What The Benchmark reveals about succeeding with brand video

We've put together the headlines of what The Benchmark reveals to help you get more from your video budget. This is the first report to analyse in detail how UK brands use video on LinkedIn and Instagram.

The Benchmark analyses the video output of 50 leading UK brands over three months. For the first edition, that's a total of 1,643 videos including 661 on Instagram and 982 on LinkedIn posted in January, February and March 2021.

Our 50 selected brands represent a broad range of UK industry from all the major economic sectors. We publish updates each month to track trends and highlight best practice.So what does the data reveal?

Your brand has fans, whatever the product

Fans don’t just follow music or sport, and they do love good video. Aston Martin Lagonda and Dr Martens have armies of followers who engage with their video on Instagram, while Rolls-Royce inspire a LinkedIn audience.

That's not just because of Instagram's and LinkedIn's demographics. Rolls-Royce and Aston Martin Lagonda rank in the top 4 for engagement on both platforms.

If you think you need a glamorous product or service to succeed with video, think again. Unilever, Reckitt and Shell excel at crafting authentic video content on topics their audiences love.

Your video doesn’t need to be short to generate engagement

Most social media guides tell you to keep your video short. We searched hard, but we found no strong evidence that short edits engage audiences more effectively. The key driver is a blend of content and budget.

Using different measures of engagement, more popular videos average around 40 seconds duration on Instagram and 1m 05s on LinkedIn. There's a wide range of durations from three seconds to almost three minutes in top-ranking videos, driven by the type of content. Audiences are perfectly happy to watch long form content if it holds their attention.

UK brands posted 49% more video on LinkedIn than Instagram

Three in 10 posts on LinkedIn were video, one in five on Instagram. Why?

This could be because images on Instagram get three times more likes per post than video, while video gets 26% more reactions than images on LinkedIn. Or because Instagram is seen as an image-first platform. Or perhaps brands have not fully appreciated the opportunity video offers on Instagram. We think there's plenty of opportunity on both platforms.

Many more insights can be found in the full report, along with a full list of brands and an outline of our methodology.

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What does good look like?

If your brand doesn't average over 300 reactions on LinkedIn or over 1,800 likes on Instagram per video, your strategy might benefit from a review. The figures will vary according to your business sector, budget and other factors. But they are a useful benchmark to keep in mind.

You have questions

How did we get these figures? Which brands did we analyse? How did other brands perform? What does it mean for your brand, or your competitors?

It's easy to benchmark your brand's video performance - Moving Image can do it for free.All you need to do is tell us which three competitor brands you want to compare against. We will report back on how your brand measures up to them and to your industry sector. We will offer recommendations on how to drive up your video engagement.

GET YOUR BRAND'S FREE VIDEO BENCHMARK

The insights will help you shape your video content and strategy, and get more from your video budget.