Video marketing is one of the top digital marketing trends of 2020. Videos are the best to engage people and offer a huge return on investment for digital marketers.

When you think of videos and digital marketing, the first name that pops up is YouTube! Do you know how many users YouTube has? It has 2 billion users worldwide! Statistics also show that 79% of internet users have their own YouTube account. Without a doubt, YouTube is the largest video sharing platform that digital marketers use in 2020.

If YouTube is so great, why are we even thinking about other platforms for video content marketing? I know you are asking this question right now. I can think of multiple reasons why you should consider alternate video sharing platforms other than YouTube.

Why should you consider other video sharing platforms?

YouTube is the most popular video-sharing platform, but it has many limitations. I will give you five reasons why you should think about alternate platforms other than YouTube.

Content Restriction: We all know about YouTube’s stringent content policy. While to a certain extent, it protects the viewers and creators alike. However, the tight copyright rules sometimes may result in the suspension of the account, disabling of ads that will hugely impact the digital marketers.

DCMA Takedown: YouTube is very strict about copyright claims. That’s not a bad thing. However, YouTube deals the copyright issues with an iron fist. If your account is accused of copyright infringement multiple times, YouTube might delete your account and remove your content altogether.

Advertisements: Even though it helps you make money, YouTube advertisement can get a bit annoying for your users. Sometimes, ads of your competitor or ads of a notorious brand might appear on your video.

The competition: With it’s 2 billion users, YouTube has a huge viewership, but so is the competition. It’s tough to get some attention for your video on YouTube.

 The infamous comment section: Anyone can comment on public videos on YouTube. The comment section in YouTube videos might turn ugly with inappropriate content that might affect your brand. Often viral videos are hijacked by spam or ads. While it’s possible to moderate and remove comments, it may not be practical when you have hundreds of comments.

Video-Sharing Platforms That You Can Use Instead of YouTube

As a digital marketer, you can use several websites as a replacement for YouTube. Here is a list of YouTube-alternatives for video content marketing.

1. Vimeo
2. Dailymotion
3. Metacafe
4. TikTok
5. Veoh
6. Flickr
7. Photobucket
8.  Instagram TV (IGTV)
9. Facebook

Vimeo – A Classy Alternative for YouTube

Vimeo is a video sharing platform widely used by artists, musicians, and filmmakers. Compared to YouTube, Vimeo users are more like a gated community. Vimeo has an excellent interface and known as a “classier” alternative for YouTube.

For a digital marketer, here are the pros and cons of using Vimeo.

Pros of Vimeo

• Vimeo has 170 million monthly views.  
• Vimeo has a clutter-free interface that concentrates most on the video rather than the things around it.
• Vimeo is great to tap into specific customer personas like artists and creative people.
• Vimeo allows creators to upload high-quality videos even 4K Ultra HD
• The paid plan of Vimeo includes 1TB video storage and a wide range of tools for content creators.

Cons of Vimeo

• Vimeo doesn’t support ads if you are looking for monetization.
• Business subscription is costly but comes with a wide range of benefits
• Vimeo is limited for certain sectors of target audience – artists and high-quality content seekers.

Dailymotion – A Flexible YouTube Alternative

Dailymotion is a popular website that is quite like YouTube. The primary difference between YouTube and Dailymotion is in the video length. The maximum length is 60 minutes in Dailymotion. It doesn’t have stringent rules like YouTube, and chances of accounting getting removed or suspended are very less.

Pros of Dailymotion

• High content flexibility. Copyright is respected, but an infringement of copyright doesn’t lead to suspension or content removal.
• Dailymotion has more than 300 million users. You can reach a new target audience.
• Monetization through ads is possible on Dailymotion.

Cons of Dailymotion

• 60-minute video limit, and additional constraints like 10 videos per day or a maximum of 2hrs of video per day.
• Lesser reach compared to YouTube videos
• Analytics of video performance is limited compared to YouTube

Metacafe – A YouTube alternative for short videos

If you have short videos under the 90s, Metacafe is a great place to feature them. It’s a tough competitor of YouTube, with 40 million unique visitors every month. Metacafe concentrates on entertainment and music videos. However, in recent years, Metacafe is used by marketers for product reviews. Here are the pros and cons of Metacafe.

Pros of Metacafe

• Metacafe is an older platform that YouTube has a massive volume of videos.
• Metacafe is a great platform if your target audience is keen on entertainment. 
• Metacafe membership is free, and you can monetize your channel via ads.
• Metacafe promotes videos that have high quality, and there is a huge reviewer network for Metacafe.

Cons of Metacafe

• 90 seconds video limit is a massive deal-breaker for digital marketers,
• Metacafe is mostly focused on entertainment, may not be suitable for the technical or scientific content.
• The quality of the videos is not as great as YouTube.

TikTok – The Common-man’s Alternative for YouTube

In 2020, TikTok is taking the internet by storm. TikTok started as a fun app, but soon gained popularity among crowds. Today, TikTok is a strong competitor for YouTube and other video sharing apps. TikTok allows users to create 15 or 60-second videos and is completely free.

Pros of TikTok

• TikTok might be the most popular video-sharing app in 2020, with more than 800 million users worldwide.
• While TikTok doesn’t directly allow the monetization of content, it’s a great place to find sponsors or affiliate marketing.
• TikTok videos are of low production cost, and you don’t have to look for perfection like YouTube.

Cons of TikTok

• Video length is limited to either 15 or 60 seconds.
• Affiliate marketing on TikTok is quite expensive.
• TikTok is primarily used by the younger generation of 16-24 years.
• You need to be very creative to send your message to your target audience in less than 60 seconds.

Veoh – The Long Video Alternative for YouTube

If you have long video content like reviews, tutorials, how-to guides, Veoh is a perfect place to host them. Veoh is not precisely a video sharing website. It’s an internet television website that has some similarities with Netflix and Amazon Prime. Veoh is suitable for digital marketers and content creators who target the television audience.

Pros of Veoh

• Veoh allows long content and full-length films. There is no restriction on the file size.
• Veoh allows content creators to monetize their content through revenue sharing or charging fees for their videos.
• If your target audience is interested in movies/series, then Veoh will be a good fit.

Cons of Veoh

• Veoh receives traffic from a highly specific area of the audience. Hence you need to use the platform specifically for this audience.
• Veoh interface and website aren’t as sophisticated as Vimeo or YouTube.
• Veoh has a long uploading time. You need to be patient while uploading.
• No monetization through ads.

Video-Sharing through Social Media

We have discussed the exclusive video sharing websites that can act as an alternative to YouTube in 2020. When you think of YouTube alternatives, don’t forget the video-sharing capabilities of popular social media. Facebook has an excellent video sharing capability, so does Instagram. Instagram TV (IGTV) is popular among the common folks and celebrities alike. Also, image sharing apps like Flickr and Photobucket have video sharing features.

Digital marketing trends are evolving every single day. In 2020, with COVID-19 pandemic, people are spending more time online. It’s the right time to experiment with some new trends in digital marketing. These new trends will help you reach a huge target audience.

In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made its way into the digital marketing realm. The use of AI continues to be a top digital marketing trend, even in 2020. If you haven’t already experimented with this cutting edge technology in marketing, it’s high time to start. Every business around the globe is tapping into the massive potential of Artificial Intelligence for marketing.

Here are four top digital marketing areas in which Artificial Intelligence can be used.

• Chatbots and conversational marketing
• AI-powered personalization of marketing content
• Content creation and curation using artificial intelligence
• Computer Vision

We will briefly touch upon each of them. At the end of the article, you will have a good idea about the top digital marketing trends of 2020 that use Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence in conversational marketing – Chatbots

Digital marketing is no longer an impersonal exercise of creating content and pushing ads online. Customers in 2020 value marketing that they can personally connect. Conversational marketing is a big part of Digital Marketing. Almost every website and social media have chat boxes to interact with prospective customers. However, it may not be economical to assign humans to handle hundreds of conversations online.

Artificial Intelligence provides a perfect solution – chatbots. Chatbots are in trend for some years now, but in 2020, digital marketing uses highly advanced chatbots.

The natural language processing technique of AI is effectively used to make chatbots sound just like humans. There are multiple benefits in using chatbots to interact with your prospective customers.

• Highly intelligent chatbots closely resemble human conversations
• With chatbots, you will be available for prospective customers 24*7
• Instant response to customer queries
• Connect to potential customers on a personal level
• Relieve customers from filling tedious surveys or forms

Studies indicate that customers like chatbots as they are prompt and accurate to reply, patient, and are highly personalized. While it’s a great idea to use chatbots in digital marketing, you should be careful about the conversation sequence and tone of chatbots. If used smartly, chatbots can be a great gift of Artificial Intelligence to Digital marketing.

Artificial Intelligence for personalized digital marketing in 2020

With the clutter in digital marketing content, customers no longer respond to generic advertisements or marketing campaigns. If you haven’t embraced personalized marketing, 2020 is the right year for it.

People spend a lot of time online, and they create a lot of content – in the form of social media posts, comments, and reactions. Artificial Intelligence provides the ability to analyze these customer data to create personalized ads. The following are some examples of personalized digital marketing using AI.

Personalized Ads – AI algorithms help to analyze data related to location, education, hobbies, career, and personal interests of your prospective customers. Based on this data, digital marketing campaigns can be customized to suit each target audience.

Personalized Emails – Instead of a generic marketing email, customers respond better to emails that speak to them on an individual level. If you have a great email audience, then AI will help you process the data of each of your customers to add personalization elements to their email. This data includes time preferences, interests, hobbies, jobs, and social circles. Superdry, a UK based clothing company, used AI to personalize their email marketing. They made a massive ROI with this technique.

Personalized Website experience – In 2020, the businesses are moving away from cheap, run-of-the-mill websites. Instead, with the use of AI, you can provide a highly personalized home page for your customers. On their returning visit, this customized home page will help your customers to connect better with the business.

Content creation and curation powered by Artificial Intelligence

In 2016, the Washington Post used an AI-powered software named Heliograf to write articles about the Rio Olympic Games since then. This AI-powered software has written hundreds of articles for Washington Post.

The natural language generation capability of Artificial Intelligence is a big boon for digital marketers who wants to create automated content in 2020. The content bots can help you create auto-blogs, ad content, and in-depth articles that are optimized for search engines.  However, the content created using AI solutions might need to be verified and edited by humans.

Content Curation: This is another area where Artificial Intelligence can help digital marketing. AI-powered tools can search the web for content that is relevant to your business, share the same content. Content curation using AI also includes scheduling of content and releasing the content automatically through multiple social media.

Computer Vision – An AI solution for digital marketing

Computer Vision is a term related to Artificial Intelligence, where computers can derive knowledge from the digital images and videos that it process. With CV, computers not only display the images or play the video, but they can also understand what they are displaying and derive information from it.

That sounds really cool, right?

So, now let’s see how the AI-Powered computer vision helps digital marketing.

Brand identification for understanding competition – One of the major challenges for digital marketers to study the competition for a business they represent. With the help of Computer Vision, digital marketers can now scan millions of images to recognize brand logos and other indicators. This will help digital marketers to identify which brands dominate what platforms, helping the competitive analysis. Gumgum is a company that specializes in brand recognition through computer vision.

Gathering customer reactions – With computer vision, digital marketers can now analyze images that customers post as part of their review or social media post. Just like we analyze the written content by the customers to measure their satisfaction, now digital marketers can use computer vision to measure customer’s reactions.

If you haven’t embraced Artificial Intelligence for your digital marketing, 2020 is the year for it. As there is a huge online audience, your digital marketing strategy using AI will give you a high return on investment.

Have you tried Artificial Intelligence-powered marketing techniques? We are excited to know how it worked for you!