Advanced B2B Video Marketing
Video marketing ROCKS! Aberdeen Group reports that video marketers generate 66% more qualified leads than those who don’t use video. Video is one of the most engaging and potentially captivating forms of B2B marketing.
With this in mind, here are a number of B2B video marketing strategies and ideas for you to effectively attract and engage your target audience.
Evoke an Emotional Response through Video
The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio conducted studies of people with damage to the part of the brain that triggers emotions. These individuals couldn’t feel emotions.
What Damasio uncovered is that these individuals found it extremely difficult to make any decisions, including purchase decisions. In other words, without emotions, they couldn’t make the decision to purchase a product or service.
What this means for brands is that if your marketing is not evoking an emotional response from your target audience, you are essentially making it extremely difficult for them to make a purchase or engage with you. (It also means you’re probably wasting your marketing budget.) Be sure that you’re not creating videos that are boring – evoke an emotional reaction and get better results.
In the research report “From Promotion to Emotion: Connecting B2B Customers to Brands” by CEB and Google, purchase intent is found to dip during the purchase funnel when messaging becomes less emotional. The research found that B2B brands achieve roughly twice the impact with a target audience when appealing to the personal value to the buyer including emotional benefits.
Whether funny or sad or uplifting, evoking an emotional response in your videos can transform your video marketing into something more powerful than you ever imagined.
Use Video to Personalize ABM
Creating customized or personalized videos as part of an account based marketing campaign is highly effective in generating leads and securing new customers.
For example, let’s say that you sell IP detection software for businesses. You could create a personalized video for a prospect, walking them through an initial analysis you’ve done on the company’s actual website traffic, with tips for how to respond to different types of site visitors based on the behavior displayed.
Shooting videos that are specifically directed at a company or person is a powerful way to grab their attention and get them to engage with you. It’s also an effective way to differentiate yourself and your brand from competitors.
Clarify What You Stand For
Another type of video that’s effective for B2B is to showcase your mission, vision or manifesto, as Accenture Digital does in the example above and Deloitte Cloud does in the example below.
Increase LinkedIn Engagement via Video Marketing
Eighty-four percent (84%) of marketers who have created videos for LinkedIn have found the channel to be a highly effective strategy for generating results. This presents a unique opportunity for B2B marketers.
Sharing videos is one of the most effective ways to cut through all the noise on LinkedIn. For our clients here at Stratabeat, we notice 3X – 5X engagement on most social posts featuring video.
Feature Customers
Featuring customers is an excellent way to make use of video marketing, providing strong social proof to prospective customers. Salesforce has turned the customer profile into a captivating and inspiring journey and acts as a great model to follow.
Tell a Story
Speaking of featuring customers, Slack shows us that turning the feature into a story (and one that evokes an emotional response) can translate into 1.1 million views.
Interview Interesting Leaders and Trailblazers
Interviews can be filled with insight and inspiration. HubSpot’s feature of Joe De Sena, CEO and Founder of Spartan, in the first episode of the “BRILLIANT” video series is an exceptional example of an interview that goes the extra mile. It’s a BRILLIANT demonstration of B2B video marketing done right.
Solve Problems with How-To Videos
Moz is the master of B2B how-to videos, with its Whiteboard Friday series. Always educational, Moz does an exemplary job of making the information interesting and accessible.
Increase Your Event Marketing ROI
If you’re already investing in events, then use video to strengthen your event marketing ROI. For example, you can promote an upcoming event that you or someone from your company will be speaking at. You can also interview people or simply provide your perspectives at an industry conference.
Does your company do webinars? Then by all means capitalize on the recordings in making them available to your target audience for as long as the content remains applicable.
Be Intentional
Whatever form of B2B video marketing you decide on, make sure you understand what you’re aiming to achieve with the videos. Are you looking to:
- Expand awareness?
- Strengthen differentiation?
- Drive engagement?
- Increase leads?
- Retain customers?
- Other?
Think about the personas you’re targeting, and marry the right video with the right point in the customer journey for each persona. Be sure you know the specific actions you want them to take upon watching each video.
Configure a dashboard with both video engagement metrics as well as any related conversion data so that you can measure progress and success, and so you can adjust and optimize your video marketing over time.
B2B video marketing is powerful, and it works. Go Hollywood, and make something epic.
Want some help? Hire a B2B marketing agency like Stratabeat. Give us a shout!
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