By Max Wilbert

According to We are Social, 70% of marketers plan to use video marketing this year. That’s because it’s highly effective. Animoto’s Social Video Forecast suggests that 76.5% of marketers and small business owners are getting results with video marketing. And the right video marketing platform can make all the difference.

In this article, we’ll share and explore 6 reasons why you should use a video marketing platform to power your efforts. We’ll cover lead generation, branding, SEO, as well as a few other key concerns for marketers. In each case, we’ll see that professional video marketing platforms offer some serious advantages to marketers.

The 6 key reasons for using a video marketing platform that we’ll cover here include:

generate leads
let your brand to take center stage
measure ROI precisely
integrate video marketing with your existing apps and services
redirect viewers to your website and maximize SEO
stream on multiple platforms and all devices

Ready to learn more? Read on!

1. You Need To Generate Leads

Generating leads is the first step in any marketing funnel. And video can play a key role in this process. In a report published by Forrester, video usage in an email campaign leads to a whopping 200-300% increase in CTR (click-through rate). However, that’s just one example of how video can immediately power-up your marketing efforts.

A video marketing platform with tools like email capture allows you to rapidly increase your pool of qualified leads.

In turn, these leads can translate directly into higher returns. In fact, marketers who use video see a 49% faster growth in revenue. Finally, the right online video marketing platform can provide access to lead generation tools, the first keyway to achieve video marketing success.

2. You Need Your Brand To Take Center Stage

For a business, your brand represents your identity. You want your users to instantly recognize your brand–and you want it to stand out! In particular, your brand should make users think of the products and services you can provide for them. And it needs to trigger emotion—a feeling of connection.

Professional video marketing platforms make this process easy. That’s because pro-OVPs provide a white-label service. This means that there is no logo present, except for what you choose to add.

Using the right platform, it’s easy to insert a watermark with your logo. Plus, you can modify the video player to match your brand identity. Choose custom colors and more for seamless integration with your websites and beyond.

Remember, this white-label feature is in stark contrast to free, consumer-focused video platforms. With those services, every video includes the logo of the host service: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or something else. As a result, your own branding takes the second stage. That may be fine for vloggers, but businesses need a fully white-label video streaming platform.

3. You Need to Measure ROI Precisely

Nearly 52% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI. That’s far higher than any other single type of content. You can bet on video having the potential for great ROI.

With that in mind, how can you measure results precisely?

In short, a professional video marketing platform provides detailed analytics for this purpose. Analytics allow you to track view count, traffic sources, geographic data, revenue, and more. Plus, you can use real-time analytics to get moment-by-moment insights as viewers watch your content. That data will empower you to make intelligence-driven business decisions, ultimately helping you to boost ROI and revenues even further.

In addition, you can easily export all this information manually or via API. That way, you can access easy integration into external analytics dashboards and other data management tools.

4. You Need to Integrate Video Marketing With Your Existing Apps and Services

Modern video marketing professionals use an array of tools to track leads, sales, support issues, feature requests, returns, and more. To be successful, a video marketing platform needs to integrate seamlessly into this ecosystem of services.

According to Streaming Media, “The video workflow and distribution environment are incredibly complex, and the way to build a best-of-breed system or even just gain finer control over tasks—especially when delivering video at scale—is by API.”

An API (Application Programming Interface) allows you to easily connect various services and platforms used by your business. This unlocks the potential for powerful automation and seamless workflows. Moreover, it’s why most businesses are migrating to API-based workflows for online video.

Internal Dacast data shows that our API users in marketing, entertainment, and advertising account for 94.3 percent of total API calls. These sectors have also shown an impressive growth in terms of absolute calls, which have grown by 451 percent to date. And these users represent about 84 percent of Dacast’s total data usage.

In short: successful marketers know how important APIs are to successful marketing and branding campaigns.

5. You Need to Redirect Viewers to Your Website and Maximize SEO

Videos improve your website SEO. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a key part of any modern business. Using a video marketing platform will help you boost SEO in the most direct way possible. That’s because search engines privilege video results. What does this mean for businesses? Companies that use video marketing are likely to have 41% more web traffic from search than non-video-users.

Keep people on your website. Unlike consumer-grade free apps, Professional video marketing platforms direct all clicks to your website. When you use a consumer video platform like YouTube, on the other hand, each video click redirects users to YouTube.com. Every time that happens, you’re losing an opportunity for organic traffic and SEO improvements. In contrast, a white-label service will keep all traffic on and directed to your own website.

The use of videos can boost revenue. Of course, you also want to maximize purchasing behavior. Video content makes online purchases 1.6x more likely. That’s why it’s important to use a video marketing platform to drive users to your website and keep them there.

6. You Need to Stream on Multiple Platforms and All Devices

Ericsson’s TV and Media report have found that people are watching four more hours of mobile video per week than in 2015. At the same time, traditional TV viewing has declined by 2.5 hours.

“Mobile first” is the new mantra for any online endeavor. And video marketing is no exception. You need a video marketing platform that is optimized for every device. In other words, choose a video marketing platform with an HTML5 video player and SDKs to make development on mobile platforms simple.

Another priority is multi-platform streaming. Nowadays, live streaming is a growing part of online marketing. The industry publication MarketingWeek notes that live streaming “is key to building authenticity.” The ideal video marketing platform allows you to stream to multiple platforms simultaneously. That allows you to take advantage of all the features we’ve discussed here while streaming on your websites while maximizing your audience by streaming on social platforms (Facebook, YouTube, etc.).