By Catherine Heath (Freelance Technical Writer and Marketing Advocate)
Catherine is a freelance writer based in Manchester. Blogs. Copy. Documentation. She believes in ditching the jargon – just give her plain writing.
In collaboration with Syed Abdul Qadir Gilani (a Python developer and data scientist),
Find Syed on LinkedIn.
As marketers, we know videos are a great way to grab attention and share our message. Videos are a powerful marketing tool. They’re visual, engaging, and can be reused often indefinitely.
Some of the benefits of video marketing are:
- Earn more backlinks.
- Boost company revenue
- Convert more customers
- Improve email open rates
According to Hubspot, in 2023, 93% of businesses were using video as a marketing tool.
But we need somewhere to keep your videos. You can’t just host them in the ether.
But with many options for video hosting, it’s hard to choose the right one. Let’s compare Vimeo and YouTube to help us decide, and compare their main benefits and drawbacks to help us understand the top contender.
First, we’ll take a look at Vimeo.
Vimeo
Vimeo is a great choice for businesses and marketers. Here’s what it offers:
1: Great video quality
2: Track your video’s performance.
3: Easy branding
4: Works well with marketing tools
5: Dedicated Support
Advantages:
1. High-quality video
2. Advanced features
3. User-friendly interface
4. Priority support
Disadvantages
1. Limited free storage
2. Can be expensive for large-scale businesses
Vimeo is great for collaboration and uploading video files needed for marketing. Vimeo makes this easy and sending video files to colleagues or clients is a streamlined workflow. Create projects with Vimeo and allow clients and freelancers to work together on shared files.
Next, YouTube is the one we’re going to look at for marketing businesses.
YouTube
YouTube is the largest video-sharing platform in the world, with over 2 billion monthly active users. Here are some of its key features:
1. Huge audience
2. Make money with AdSense
3. Advanced Analytics
4. Free storage and bandwidth
Advantages:
1. Massive audience reach
2. Monetisation options
3. Advanced Analytics integration
4. Free unlimited storage and bandwidth
Disadvantages:
1. Ads can be distracting.
2. Limited customisation options
3. Strict community guidelines
YouTube is a great platform for sharing and hosting large numbers of videos needed for video marketing. Security is a top concern and many users are accessing YouTube anyway so you have a large audience for your marketing.
Comparison table
| Feature | Vimeo | YouTube |
|---|---|---|
| Video Quality | 4K | 4K |
| Analytics | Advanced | Advanced |
| Storage | Limited | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Limited | Unlimited |
Conclusion
In 2023, over three billion people watched videos, downloaded or streamed videos.
Ultimately, there isn’t a huge difference between Vimeo and YouTube except that the YouTube interface is more well-known as a product of Google. Make money with YouTube whereas Vimeo is more of a straightforward hosting site.
There is more you can do with Google YouTube in terms of analytics and ads. Consider the use case for your platform when deciding between them.
