5 Tips to Optimize Your Video Marketing Efforts

Video analytics can now tell you how long people are watching your video and what content they're engaging with. That's an enormous feedback loop that's been missing. Retailers need to seek out and adopt new video marketing tools and data to start optimizing video content and driving response through the roof.

4. Test your thumbnail for no-brainer volume lift. A simple change of your video thumbnail — the still image that shows before visitors play your video — can lead to double-digit increases in your clickthrough rate. But how do you know which of your thumbnail options is going to work best?

It's simple, run an A/B split test. If you're not A/B testing your video thumbnails, you're giving away views.

5. Be sure your videos play on every device. Fifty percent of smartphone users watch web video on their mobile device. With mobile video traffic set to increase 16 fold by 2017, can you afford to ignore or underserve that market? Plus, research has shown that smartphone users watch video content longer than viewers on other platforms, and are more likely to buy.

Bottom line: Test your video content to make sure it works on all platforms. Otherwise, you're missing a massive and rapidly growing opportunity.

Don't Get Left Behind
Video may be new, but it's taking over. Best practices for video marketing in retail are going to be shaped by those retailers that invest in testing, learning and optimizing the fastest. So what are you doing about it? Share how you're driving results with video in the comments section below.

Michael Litt is the CEO and co-founder of Vidyard, a video marketing platform provider. Michael can be reached at michael@vidyard.com.