Business to Business marketing is rapidly evolving as many of the marketing strategies pioneered in the B2C space have been tweaked for B2B purposes and social media, LinkedIn, digital ads and content marketing are now critically important to overall sales goals and revenue growth.
As marketers have become savvier, B2B firms have expanded their traditional marketing channels to include a number of channels where video content represents a vast increase in retention and over ROI vs static content.
Let’s take a look at some of the most important uses of video content in B2B marketing.
Brand Promos
Do you want to wow your clients and industry peers? Then a brand promo to show off what you offer and why you matter is one of the most basic types of B2B content nearly ever firm should create.
A video promo or brand overview video should be posted in a variety of places, including your website, youtube channel, social media channels, linkedin, instagram, email marketing campaigns etc. This will be the most central video your B2B marketing plan will build from.
Product and Service Explainers
You need to clearly explain your products and services, one of the most engaging and effective ways to do so, is through a explainer video showing exactly why anyone should care about your specific product or software system. This is another very central type of video content any B2B firm should have. New companies or incumbents launching new products absolutely need to invest in B2B explainer video content, as it will be the cornerstone for marketing involving your new offering.
Case Studies
One of the most tried and true methods to overcoming objections or price concerns is to show how you solved a similar problem with a prior client. Case studies are a very important aspect of B2B marketing, with many B2B firms having entire sections of the website devoted to case studies. With so many companies creating more case study content, how do you make sure your case studies are even read?
Video is one of the easiest answers. B2B case study videos are an incredibly effective way to highlight your best examples and prior work. Your clients will stay more engaged watching a 2-5 minute video showing a mix of before and after images, interviews, motion graphics data, and other metrics than they will be sent a pdf that’s 5,000 words. No one wants to read that….
Don’t waste the leads you’re marketing and sales team have worked so hard to get, you will convert more targets by building a number of video case studies and using that as the primary method of overcoming objections than spending more time on zoom, making more info graphics etc.
Internal Communications
Getting your team rowing in one direction and keeping their morale high is an often overlooked component of B2B marketing. Often it comes down to how much your team believes in your own brand, which keeps them motivated, and engaged when talking with customers and representing your brand.
Tired of boring all hands meetings that last too long? Instead try making a 2-4 minute internal communications video highlighting company values, goals or major company events. Your employees will be glad you did and your brand will be raised as a result.
Email Marketing and Digital Ad Video Production
How many email advertisements do you get daily? The answer is probably a lot, but how many do you actually pay attention to? Likely a much much smaller number. Making sure your email marketing and digital ads are crafted in a way that generates real results is key to the profitability of any digital or email marketing campaign. In a post-covid-19 world where tradeshows and in-person visits are much reduced, email has become even more important to the sales growth.
Make sure your email campaigns and digital ads are as effective as they can be by using video content vs static text and images. Video increases CTR by anywhere from 50%-300% depending on the study, which is a massive boost in conversions and lead generation. Video content is quickly being viewed as a shortcut to more successful email marketing, as you can tailor the video in the email to the target’s needs, thus personalizing the communication even more.
Often videos will be shared between team members of the target company as well, which is much less common with static ads.
B2B Social Media Video Production
Social media marketing is important for B2B marketing contrary to what some might think. Social media marketing builds your brand as a thought leader in a niche and through the powerful targeting of the various social media platforms, you can put ads in front of the decision-makers who matter. With nearly every B2B firm now using some type of social media marketing, what type of content do you think will drive the most engagement- a picture and text or a video? Clearly, video content will massively increase the ROI of any social media campaign, as video content drives engagement, promote shares, and keeps viewers’ eyes on your content, not rivals.
Not implementing a throughout B2B social media strategy will mean you lose out on leads/sales and hand them to rivals. Linkedin has risen to be a major source of leads for many B2B firms, and video content will 100% improve your sales team’s performance.
Tradeshows and Expos
Tradeshows and Expos will start to open back up likely in late 2021 or early 2022, and now is the time to start preliminary planning for how you will outdo your competitors at your next trade show. Booth design and video content are both key to have a successful tradeshow experience. Plan to have multiple large tv displays with multiple types of engaging content, even better would be to have numerous case studies and product/service explainers on other screens or ready for when visitors want to learn more.
Incorporating VR/360 B2B tradeshow marketing content is another way to really outcompete your rivals, without fail VR /360 will generate more booth visitors and more engagement from visitors than any other type of content, which why so many firms across many industries are investing in B2B VR/360 content for tradeshow use.
For any of these B2B videos, making the videos is only the first step, we’ve seen firms that spend the time and money to create the content, but then never take full advantage of what they’ve created. Your marketing team should put together a media plan clearly planning the ways in which each new piece of content will be used, including each marketing channel, the date at which it will be released, and how you will follow up the release of the new content. B2B firms that effectively followup and plan out their video marketing strategy and content plan will absolutely be more effective and grow easier than firms that don’t.
Don’t forget that quality matters, as more brands both B2C and B2B create more and more content across many channels, the bar is continually raised as to the type of content that will retain viewership. Some companies go for a quantity over quality approach and end up with tons of terrible looking videos which no one watch. This is probably worse than not creating videos, as extremely low-quality videos will have a negative impact on your brand and worsen your online presence. Even companies with a modest budget, seek to create a few pieces of mid-high quality content that can be used in a variety of ways over the course of several years. If you create a couple of pieces of high-quality long lasting content each year, within several years, you’ll have a decent library of B2B marketing content for a number of use cases.
Volan Media is a top Knoxville B2B video production company, having worked with dozens of small and large brands to help them craft B2B content marketing strategies and build content that is engaging and generates results. Let’s talk about how we can energize your brand and sales growth with fresh video content. Get in Touch
