Automotive brands that branch out and publish video content beyond the Super Bowl can improve ROI.

For certain industries, online marketing is a foreign language. It can be difficult to alter traditional outreach programs to include emerging practices like video marketing, but if lead generation is the driving force behind improving ROI, professionals can look to the auto industry for some guidance.

A recent Unruly white paper entitled “Stuck in First Gear?: The State of Automobile Marketing in Social Video” uncovers key data for auto marketers as they allocate resources toward their future content marketing campaigns. While businesses understand Page Rank and SEO-friendly branded content can help their brands get in front of leads through search, video marketing encourages social shares and can spread media across the web even further.

The white paper found that the auto industry isn’t leading the proliferation of social video, but innovators in the sector are gaining early adopter advantages. For example, video sharing of auto content on social networks is growing at only one-fifth the rate of the overall ad market. In addition, four automobile brands account for 73.1 percent of video sharing in the industry, which indicates there is significant room for growth, and that more companies may soon develop custom content of their own for professional gain.

Perhaps the statistic that stands out the most is that nearly one-quarter of all video shares in the auto industry occur during the Super Bowl. With the bulk of companies focusing their marketing strategies on a single day out of the year, an untapped opportunity awaits those marketers who look toward the remaining 364 days.

Econ Video ShareEconsultancy contributor David Moth analyzed the Unruly Viral Video Chart and noticed that German carmaker Volkswagen claimed one-quarter of all auto video shares from June 2011 to June 2012. The companies Kia (21.6 percent) and Chevrolet (15.3) earned the second and third amount of online video shares, respectively, over the same time period.

Moth went on to note that for every branded automotive video share, an average of 25 people see the content, so marketers who develop engaging material can generate a significant number of new leads with one post. Video marketing may seem like a far off strategy for some auto brands, but Unruly’s data and Moth’s analysis put demand for the practice in greater perspective.

There certainly is room for growth, as indicated by the volume of branded video shares that occur during the Super Bowl, but it’s up to today’s thought leaders in the automotive field to take the leap into content creation and get ahead of the social sharing wave.

Ted Karczewski is an Executive Communications Associate at Brafton. He works to develop his own voice and apply his passions to the evolving world of SEO and content marketing, but he doesn't shy away from writing for fun. After graduating from Suffolk University, Ted used his Communications degree to test out Sports Journalism before Marketing at Brafton.