As we settle into 2021, our team is taking the time to look back at 2020 and reflect on the year’s progress. Today, we’re using our findings to paint a picture of the video marketing landscape for the last 12 months—and to evaluate what might be ahead for the next 12. Let’s dive in!
Lemonlight Videos Created
This year, we made a total of 1,604 videos and served a total of 471 customers. This breaks down to an average of 3.4 videos per client. We saw a similar trend last year, so let’s take a look at why many of our clients purchase multiple videos.
One common explanation is that many clients want their content to be able to fit multiple distribution platforms. For example, a client may have plans to post on a website page, on YouTube, and on Instagram, but each platform has its own best practices and video specs to accommodate.
For these clients, we make sure to tailor the final video to the intended distribution platform, which often means making multiple versions of the same video. This ensures that everywhere the video is posted, it looks like it belongs there. It’s a small post production step that makes a big difference.
On the other hand, many clients go a different route and produce several different videos. Sometimes, the videos might serve the same overall purpose or contribute to the same campaign. Other times, they don’t.
When the videos align as part of the same campaign, they often serve as smaller parts of a larger story. For example, we might make a series of short product videos that each highlight a different product feature. While the videos are individual and can be enjoyed alone, together, they create a more cohesive view of what the product does.
When the videos aren’t part of the same campaign, they often serve different purposes for the brand. For example, we might make a product video and an “About Us” video at the same time. The “About Us” video may live on the client’s website, while the product video becomes an Instagram ad.
Now that we know how our videos break down for our clients, let’s take a look at how audiences are engaging with those videos.
Consumer Viewing Habits
As we often tell our clients, blog readers, and webinar attendees, your job as a video marketer doesn’t end when you hit “publish” and the video goes live. A crucial component of the process is digging into your watch data to see how your audience is receiving the video to see what you can learn for next time. Done correctly, this step helps you identify opportunities to test something new in the future.
We host many of our client videos on Vimeo, where we’re able to share them with our prospective clients and the general public. While these stats don’t account for the way our videos perform for our clients themselves, they do give us valuable information about what our own audience is looking for.
Here are some of this year’s takeaways.
In 2020, our videos received 291,000 total views from 75,000 unique viewers. This is interesting because it means that the average viewer is watching roughly 4 videos (or watching the same video four distinct times). When you look at your own video data, keep an eye out for this ratio. Increasing your unique viewers is an indication that you’re moving in a positive direction, but it’s also a good sign when viewers are (on average) consuming multiple pieces of content.
Desktop devices still reign supreme for our content, with 227,051 views coming from desktops. However, as we’ve shared before, considering how your video will translate across other devices is incredibly important. Despite desktops winning out, we had 60,675 views on mobile devices, 3,089 views on tablets, and 61 views on TV apps. If you’re optimizing for a single platform when you develop your content, you might be accidentally allowing for a negative experience on all the other options.
Finally, our viewers consumed Lemonlight videos for a grand total of 115 days, 12 hours, 8 minutes, and 7 seconds. That’s almost a third of the year!
Video Marketing Expertise
One of our favorite ways of connecting with our audience this year was through our blog posts, where we share video marketing tips and tricks to help you level up your content strategy. This year, we shared a total of 94 articles with a total of 427,911 website visitors.
Our top five new articles this year were:
- 12 Do’s and Don’ts of Successful Video Call Etiquette
- Must-Watch Video of the Week: Progressive Keeps You From Becoming Your Parents
- OTT Media: Current 2020 Landscape and Where We’re Headed
- Everything We Know About Etsy’s New Video Prototype
- 9 Experts Share Actionable Tips for Digital Marketing in 2020
Beyond our blog, we also share the latest video marketing info with our webinar audiences. This year, we hosted 6 webinars with a total of 873 attendees. We covered best practices for video ads, how to use video to launch a winning crowdfunding campaign, tips and tricks for creating your own video content, and more. We have several exciting webinars planned for 2021, so stay tuned!
Bring It On, 2021!
Our team is excited to leave 2020 behind and move onward and upward into 2021. We’d love to be a part of your video marketing journey this year, so here are a few ways you can connect with us: sign up for our mailing list, check out more of our blog content, or work with us to create new video content for your business. We hope you’ll join us for what is likely to be video’s best year yet!