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More than ever, social media channels are putting video content front and center on their feeds, as audiences increasingly turn to TikTok, Reels, and live videos to be entertained, discover products, and even learn about exciting new brands.
And for marketers, leveraging video not only offers the highest ROI of any media format, but it plays a key role in helping marketers exceed their goals.
So, where in the world of video marketing should you focus your video marketing efforts? To help you determine your next steps, I surveyed 500+ video marketers to get their takes on all sorts of topics and tactics, including:
Let’s dive in.
The effectiveness of video marketing is obvious from the survey results — 73% of respondents say video marketing is effective at helping them reach their companies overall business goals.
Video marketers also overwhelmingly say that video marketing is very effective at helping with more specific goals, such as helping customers understand their products/services, engaging audiences, and generating leads.
I also asked marketers how many videos they publish per month, and a majority (30%) are churning out between 8 and 10. 23% say they’re publishing between five and seven.
I wanted to know how many views these videos get, so I asked about that as well:
Views aren’t the only metrics marketers track, though. There’s a long list of data points to keep your eyes on, so let’s take a look at which are the best measure of your video’s performance.
Video marketers told me that engagement (likes, comments, etc.) is the most important video marketing metric to track. That’s followed by watch time and view count.
I’ll dive a bit deeper into the importance of each major metric.
43% of video marketers say engagement is the most important video marketing metric to watch, and this makes sense to me because engagement clearly outlines how your videos resonate with your audience.
High engagement means people are eager to take action in addition to just watching the video (liking, commenting, sharing, etc.).
Here’s what Jigar Thakker, Chief Business Officer at INSIDEA, told me about why he thinks engagement rate is the most important video marketing metric:
“This metric [engagement rate] shows how well your audience is connecting with your content. High engagement indicates that your video is resonating with viewers, encouraging interaction, and fostering deeper connections with your brand…Engagement reflects the true effectiveness of your video in driving meaningful actions and interactions.”
Watch time is the second most important metric that video marketers track. It’s key to understanding how long people spend watching your videos.
And also, according to Michelle Tabor, Solutions Engineer at Lynton, the quality of your video: “I want as many people as possible to watch, and view time is a top indicator of if my content is boring or not.”
For example, if the average watch time for your five-minute video is four minutes, most viewers are sitting through nearly all of it because you’ve successfully hooked them. If you see a dropoff halfway through, the video may have been too long or not held interest enough to keep people watching.
The overall average watch time of your videos can be useful when comparing similar-length videos. I do recommend, if possible, checking the percentage of viewers watching at key moments throughout your videos.
Speaking of video length, I also asked marketers about how long marketing videos should be.
A whopping 91% of marketers agree that the optimal length of a marketing video is under 10 minutes.
Beyond that, opinions start to differ, with the largest chunk (36%) saying videos should be between 1-3 minutes, while 16% think the sweet spot is between 4-6 minutes. Another 30% say the optimal video length is under 60 seconds. 9% advocate for videos between 7-9 minutes long.
At the end of the day, the length of your video will largely depend on which type of video best suits your goals (I’ll talk more about this later on).
View count is the third most important video marketing metric to track, and the third most popular video marketing metric overall.
The meaning of views is in the word: how many people view your marketing videos. The more views you have, the more people, well, viewed your video.
However, high view count doesn’t always equal high quality video, which is why it’s important to monitor multiple metrics (including the ones I mentioned above) to get a well-rounded picture of your videos success.
Some other notable video marketing metrics I want to call out are follower/subscriber growth and click-through rate (CTR).
If you’re gaining followers/subscribers from a video, it resonates with viewers and they want to see more from you. If your growth rate is higher than normal, you can replicate your strategy with that video to optimize the rest of your content.
CTR speaks to your thumbnail and title/caption. It tells you how effective they are at getting people to watch your video in the first place.
Let’s dive into the next section: video marketers top goals for 2025.
Video marketers’ top three goals are increasing brand awareness and reaching new audiences (52%), increasing online engagement (38%), and increasing revenue and sales (36%).
More than ¼ of video marketers are also focused on using video to grow their online community/following, while 23% are using video to foster relationships with customers and increase brand loyalty.
As I mentioned at the very start, our survey shows video marketing is highly effective for reaching all of these goals, so let’s dive into some of the strategies video marketers are using to succeed.
Marketers say that the biggest benefit of video marketing is that it helps customers better understand a product/service.
They also say that videos are already popular among their target audiences and generate more leads than other types of content.
While this seems perfectly in line with video marketers’ goals, those benefits can come along with a few challenges.
Creating an effective video strategy is the biggest challenge video marketers face, followed by a lack of time to create video content and a lack of content ideas.
Having inadequate budgets to create video content is something that 28% of our survey respondents struggle with.
81% say they have a dedicated budget for video marketing, and it makes up 41-60% of their overall marketing budgets. Here’s what those budgets look like:
91% of marketers’ companies spend under $50,000 to create a marketing video, and over half spend under $10,000.
Our survey results show that marketers spend the most money during the production stage of creating a video (filming, setting up lighting and audio, etc.).
The most important factors for creating effective video content are capturing viewer attention in the first few seconds, engaging video editing, and engaging storytelling/scripting.
Capturing viewer attention in the first few sections (and even seconds) of your video is important because it’s what gets them to stick around.
If they’re intrigued, they’re more likely to watch more and the more they watch the more likely they are to benefit from its content (like educating them about a product or even just making them laugh).
The longer they watch the more likely they are to form an impression of your business, and a positive impression can inspire follows/subscriptions.
If you capture their attention and they stick around, you also have a higher chance of driving some sort of action, like a viewer sharing the video with friends.
So, how can you immediately capture this attention?
Adriane Grunenberg, HubSpot Automation & Digital Analytics Expert at Pinetco, says: “The opening moments of your video are crucial for capturing attention. You could use an intriguing question, a surprising fact, or a visually appealing scene to grab viewers’ attention immediately.”
I do have to mention that while storytelling/scripting is important, consumers nowadays also crave authentic, behind-the-scenes, and “real-life” type content.
Gabrielle Herrera, Community Growth Senior Marketing Manager at HubSpot noticed first-hand how much people enjoy this type of content after the Community team sent people to INBOUND 2024.
A majority of the content they created were videos, and she said: “The videos that received the most engagement and impressions weren’t the ones that were polished or scripted; they were the ones that featured the average attendee, usually impromptu on the show floor, and highlighted the unique experiences and learnings of those featured in the video.”
She adds, “There’s certainly a time and place for formal, scripted, and beautifully edited video marketing, but don’t discount the value that UGC and peer-based perspectives can bring to your video marketing strategy!”
As with all areas of marketing (and I guess life in general), AI is impacting video marketing. In fact, the most commonly used generative AI tools among marketers are visual AI tools (image/video/design generators).
I wanted to get more specific about video marketing and AI, so I asked our survey respondents whether they’re using AI in their processes and how they’re doing so—just 9% said they don’t use AI in their video strategy.
The most popular use cases for those who use AI in their video strategy is to generate descriptions/titles/tags to improve searchability, improve or generate visual effects layered in videos, and generate other visual features life text, titles, transitions, etc.
Here are some other interesting AI and video marketing stats I dug up from other HubSpot research:
Pro tip: If you’re looking for a low-stakes and easy-to-use tool to get started using AI in your video marketing, I recommend HubSpot’s Clip Creator.
You simply answer a few basic questions about the video you’re hoping to create, choose a template, and sit back to let AI generate the personalized content you’re looking for.
It can be tempting to dedicate all of your time to crafting the “perfect” video with slick edits, high production value, and an irresistible thumbnail. While these things are important, they lose their power without effective video promotion.
In fact, the past three times we’ve run our Consumer Trends Survey, consumers overwhelmingly say that it’s more important that brands post authentic and relatable content on social media than polished and high-quality content.
On the other hand, ineffectively promoting your video can cause your video to flop, so let’s take a look at a few strategies video marketers use to make sure that doesn’t happen.
The most effective video promotion strategies are sharing them on social media platforms, adding videos to your website or blog, and running paid ads for your videos.
For optimum results, I recommend a well-rounded video promotion strategy that includes the top strategies marketers told us about, and that starts before your video goes live and continues after it’s published.
For example, if your video is going live on YouTube in the next 24 hours, hop on Instagram and start a countdown on your story. Share the thumbnail and title 3-5 hours before the video drops to generate more interest. Prepare a teaser to hook viewers in and share that on social media as soon as your video releases.
Once the video is out, you can run an interactive poll related to your video on social media to engage your core audience and pique the interest of those who haven’t seen it yet. You can also set up an email campaign to go out announcing your video a few hours later, or add a banner to your website linking to the video.
All in all, continue to promote your videos whenever the opportunity arises. For example, if you notice a conversation on X (Twitter) related to the topic of a video you published three months ago, you can share the link if it adds value to the conversation.
Now that you’re up to speed on video marketing goals and strategies let’s take a look at which video formats are most effective.
Survey results showed that the majority of video marketers use short-form video (83%), 39% leverage long-form video, and just 14% use live video.
In this section, I’ll dive a bit deeper into each of these formats.
Of all the video formats, short-form has the highest ROI and is also #1 for lead generation and engagement.
Short-form video use also grew significantly this year, with marketers overwhelmingly planning to invest it in more than any other media format.
To top it off, 30% of marketers who didn’t already use short-form videos started doing so this year. Our blog team even tested out using short-form videos as a promotional tool.
Exactly how short are these short-form videos marketers make? The consensus among survey respondents is that 21-30 seconds (42%) is the optimal length. 32% say 31-60 seconds.
Long-form videos, defined in this survey as videos over three minutes, come in 2nd to short-form for ROI, lead generation, and engagement.
The biggest chunk of marketers (36%) say the ideal length for a long-form video is 3-6 minutes.
Where long-form outshines short-form video is that it takes first place in terms of format marketers plan to leverage for the first time this year.
Live video has lost popularity among video marketers — a -56% decrease in usage, in fact, since the last time we ran this survey. It comes in third place in terms of leads, engagement, and ROI.
Social media is, overall, the most used video marketing channel—81% of our survey respondents use it. YouTube/Vimeo is the second-most popular.
Social media is also the channel that brings in the highest ROI and generates the most leads, significantly outshining the second-place holder (blog/website) — 83% of survey respondents chose social media as having the highest ROI, and 10% chose blog/website.
While all these channels can be effective for sharing marketing videos, social media is the clear winner. Let’s dive into which platforms are most effective for video sharing.
Instagram is the most popular social media channel for sharing videos. 76% of marketers use it, and it’s the top social platform for ROI, engagement, and lead generation when sharing marketing videos.
YouTube comes in at #2 behind Instagram in terms of use and ROI but third for engagement and generating leads.
60% of video marketers use Facebook to share marketing videos, and it ranks fourth for ROI, engagement, and lead generation.
TikTok offers the second-best engagement and leads when sharing marketing videos, and 54% of video marketers use it.
Tumblr, Twitch, Pinterest, and Reddit are the least popular channels for sharing marketing videos, and all four offer little competition to Instagram and YouTube in terms of generating high ROI, driving leads, and getting engagement.
Now we know where marketers are sharing their videos, but what kind of videos are they sharing on those platforms?
Content showcasing products/services is the most leveraged type of video content, and video marketers say it’s the most effective at helping them reach their video marketing goals.
Consumers told us that content showcasing a brand’s products/services is the second-most memorable type of content they see on social media, so it’s worth investing in this within your own video marketing strategy.
Relatable content is the second most popular type of video content, and it is also the second best in terms of helping marketers meet their goals.
You should be a helpful resource for your audience, so it’s no surprise that education and informational videos are the third most popular type of video among our survey respondents.
Learning new things is one of the main reasons consumers use YouTube, so if you leverage that platform, consider posting helpful and educational videos to your channel.
Overall, funny content is the most memorable type of content for consumers when they encounter it on social media. 32% of our survey respondents use it, and it comes in fourth place in terms of helping video marketers meet their goals.
Creating a viral video is a goal that many video marketers may have, but it’s not necessarily a goal you have control over. You might hope to go viral by, say, jumping on trending topics or leveraging a popular influencer/celebrity, but its potential really depends on how consumers receive it.
However, with that in mind, I did ask our survey respondents if they’d had a hand in creating a viral video and, if so, what they think contributed to its virality. The top themes I gleaned from responses are:
93% of marketing videos are created in three weeks or less, and 32% are made in under a week.
This doesn’t surprise me at all: short-form videos are the most popular video format, and consumers appreciate more authentic videos.
This means that marketers can spend less time on production (shorter videos typically require less filming) and editing.
Whether you’re just getting started with video marketing or a seasoned video professional, keeping up with the latest trends and marketing strategies is key.
While video marketing is currently one of the top marketing strategies, there are a few others that have even better ROI – luckily, you can incorporate most of them into your video marketing strategy for even better results.
Just getting started with video? You can also download our free Video Marketing Starter Pack below.
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