Vimeo marketing: how to use the platform efficiently to promote your brand

YouTube can feel on the top of the video content world as the second large search engine behind Google with great SEO features and millions of daily viewers. Yes, some users complain about the abundance of advertising in clips. Others worry about poor privacy controls on the platform.  

Anyway, while people hit the bell to be notified about another update, businesses of all sizes and forms from different niches continue uploading videos on YouTube.   

However, there is a reasonable alternative to this platform. What does it offer for brands? Say, the higher video quality, more options for content customization, and features to replace and update clips without breaking their links.  

Ladies and gentlemen, Vimeo is coming on the stage!

What is Vimeo? 

It is a video-sharing platform that offers software as a service to create, share, and promote high-quality clips for companies and video content creators. For now, Vimeo boasts 230 million monthly active users and 1.9 million paid subscribers.  

It was launched in 2004 by a group of filmmakers, and that explains why motion designers, film artists, and animation creators are obsessed with the platform. Being advertising-free and laser-focused on video quality, Vimeo is the best place to show your creative artistry to the world. 

Brands, however, harness the platform, too. Unlike classic video ads based on hackneyed yet inspiring stories and catchy taglines, Vimeo branded clips look like nominees from shortlists of independent film festivals.  

For instance, watch this fascinating short film (it’s really hard to call it just ‘video’) sponsored by Marin Bikes, a Californian bicycle manufacturer.  

Changing Seasons feat. Mark Matthews | MTB RAW from Scott Bell Visuals on Vimeo.

Then, have a look at the comment section to understand who the local audience is. 

Yes, these guys are true video maniacs who keep their eyes on every pixel of your clip. Meanwhile, don’t rush back to more casual YouTube and TikTok bloggers. It is worth trying out Vimeo business tools.   

Is Vimeo good for marketing? 

It seems you need to hire Steven Spielberg before taking the first steps on Vimeo, but this platform is affordable even for companies with small marketing budgets. The problem could be something else.  

Vimeo like everything in the world is not flawless. Comparing the platform to YouTube, you can find some inconveniences: 

However, Vimeo beats YouTube, offering companies more advanced features for content creation and more intelligent and thoughtful viewers for their clips. Not surprisingly, many brands publish their business stories there.   

The platform has two special categories for business content: Ads and Commercials and Branded content. It means your company-related clips would look seamless there. 

Here are five main branded content types on the platform: 

1. Cinematic commercials 

If you want to build brand awareness by using professional filmmakers, Vimeo is the best place to publish your promo clips. For instance, the furniture manufacturer Floyd presents its branding story and products in this 3-minute video filled with beautiful details of Floyd’s items. The appearance of two co-founders of the company humanizes the brand. Yes, it is still a commercial but masterfully staged. 

The Floyd Ethos from RATHAUS on Vimeo.

2. Behind-the-scenes videos about the manufacturing or creation process 

The Vimeo creators manage to turn clips about making videos into individual masterpieces. As a result, watching behind-the-scenes of branded video content becomes almost more exciting than watching an original clip.   

Since creating a commercial for Converse required makeshift and sophisticated equipment, its author decided to make the second film about the filming where the brand name was mentioned again. Moreover, there is a better chance that viewers want to watch both of the clips.  

Converse - Time Web BTS from Eric Schleicher on Vimeo.

3. Company culture presentations 

On Vimeo, there are tons of clips dedicated to big and small businesses from different countries. Many of them show companies through building and enhancing their HR brand. For example, this clip for theDesk, a co-working space in Hong Kong, is all about people and the company’s corporative culture, not a business and competitive advantages. 

Welcome to theDesk from SCENE 852 on Vimeo.

Additionally, Vimeo works well for employee tutorials and customer testimonials. 

4. Event announecements 

Vimeo attracts 3D artists and motion design professionals, too. That is why you can find hundreds of stunningly beautiful animations there. Many of them are announcements of business or industry events as these titles filmed to Pause Fest 2021, the international independent, industry-driven movement of video creators.   

Pause Fest 2021 Opening Titles by TheMill from Pause Fest on Vimeo.

5. Live streaming content 

Finally, companies can use Vimeo as a live streaming platform during webinars, online classes, product launches, virtual conferences, and panels. Vimeo offers custom registration page creation, preview testing features before going live, and an interactive chat for your viewers during an event. You can simulcast your live stream on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitch, and YouTube without ads. Broadcasting in full HD is available, too.    

How to build a Vimeo marketing strategy? 

Harnessing this video platform, you need to prepare a realistic plan. Vimeo is quite specific in terms of the audience and content distribution. It is better to include it in your overall video marketing strategy.    

Set up your marketing goals 

Firstly, define tasks that Vimeo can help you tackle. Here are possible ways of using the platform for marketing:   

Check if your competitors are already on Vimeo 

Being a pioneer from your niche, you can experiment with video formats and topics on the platform. If your competition is ahead of you, pay attention to what they are doing on Vimeo and how users feel about it.  

You can track your competitors with Awario. The social listening tool scans blogs, news sites, and popular social platforms, including YouTube and Vimeo, to find the keywords or brand names you set up as alerts. Then, it measures and shows the reach and sentiment of these mentions. It also gives you a hint of whether Vimeo works well for your industry or not. 

Take a look at how to set up your first alert in Awario:  

Analyze the Vimeo viewers preferences 

Deciding on to do Vimeo marketing or not, you also need to meet the platform’s habitats. Find out what topics they love and what videos they binge most.   

Firstly, have a look at ‘Staff pick’ content in a category related to your industry (Travel, Sports, Animation, etc.). These clips are handpicked and promoted by Vimeo. Usually, the videos earn more viewership and engagement from the audience and set the trends for creators. 

Vimeo also provides you with embed stats such as the number of views, total time watched, impressions, the viewers’ location, and devices they use to consume your content.   

Unfortunately, this feature becomes helpful only after you publish something on Vimeo. Before you begin, you can use social listening again to reveal who the platform audience is.   

In Awario, you can set up your industry-related keywords as alerts and choose Vimeo as a source to browse. The tool shows you the Age, Gender, Location, and Language of people who mention your keywords on the platform. Compare this portrait to your buyer personas to define whether your customers are on Vimeo or not. 

Find allies on the platform 

Finally, you can reach out to influential Vimeo authors for collaboration with them. There are many channels with a big subscriber count on the platform where you can publish your clips. 

As a quick point, Awario can help you find popular Vimeo creators. Analyzing gigabytes of raw data, the tool generates the Influencers report where all popular bloggers, journalists, and creators who mention your brand (or your competitors) or industry-related keywords on the web are. 

Handy tips and tricks for good Vimeo marketing  

Vimeo is a niche video hub full of skilled content creators and demanding yet devoted viewers. That is why many marketing techniques that work well on YouTube or TikTok are often not applied to this platform.  

Use these approaches instead to get the most out of Vimeo: 

High-quality clips are essential for the local community. The viewers are used to watching first-rate content there and prefer channels where they can find it. For everything else, there are YouTube and TikTok.   

On top of that, the Vimeo staff constantly checks the quality of content that users upload to the platform and bans the junk and low-brow clips.       

You can start with a well-prepared video campaign there. Vimeo works best for infomercials, business presentations, and brand storytelling videos. Many major brands — from Sephora and Discord to Audi and Ralph Lauren — adopt this way.   

Ralph Lauren x FOSS from Matthew Palmer on Vimeo.

Despite the Google algorithm supporting YouTube clips first, you have a chance to have your Vimeo content indexed by its robots and top-ranked in SERP. To hit the goal, you need to optimize each piece of content you upload to the platform.   

The Vimeo pros recommend keeping the titles of your clips catchy yet descriptive. Add search queries and relevant keywords to them. It helps robots and users to find your content fast and easily.   

For instance, these video tutorials Rufai Ajala made for Vogue have concise and SEO-optimized titles. It works perfectly in combination with attractive thumbnails.    

Any video on Vimeo has a description that you can also improve with a pinch of SEO magic. Do not hesitate to add links to your social pages and website there. 

Besides, you can add a video transcription that gives Google robots more information about your clip to crawl and makes your content more accessible for viewers.     

Many users still perceive Vimeo as a professional, not entertaining video platform. It means you can’t rely on its popularity itself, as in the case of YouTube, trying to grab the attention of your customers. On the other hand, it provides you with creating and uploading top-quality clips. All you need is to build a well-designed strategy for their promotion. 

Any Vimeo clip, including live streams, can be embedded anywhere across the web. Moreover, you can publish these videos natively to Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. The latter, by the way, does not tolerate Vimeo links at all, preferring organic content.   

Also, you can publish your branded Vimeo content such as tutorials, client testimonials, or About company clips on your website built on Shopify, WordPress, Squarespace, and other popular website building platforms.  

Finally, you can convert your clip to GIFs and use them in email campaigns.   

Vimeo marketing features enable you to add some interactivity to your clips. You can customize the final screen with links to other videos, links to your website, store, or social networks. Also, adding call-to-actions is available. Thanks to integrations with Hubspot, Marketo, Keap, and other marketing software, you can collect contact information from your leads in the player.   

Final words  

You can treat Vimeo like YouTube for professionals. However, the main idea behind Vimeo is it is primarily a multitask video marketing tool, and only after that, a video hosting and creators' community. By perceiving the platform that way, you will realize its strengths and use this discovery to your brand’s advantage.