What Video Distribution Channels Should You Use?

As you are creating your video content and strategy, an important component is thinking about where your videos will live. The big question is ‘how do you ensure that the right people see your video’?

To make sure your video content reaches your target audience, it’s important to utilize the video distribution channels where your audience already lives.

Using the right digital channels is a crucial part of video marketing, and thinking about channels the right way helps you to achieve your business goals.

To determine which video distribution channels your business should use, first establish what stage of the Flywheel you are concentrating efforts on.

The Flywheel is a customer lifecycle business model focused on perpetuating company growth. The 3 stages of the Flywheel are attract, engage, and delight.

If your goal is generating leads and establishing brand awareness, then you’re in the attract stage. The two main channels in the attract stage are social media and YouTube.

Use social media to capture attention and establish a brand identity. Video is the best performing content on all social platforms because it harnesses user attention through sight, sound, and motion.

Ask yourself which social platforms your target audience lives on (you don’t have to use all of them).

• LinkedIn is the social channel of business, specifically the B2B community.
• Using your personal LinkedIn platform will also help establish you as a thought-leader in your industry.

• Instagram is where all the young kids and creatives hang out!
• What was once a simple photo-sharing app has evolved in a brand-building platform.
• Instagram is especially popular for the B2C community but is still a great place for B2B companies to establish a fun brand personality.

• Pinterest is a fantastic platform for businesses with a strong brand aesthetic and plenty of photos of their product- like lifestyle, fashion, or home decor companies.
• Native video is relatively new to Pinterest making is a great way for your brand to stand out. 

• Facebook has the widest variety of demographics and the greatest number of users.
• Facebook ads offer the most specific and very cost-effective targeting abilities.

• Twitter is useful for short bits of information, news, or statistics.
• It’s also great for communicating with your consumer and addressing their customer service needs.

Use YouTube to build your brand with video. YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine and an optimized YouTube video can help your search engine optimization efforts along with helping build your brand as a thought leader to prospective customers. 

If your goal is converting prospects into customers, then you’re in the engage stage. The key channels for conversion are email and website.

Place video on your website so a prospect can easily learn more about your products and services. 72% of people prefer learning about a product or service by way of video. Plus, using video on a landing page can increase conversions by upwards of 80%.

It’s a crime not to have video on your website! Give the people what they want!

Hosting the videos on your website through a video marketing platform a step above YouTube and Vimeo is a great way to gather analytics on your video viewers.

Wistia is a fantastic and affordable video marketing platform that provides advanced analytics and allows for a custom branded video player.

Email is a great way to get more interested eyeballs on your video and more qualified leads to your website. Including a video in an email can increase CTR by 96%!

Email can be boring, but video is exciting and jazzes up the otherwise monotonous task of checking emails.

We can’t yet embed video directly in email, but using a GIF and hyperlinking to your website is an easy workaround that increases CTR.

If your goal is having happy customers and creating brand advocates, then you’re in the delight stage (PS- this should be every business’s goal).

Delighting customers is more important than ever because happy customers become brand evangelists and recommend you to their peers.

The best channels for delighting current customers are social media and website.

A large portion of your social media following is likely your current customers, so content meant to delight should reach your audience on social media.

You don’t have to use every social media platform. Focus on the platforms where your audience lives.

It’s also beneficial to place delight content on your website. This ensures that when customers have questions or problems, they can find answers on your website.

You can have a fantastic video designed to meet your business goals, but what good is that if it doesn’t reach your target audience?

Now that you know which video distribution channels will help you reach your goals, it’s time to optimize your video!