Brightcove’s Jennifer Griffin Smith: Why Every Company Should Act Like a Media Company

I am sure you can relate to the frustration of being bombarded with information online. There are distractions everywhere. The thing is, if you’re frustrated as a customer, you’re certainly frustrated as a marketer trying to break through.

What’s a solution? Jennifer Griffin Smith the CMO at video communications platform Brightcove said in her presentation at INBOUND 2022 that thinking as a media company we can more effectively connect with customers. Just look at Netflix for example. They don’t renew a show unless the content performs. They think very specifically about the audiences they’re trying to serve and optimize programming and the content experience accordingly.

We’ve all heard “content is king”, but with 4.6 billion pieces of content consumed on a daily basis (eMarketer), there’s simply too much content.

Traditional marketing measurement follows a model of:
> Awareness
> Interest
> Consideration
> Purchase

The new media company centric marketing measurement model focuses on:
> Identify
> Expand
> Engage
> Advocate

Why? Because what worked in the past, simply isn’t working today. The digital landscape & the way people
consume content has changed. We need to look to the future, especially future buyers. People 18-25 years old are spending an average of 10.5 hours a week on TikTok and 6.9 hours a week on YouTube. (eMarketer) Brands need to be where their customers are.

To further explore consumer content behaviors, Brightcove undertook a study focused on B2B, B2C and employees. Their findings included:

B2B Audiences

• 97% are more receptive to sales communication from a business after consuming their video content.
• 81% prefer video over written content when learning how to use a product or service.

They also found that video helps with purchase decisions. When asked in what ways video was helpful for making purchase decisions, respondents said:

• 58% Learning about a product or service
• 40% Learning how to solve a problem
• 36% Understanding a problem
• 36% Hearing what other customers think

Employees Audiences

• 83% agree that if their organization used more video content, they would have a better overall experience as an employee.
• 80% prefer internal CEO announcement through video, either live or on demand.

But here’s the thing: organizations are not communicating in the ways that employees prefer:

• 31% say their organizations use video for corporate communication.
• 38% say their organizations use video for training.
• 36% say their organizations use video for corporate events.

To close this gap for B2B and employee audiences (as well as B2C not covered here) Jennifer suggested viewing content the way a media company views their content. Obviously companies are at various stages in their adoption of video and video platforms. Luckily there is a maturity model to help brands understand where they are and how they might evolve.

And how we might transition through these phases.

Exploratory: Grow video use across channels

Performance: Driving tactics on consumption statistics

Operationalizing: Incorporating video & streaming across all company communications

Highly Strategic: Leading w/ new channels & mediums

Success is achieved through highly tailored content aligned to personas, buying stages and consumption served through new ‘owned’ channels.

Evolving your approach to video content also means evolving analytics. Instead of the default of viewers per video, average duration watched, and number of views yesterday, Jennifer suggested we think about vide metrics like a media company:

Net View Share like a TV rating, dials into a video’s impact as a percent of all engaged views in the last 30, 90 or 365 days

Attention Index like an NPS, measures % of viewers watching >75%, minus those watching <10%

First Watched identifies first-time viewers as a segment and the video that got them to watch

Imagine if your B2B brand (B2B is my emphasis) could engage with customers with a Netflix or Hulu like experience?

Brightcove is walking the talk on this B2B video experience with PLAYTV an always on video channel featuring content of interest to customers including:

• Events
• Interviews
• News & Trends
• Documentaries
• Short Films
• Inspiring Stories
• Thought Leadership

Along with a completely owned content/media destination, with PLAYTV Brightcove as a depth of analytics and insights about content. Owned media is even more important when it comes to first party data. As Jennifer says,

First party data management = owning your future

As takeaways, Jennifer shared that building your own channel has some important benefits:

1. Own your own audience

2. 1st party data management

3. Better insight and analytics

4. More engaging

We’ve experimented with video in various ways for TopRank’s own marketing and I think it’s time that we along with just about every other B2B marketer start thinking about video content like a media company.  What do you think?

*Brightcove is a TopRank Marketing client

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