Cincopa Vs YouTube: Which is Better for Your Business?

YouTube is awesome. It has come a long way since the infamous early days of cat videos. It has assumed its rightful place as one  of the pillars of the internet, and as the inarguable channel through which free videos can be dispersed and viewed.

But is it really the best place to host your videos?

YouTube is a great choice if your looking to just get your videos out there. 

But, like other business departments, marketing and branding personnel need to be able to analyze their efforts.

Most marketing departments are going to be judged by lead generation and conversion.

YouTube offers marketers little to no regarding video engagement, specifically individual viewing patterns. How can you be expected to guide a lead along the marketing and sales funnel if you can’t even point to who, where, and what exactly he viewed?

 

youtube question

 

Let’s explore how video hosting platforms, such as Cincopa, stack up to YouTube in terms of analytics, automation and engagement:

Audience scale

YouTube is designed for content creators to share and monetize their videos through ad revenue. It offers many ways to promote content to an audience consisting of billions of daily users.

However, such a massive audience renders YouTube’s ecosystem as incredibly competitive. For every one video that manages to stand out, there are countless others toiling in obscurity.

Viewers who watch videos on YouTube are also often distracted by pre-roll ads and recommended content. They could be watching a video of yours, and within 9 seconds find themselves watching NFL highlights,  forgetting they ever even clicked on your content.

Using a video hosting platform, like Cincopa, allows you to curate your users viewing experience.

Cincopa enables you to build personal video pages, or Channels. That way, you essentially ‘lock’ your prospect within your site. The layout is similar to Netflix’s. So, even when a lead is tempted by an intriguing video, he’d be ditching one piece of content, for another one of your  videos.

 

Tell your story with the

Power of Video

SEO

Having videos on YouTube has its advantages. After Google, YouTube is the largest search engine. So, if you want your videos to appear in the search result, you should also publish them on your YouTube channel.

However, to truly reap the valuable SEO benefits your brand needs in order to grow, you need to embed videos on your website, using a sophisticated video host, like Cincopa.

With JSON-LD, an SEO-friendly embed code standard, Cincopa encourages search engines to rank your content and drive traffic to your website.

 

Branding

YouTube gives you the possibility to customize the display on your site such as removing the branding and controlling how the player behaves. That’s about the extent of it.

With Cincopa’s video player, your videos will have a look and feel that are truly-unique to you and your brand. The platform is easy to use and offers a wide range of customization options. More importantly, it is fully-responsive, so it’s optimized to fit all screen size.

cincopa customization

Unlike with YouTube’s standard uniform player, you can choose your company colors, add your logo as a watermark, and have the closed captions, chapters and annotations (more on that in a minute) appear in your site’s font. If you want to take things further, you can add custom CSS, too.

You can also set up your video to accompany the viewer even as he scrolls up and down the page, using the floating video player option.


Engagement and lead-generation

Sure, engagement it is an overused buzzword at this point. But if someone fails to connect with your video within the first 3 seconds, you can more or less forget about him or her converting.

YouTube offers some engagement-inducing features, such as the ability to post comments on videos through integration with users’ Google+ accounts.

The ability to comment on most videos can contribute as well (not always in a positive way, though).

With Cincopa, you can boost your engagement rate by using videos tools such as annotations, closed captions, personalized calls-to-action and on-video forms.

 

These enable you to approach video creation and distribution similarly to blogs and email campaigns. Sending out useful info is nice, but your ultimate goal is for your content to facilitate further engagement.

With Cincopa, you can add a form during high leverage moments throughout a video; say, right before a cliffhanger, or after the first few seconds. Once you’ve piqued your viewer’s interest, he or her will be compelled to fill in their personal details.

Additionally, you can arrange for calls to action to appear after a video, prompting viewers towards extended interactions with you and your content.

Here’s what a video CTA looks like
If you have longer-formatted videos and you’re worried your audience may lose interest, fear not.
Using Chapters, you can break up your video in a way that will enable viewers to jump right to parts they deem interesting.

Cincopa offers lead generation forms and allows gated video content to capture more email leads. Additionally, you can access the lead generator directly from the video gallery editor and a user-friendly email form pops up at the point you want it to in your video. You can customize the form and allow viewers to skip it or gate your content by making it non-skippable.

 

Video analytics

Here’s where YouTube really falls short. Creators really can’t know how their audience consumes their videos. Heck, they really don’t know who their audience is.

With Cincopa, your business benefits from in-depth analytics that helps you understand how your video is performing, down to individual user behavior. In the Live Feed section, you have access to a list of all video viewers, including those who share their contact information with you.

Here’s a sneak peek at Cincopa’s Heatmaps 
You can see viewers’ details such as the email address, first and last name. You also have access to a video viewing summary, average engagement, location, IP address, operating system, and browser version. Compare the number and quality of video views with purchases to identify the key to successful sales.

 


Integration partners

YouTube has all the leverage in the world. It does not have any notable integrating partners. ‘Take it or leave it’ is basically their business proposition toward creators and video publishers.

With Cincopa, it’s easy to connect your account with external email marketing platforms, such as Constant Contact or MailChimp. All data submitted by video viewers in the email form is saved automatically to a specified email list.

When you want to launch an email campaign, you can do so instantaneously as all the information is ready to use. Seamless integration with your marketing automation platform, such as HubSpot, will greatly increase  your videos’ ROI.

pointing at computer

Support

The help offered on YouTube includes free help documentation and access to a rather crowded support community.

Hosting with Cincopa offers you more personalized support. For example, the technical support you receive could significantly help your business if you do not have that much video expertise. A professional and support team is available around the clock for assistance with any question, problem or request.

man looking at computer

Miscellaneous 

Cincopa allows you to securely manage all your video assets from a single platform. You can deliver videos across any platform, screen, device, and browser.

With Cincopa, you’re in the driver’s seat. For example, Cincopa has a YouTube integration button that allows you to upload all your content on Cincopa and share it directly on YouTube. In fact, you can deliver your content on any platform in the most engaging way by using video slideshows, galleries, and live streaming.

You can create playlists by uploading any number of files to a single video player and present them in a vertical or horizontal form. You have the opportunity to use a variety of video player, video portal and video gallery templates to organize your videos.

arab lady computer

Conclusion

Cincopa and YouTube are two very different platforms with very different purposes. Each platform has different advantages and relies on different business models. Hosting your videos on YouTube is free, it has a huge audience, your videos may perform well in search and you have access to some useful analytics to track ROI.
That being said, YouTube has some glaring disadvantages for business owners and enterprises. Keeping your audience engaged (and preventing them from getting lost in the tube) is really challenging. And, most glaring is the lack of tools to analyze video watching patterns, viewer identity and other crucial lead and conversion-related information.

Cincopa offers a fast, reliable, customizable solution for business owners, e-commerce and education purposes. It allows you to engage, teach and market through the use of video, images, and audio
You can leverage amazing features to engage and generate leads and analyze your results. Additionaly, you can seamlessly integrate with your other business solutions. Lastly, Cincopa offers complete privacy, superior stability, scalability and customization options without any need to know how to code.

Originally published on April 20th, 2019, updated on May 21st, 2020
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Cincopa Vs YouTube: Which is Better for Your Business?

by Simi time to read: 6 min
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