion analytics, and let it inform your video marketing strategy.

For bonus points, we’d record that webinar and repurpose it into video for other channels—more on that later.

As B2B video marketers, we believe in the power of analytics. That’s why we built comprehensive data and insights into our platform. To check it out, book a demo of Goldcast.

• Video marketing consistently delivers a high ROI in B2B
• ROI can be comprised of different metrics including engagement, customer retention, and sales
• Tracking the right analytics is monumental

As we look to the future, artificial intelligence is poised to play an increasingly important role in video marketing. Here’s what we’re seeing now.

• Although only 18% of businesses surveyed by Wistia said they weaved AI tools into their video production workflows, 66% said they “can’t wait” to create videos using generative AI in 2024
• 85% of marketers say generative AI has changed the way they will create content in 2024 and 62% say it’s important to their marketing strategy (HubSpot via Wistia)
• Only 14% said they don’t use or intend to use AI for videos (Wistia)

According to Wistia, businesses are using or planning to use AI for video in the following ways:

• Auto-generating captions or transcripts (59%)
• Generating a script, outline, or ideas (50%)
• Generating visuals and music or fixing overdubs (35%)
• Finding key clips to edit (29%)
• Helping create social promotion copy (26%)

Using the right AI tool for repurposing videos saves time and increases output. Goldcast Content Lab helps B2B marketers harness AI to do all of the above and more.

Here’s an example. Hootsuite’s Manager of Webinar Marketing, Stacy Combest, runs the brand’s webinars on Goldcast’s virtual event platform. Then, she uses Content Lab to automate the creation of video snippets and transcripts—reducing video content creation time from days to hours. 🎉

Incorporating our AI tools into her video workflow significantly boosted Hootsuite’s SEO, resulting in a 150% increase in organic traffic to their webinar pages, and a 28% lift in on-demand views.

Or take Qualio, a provider of quality management systems for life sciences. In their quest to scale their webinar program, they started hosting events with Goldcast. Before Content Lab, Senior Content Marketing Manager Alex Pavlović spent 2-5 hours editing each hour of event footage. Great content? Yes. Efficient? Definitely not, especially for a content team of one.

Content lab helped Alex reduce the video repurposing process to five minutes—a sixfold increase in efficiency. 🙌🏼

• AI adoption in video marketing is surfing
• AI tools can streamline video production, from ideation to post-production
• Exploring AI tools to enhance your video marketing workflow now can set you up for success later as these tools become more commonplace

Making AI accessible to B2B video marketers is one of our top priorities. With Content Lab, you can efficiently repurpose the video content you create for a variety of channels—boosting your video ROI in the process. Try it for yourself by signing up for a free Content Lab account today.