New research from Convertro shows how video marketing in general and YouTube specifically drives conversions and increases goal completions.

Using video marketing is the best way to grab visitors’ attention and encourage them to purchase. That’s the main takeaway from a recent study by Convertro, which looked at different marketing platforms and studied where they fell in the customer path to purchase.

The study found that YouTube was the best channel at driving conversions without the help of other networks. It operated this way 14 percent of the time, compared to runner up Facebook with 10 percent. YouTube was also the first step in more complex sales processes 18 percent of the time, meaning in total, customers who viewed YouTube content first ended up converting 34 percent of the time.

For context, this was only the case:

 21 percent of the time for Facebook
 14 percent of the time for Google+
 8 percent of the time for Pinterest

Video marketing captures customers’ attention

Web users rarely go from point A to point B in a clear-cut manner. To optimize marketing strategies, it’s important to know which networks are often the first step in the sales funnel, which occupy the middle and which ones are often at the end, so you can optimize those pieces for efficacy.

video conversion format

YouTube’s dominance is due to the effectiveness of video marketing overall. The format grabs users’ attention and shows products, services and processes in more detail than other formats. And the vast YouTube network makes for plenty of topical research and relevant engagement that keeps customers watching and learning.

Customers also simply spend more time with video content, and that buy in increases the likelihood of conversions. Brafton helped a client perform an A/B test for landing pages, creating one set with videos and one without. The group of pages without videos in them only had conversion rates of 7 percent, while those with the content had goal completion rates over 25 percent.

Create custom videos and embed them on your website to increase the dwell time of visitors and direct traffic towards conversions. The increase in engagement metrics and goal completions will be the payoff from diversifying your content strategy and producing interactive formats on a consistent basis.

Alex Butzbach is a Marketing Writer at Brafton. He studied Communications at Boston College, and after a brief stint teaching English in Japan, he entered the world of content marketing. When he isn't writing and researching, he can be found on a bike somewhere in Metro Boston.