With an impressive ROI, it’s easy to see why video has become the weapon of choice for marketers, sales reps and publishers, regardless of industry.
Like with any other business initiative, however, if you hope to cash in on video and video marketing, you must approach it strategically.
Email has marketing automation and email marketing platforms.
Webinars have webinar platforms. Sales have sales-focused solutions.
Videos are no different.
To get the most out of them, you’ll need a video-specific solution.
Companies have sobered up to the complications related to relying on free platforms, such as YouTube, when it comes to video marketing. This is especially true when it comes to website video presentation. Having visitors bounce out of your site when engaging with a YouTube video is bad enough. The lack of any real and meaningful analytics is arguably an even bigger problem, especially if you value lead generation.
That’s why working with a video hosting platform is so important.
Good video hosting platforms can supercharge your video marketing efforts:
Providing additional (or unlimited) bandwidth, video analytics, and a secure and sophisticated way to embed online videos, video hosting platforms are a vital part of a modern marketing and sales stack.
We have taken the time to research and provide you with what we consider to be the 5 best video hosting platforms:
1. Cincopa
Cincopa is the more affordable option on this list. It’s cost-effective, offering a free tier and a paid plan.
The free tier offers 400MB storage space and 200MB bandwidth limit. The paid plan is also cost-effective with plans starting from $25 per month.
Cincopa offers a large collection of fully customizable video player templates. They have an advanced video template editor to allow you to customize the video player.
You can also customize the CSS code if you are familiar with the styling language.
Cincopa is the only vendor on this list that offers a comprehensive solution for all of you digital assets. You can use Cincopa to dynamically present podcasts, images, songs, PDFs, and, of course, videos.
Your video marketing efforts (and onsite video content) can really take off when you leverage Cincopa’s dynamic video solutions. Features such as Cincopa Video Channels enable you transform your own website into a video destination.
Viewers will engage with videos in a Netflix-like environment, shielded from any competitors’ content and unrelated videos.
Cincopa Video Course is ideal for training and publishers. If you’d like, you can even present videos without having to embed them first, you can use Cincopa Account Site (a free feature 😁).
The crown jewel of video hosting software, Cincopa’s analytics will truly introduce you to every member of your video audience. You’ll know who watched each video, where in the world they were, what device they used, and an exact breakdown of their viewing patterns.
Features such as video heatmaps will provide you with an aggregated view of a video’s overall performance. You’ll see if and where there are major drop-offs in viewership. That way you can and optimize your video and enhance engagement.
Finally, offering a slew of powerful integrations, you can see to it that video engagement becomes a central piece of your sales and marketing initiatives.
You can integrate Cincopa with your marketing automation platform, such as HubSpot, and build powerful automated sequences triggered by viewers’ interaction with your videos. This will see you fully-utilizing Cincopa’s lead-generation tools, such as on video calls-to-action and forms.
Cincopa’s Zoom integration will enable you to get more out of your video recordings, by adding closed captions, chapters and annotations.
If you work with Slack, you can be immediately notified when any changes are made to your Cincopa account. All you’ll have to do is integrate the two 💪.
2. Vimeo
Vimeo is considered by some to be the Google Docs of video due to its collaborative features.
The site started as a competitor to YouTube trying to be a social platform with which you can host videos, but over time, it evolved beyond that.
Vimeo offers two platforms: Vimeo and Vimeo Pro. Vimeo Pro is the best option for your company if you’re looking for a professional video hosting services.
With the pro version, video files and projects can be added privately. You can password-protect your video and invite freelancers, team members or clients to view/review the video.
If you tweak and re-upload videos the platform saves the previous iterations of the video.
This allows you and your team to go through all the changes made on the video. You also get access to powerful video analytic tools and time-saving video asset management tools.
Vimeo also offers an ad-free experience for all users of the platform and contains social media integration and Google Analytics integration as well.
Be warned, however. If you require considerable bandwidth, upgrading your Vimeo plan might be pricey.
3. Wistia
Founded in April of 2006, Wistia is a video hosting and analytics company.
It can be used by various departments within your company including sales and marketing, HR and customer support.
Wistia is made for the everyday person and is easy to use. The platform offers two tiers for its customers: the free tier and a pro tier.
The free tier provides you with access to the platform and up to 3 videos hosted on it. The fun is in the pro tier that provides you with a ton of tools for you to utilize. This pricing is quite high as well:
The Pro version – though starting at $99 – only allows for 10 free videos, which isn’t a lot for SMB video marketing. One cool feature that you can utilize on the pro version is email collectors and call to actions. These two features allow you to overlay forms or text on your video.
For marketers, this is useful as it makes your offer more compelling and persuasive.
You can also take advantage of the video heatmaps. This feature allows you to have a look at your audience’s viewing sessions.
With video heatmaps, you’ll be able to tell whether there are sessions that your audience rewatched or skipped in the video.
You can use this information together with the video trends feature to know what resonates with your audience and what doesn’t.
4. Vidyard
Headquartered in Canada, Vidyard is sometimes considered the granddaddy of video analytics. The site offers both video hosting and analytics but excels more on the analytics side.
They offer a suite of tools that your company will find useful, especially in the sales and marketing department.
Some of the features that they offer are such as A/B split testing and interactive events, to name a few.
The interactive feature allows you to overlay your video with HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to create quite interactive forms and dropdowns.
It also offers deep insights into your audience’s behavior.
Data such as views, heatmaps, more associated with email marketing are brought to video marketing as well.
It’s considered the best video marketing tool for a sales funnel from lead acquisition to nurturing to conversion. It’s all that you need.
It also integrates with a ton of third-party tools like Hootsuite and more. One of the bigger drawbacks with this platform is in its price.
Vidyard’s pricing tiers are not as transparent as the other vendors listed here. Their prices are also way off the chart for a small business.
5. Brightcove
Brightcove does more than just allow you to embed videos.
You could consider it a video marketing tool.
The company offers a full range of services such as consulting, strategy, on demand and design services.
The platform allows you to share your videos to social media within the platform. Your social media analytics will also be published within the platform.
This makes it easier for you to manage everything in one place. Brightcove also uses video ads and distribution to help clients monetize their content.
Many users of the platform have complained about it being difficult to use, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
With a ton of features, your videos are bound to stand out by using this platform.
Their quick and flexible HTML5 player, plus the ability of dynamic ad insertion makes them stand out.
The best part about this platform is that it also allows you to integrate with many other marketing tools and content management systems such as WordPress and Drupal.
Conclusion
61% of marketers plan to increase their video spending in 2022.
Those who will see considerable ROI on their video marketininitiativeses are those who will approach website video presentation strategically.
Yes, that will mean using a dedicated video marketing and hosting solution😎.
Some of the software mentioned on this list offer free trials. We recommend you leveraget these opportunities towards exploring the platform’s interface and play around with its features.
You can sign up for your 30 day Cincopa trial here!
