Wistia Vs YouTube

Video marketing is a great way to stand out from the crowd and engage with your audience. It is a lot better than other content marketing formats like text.

Today, brands and businesses spend so much money on video. The reason is clear; video drives much more engagement than any other content format.

When it comes to video marketing, how can we forget video hosting platforms? After all, the audience base on video hosting platforms helps a lot with marketing. If you are thinking about video marketing for your business, you might be confused about selecting the right platform.

For video marketing, most business owners tend to think of YouTube only. YouTube, no doubt, is the largest video hosting platform in the world, but that doesn’t mean you can neglect other amazing platforms.

There are so many video hosting platforms, including YouTube, Wistia, Vimeo, and Brightcove. The question is, which one’s the best? In this post, I will compare YouTube and Wistia. Let’s talk about YouTube first.

YouTube

YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world and the largest video hosting platform in the world. Over the years, YouTube has grown at such a significant rate. You will find all types of content on this platform, including music, comedy, education, and more.

A huge audience base is the main advantage of YouTube. According to statistics, YouTube has more than 2.6 billion users across the globe. Consistently publishing content on this platform can help you gain more engagement.

Let’s talk about the pros of YouTube:

Advantages of YouTube

Huge audience: First and foremost advantage of YouTube is it has a massive audience base. As we have already seen, there are over 2.6 billion YouTube users worldwide. You can reach a massive audience by leveraging YouTube for your content marketing strategy.
It is free: Another good thing about YouTube is it’s free. You can gain massive engagement and reach your videos without spending much. Not to mention, you need to have a solid YouTube marketing plan.
Excellent advertising options: First, gaining organic YouTube traffic will require your time and effort. That’s when YouTube advertising steps in. If your budget allows, you can consider spending on YouTube ads.
Analytics: YouTube also offers great analytics insights. The platform provides in-depth insights into subscribers’ behavior, demographics, and other details. As a content creator, you can use that data to plan content accordingly.

Wistia

While you may think YouTube is the largest platform and you shouldn’t use any other platform in your content marketing strategy. But, if we talk about Wistia, it is very different from YouTube. The main difference is Wistia is focused mainly on B2B businesses and companies.

The platform is used by businesses and agencies. It helps B2B businesses with marketing, support, and sales. Although YouTube is a free platform, what sets Wistia apart is it’s an ad-free video hosting platform.

The platform can help you improve your website traffic, increase conversions, and drive more engagement. With Wistia, you get many customization options as well as integration options. And, depending on the plan you select, you do get advanced analytics options.

Here are some advantages of Wistia:

Integrations: One thing that sets Wistia apart from YouTube is integration options. It offers Zoom integration, social media integration, email integration, marketing automation integration, and advertising integration
Video player experience: This platform offers an amazing video player experience. You can customize your video player, player controls and use custom video thumbnails. Plus, Wistia videos are ad-free. It can help you provide a better user experience.
Analytics: Another amazing thing about Wistia is it provides amazing analytics options. Depending on the plan you select, you get basic analytics, view stream, heatmaps, and A/B testing. By integrating it with a tool like HubSpot, you can get the best out of this tool.
Support: With Wistia, you do get value for the money you pay. The platform offers multiple support options. Depending on your selected plan, you get email support, live chat & priority support, onboard specialist, customer success manager, and single sign-on (SSO).

YouTube Vs Wistia

While YouTube is the largest video search engine in the world, it has some cons; due to this, you may want to consider other platforms like Wistia. With a massive audience base, you can surely drive organic reach to your business.

Both YouTube and Wistia are different. YouTube’s audience base is spread across the globe. Anyone from any corner of the world can share content on YouTube. Talking about Wistia, it focuses on B2B businesses and companies.

Most B2B businesses and agencies don’t prefer YouTube for hosting videos because it has ads, lacks advanced integrations (with social media, email, and marketing automation tools), and lacks video player experience.

With Wistia, you get full control over the viewing experience. For example, you can change the color of the play button as per your business brand theme. Such customization is not possible with YouTube.

Besides this, in-depth analytics is another plus point of Wistia. You can see how your audience consumes and interacts with your videos with analytics. As a result, you get an idea about which videos are doing well and which aren’t. You can formulate your content marketing plan accordingly.

If you are unsure whether Wistia is the right choice, try out its free plan. The free plan includes ten videos, basic analytics, 200 GB bandwidth (per month), and video player customization.

Now, that doesn’t mean you can neglect YouTube. The best practice for a B2B business could be to use both platforms.

For example, you can upload videos on YouTube to get the advantage of better reach and engagement. As YouTube has a massive audience base, the right video marketing strategy can help you drive organic traffic.

Plus, you can also use Wistia to embed videos on your website. As Wistia offers amazing video player customization, it can help your business stand apart. Plus, in-depth analytics provides better insights into user interaction and engagement with your videos.