B2B Video Marketing - The Future of Digital Marketing with Motion
Today, video marketing has increased in demand in 2021. Simultaneously, it has proved how beneficial it can be in the B2B sphere. As per the statistics, 70% of marketers in 2021 admit that videos showed a positive ROI.
B2B video marketing is an element of content marketing that comprises planning, developing and sharing your content in video format with your B2B clients. These video formats can consist of social media videos, video podcasts, live streams and more.
As per the survey mentioned above, in promoting high-value content for businesses, 24% of B2B marketers preferred training videos, 24% picked promo videos, 14% went with demo videos, 14% chose live streams, 12% selected customised videos, 10% went for how-to videos, and 2% chose client onboarding videos.
In this blog, we dive deep into the upsurge of B2B video marketing, why it’s a key marketing strategy, and how to establish a comprehensive B2B video marketing campaign that converts.
B2B video marketing is a fundamental element of a fruitful B2B content marketing strategy. B2B marketing videos utilise audio and visual elements to directly market a product or service to an enterprise, distributor, retailer, or manufacturer. Unlike business-to-consumer (B2C) video marketing, which usually concentrates on emotion-driven purchase decisions, B2B video marketing emphasises a high degree of particularity that drills down into the perks and financial facets of a product or service.
If you need to create a high-performing B2B video marketing campaign, there are a few steps you’ll need to look at:
Emphasis on Insights About Core Competencies and What You Offer
By now, you possibly have a distinct target audience. You are proficient in their pain points, content preferences, and the approach of messaging that resonates best. You are also well apprehensive that most B2B clients consist of multiple players, not just one person. To receive a buy-in from a whole group of stakeholders, you’ll need to exhibit solid use cases and perks that each individual can find.
To get group-wide buy-in, it’s crucial to figure out what you offer to clients properly. It’s not enough to simply know the categories of products or services you offer. Instead, you need to totally recognise the pain points these products or services solve and how they associate with your target audience. Only once you recognise what you offer and your core competencies can you start to develop content that converts.
Understanding what you offer and your core competencies can be crucial as you plan your video strategy, make the videos themselves, include calls-to-action (CTAs), and delineate your campaign goals.
Set Your Campaign Goals
To develop a video marketing campaign that converts, you must set up tangible goals. Without targets, how will you assess success? Impressive B2B video marketing campaigns should outline an evident goal, which will basically influence the content and characteristics of the finished videos and the overall B2B marketing strategy.
To set attainable campaign goals, consider what you’re seeking to accomplish:
- Enhance audience retention rate
- Boost engagement on social platforms
- Lead generation and building overall conversions
- Reach consumers at distinct points in the B2B sales cycle
- Inform clients how to use a particular product or service
- Encourage organic and paid media marketing efforts
With your goals in mind, you can then determine who you are targeting on each video.
Establish Your Target Audience
Even with a strong insight into your target audience, it is indispensable to establish the kind of B2B client you are targeting and at which phase of the sales funnel. Have they heard of your business before or been on your site? Have they experienced one of your services but not another? You must know the principles of sales funnels and build campaigns around where people are within them.
Each sales funnel initiates with awareness and discovery. You cannot make a video pitching a very complicated service you offer without first telling people about your company and what you mostly do. So, if you are targeting those at the top of the sales funnel, think about creating a brand video to enlighten target buyers with your business. Tutorial videos can also benefit the introduction of your product or services to customers at the top of the funnel.
On the other hand, B2B clients in the assessment or deciding phase of the sales funnel are already aware of your company or services. Yet, they need a bit of encouragement to seal the deal. In this situation, a case study video or testimonial video can perform as an invaluable asset to explain your product or service’s real-life benefits.
Publish and Promote Your Videos
Once your videos have been made, it becomes time to publish and advertise your content. It’s crucial to follow through with your efforts at this stage — especially when it comes to social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Without promotion, your video can get lost in the organic shuffle. Consider your YouTube strategy as well.
How to maximise your content? It’s all about working smarter, not harder. You can repurpose and cross-promote your video organically via social media shares, email marketing, or placing on blog posts and website content. You can reuse your video content on digital platforms like Instagram or LinkedIn, or you can put a YouTube link to your video on Twitter. You can also use your video content as paid promotions. Particularly for video ads running on YouTube or other platforms, the volume of people who comment, like, or share your video will then influence your overall success.
For instance, social platforms and their algorithms like Instagram extend preference to posts shared in DM (direct messages) or saved to a user’s archive. The more people save your posts, the more your reach increases. Posts that get comments and likes, or cause users to click that follow button under your name, will also expand your overall reach.
B2B video marketing campaigns can be extremely successful in transforming leads to clients. Yet, B2B video marketing should always be one part of a comprehensive strategy. As the factors that lead to a purchasing decision for B2B clients, videos are considered as the cherry on top that adds clarity, awareness, and reassurance.
You should consider B2B video marketing as a supporting element to your current content marketing plan, from SEO to social platforms. A website that extends diverse content is recognised to be high quality by Google’s algorithms, indicating quality images, text, and video can help enhance your search rankings.
