The State of Video Marketing in 2021 [New Data]

It is common knowledge that video has been one of the major trends in the marketing world over the past decade.

But how does that claim stand the twists and turns of a global pandemic?

The challenges – and changes – that this most surreal year has brought affected us all.

At Wyzowl, we have been publishing an annual video marketing status survey every year since 2015, recording usage, spending, channels and opinions of video marketing professionals and consumers.

We recently released our seventh Report on the status of video marketing and given the chaos of the past year, it is perhaps our most fascinating collection of insights to date.

Our research suggests:

• Video remains a key priority for marketers whose overall usage and spend is increasing slightly over the course of 2020 and plans to pick up again over the next 12 months.
• The pandemic Has Impact on the video marketing landscape in contrasting ways – while video is generally viewed as a more necessary tool by both marketers and consumers, in many cases budgets have been tightened and plans postponed.
• The pandemic has overwhelmingly increased the number of online videos people watch.
• Marketers are more positive than ever about the return on investment video offers as it continues to have a powerful impact on traffic, leads, sales, and audience understanding.
• Consumers continue to use video as an integral part of their branded journey and look forward to seeing even more video content in the coming year.

About the survey

Wyzowl’s survey on the status of video marketing is an annual report, now in its seventh iteration. Every year we ask a series of questions – many of which are the same from year to year – to assess how the video marketing landscape is changing and growing.

This time around, our survey was conducted by a sample of 813 unique respondents (our highest sample ever) that consisted of professional marketers and consumers.

The main results …

86% of companies use video as a marketing tool, somewhat more than of 85% in 2019.

This is the culmination of a general story of increasing video usage that can be traced back to 2016 (the first time we asked this particular question this way).

What’s more 93% of marketers who use video say it’s an important part of their marketing strategy – a boost from 92% This is the highest percentage in a year since 2015.

Perhaps most noticeable 87% of video marketers reported that video gives them a positive ROI – a world apart from the low 33% This could well be due to a better understanding of how video is used, as well as tracking and quantifying its impact

Impact on the pandemic

So what about the impact of the global pandemic?

Let’s start with the fact that 91% of marketers believe the pandemic has made video more important to brands.

A pretty substantial one 40% of video marketers said their plans to create videos were impacted by events over the past year – around 74% of these say that they are more likely to use video, and 26% to say that it was less likely.

Around 60% of video marketers say they expect their 2021 budget to be roughly affected with 70% from those people who are expecting a bigger video marketing budget and the other 30% expects it to be lower.

68% of consumers say the pandemic affected the amount of video content they saw online by the vast majority (96%) to say that this has increased.

I’m looking forward to …

All signs suggest that usage and spending are on track to continue growing in 2021.

More than 99% of the current video marketers told us that they will continue to use video in 2021, and 96% plan to increase or maintain their spending (again slightly from 95% last year.)

What’s more, from the people who told us they are not currently using video, 69% told us that they are expected to start in 2020. (This is 10% higher than last year (59%).)

The net result of this is that we can all expect more noise and competition for audience attention in the next 12 months.

While this is a challenge, of course it is not an insurmountable one. It just raises the bar in terms of content quality. Video needs to be well planned and very well executed.

The great opportunities …

You will be forgiven for looking at these numbers and feeling like the video is about to hit the saturation point. Most of the data on usage, spending and consumer opinion comes from the 80s and 90s – where it has been consistently stored for a number of years.

The good news, however, is that there still seems to be underutilized ways for marketers to engage with video.

Unsurprisingly, YouTube and Facebook are the most popular platforms among video marketing companies – they are used by 87% and 70% respectively.

However, some of the lesser-used video tactics seem to be producing real results for video marketers as well.

2020 seems to have been the year of the webinar, especially given global events and the growing desire for long-distance connections. In 2019 only 46% used webinars – but in 2020 this rose significantly 62%.

What’s more, an overwhelming one 91% from webinar marketers say they were a success making it the most effective video marketing channel of all of them listed.

To conclude

The events of 2020 did and did little to slow the rise of video.

In many ways, the demand (and consumption) of video has accelerated as people are isolated in their homes and some teams work with less budget and resources than they did before the pandemic.

Video is expected to continue its decade-long track record overnight for the next decade. These statistics paint a picture of a type of media that is popular almost everywhere with both marketers and their audiences, and it helps achieve a number of incredibly important goals.

You can read the full report – with many more data points – and get a downloadable version by visiting Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing 2021 page.