Today’s B2B marketers have an unprecedented number of video tactics available to them. Gone are the days when it was acceptable to simply put an executive in front of a white wall to explain your company’s services.
Creating good and engaging — emphasis on the good and engaging — videos have never been more accessible. Costs are down, as high-quality video production and editing become more affordable with each passing year.
However, many B2B marketers still feel overwhelmed by the options available to them.
Source: Giphy
But don’t fret, we’re here to help you learn about effective B2B video-making, and not all of it needs to include Jean-Claude Van Damme.*
*We do suggest using Jean-Claude Van Damme whenever possible though.
Why B2B Marketers Love Video
While in 2017 just 63% of B2B marketers reported using video as part of their content marketing strategy, in 2018 that number jumped up to 81%.
And it’s easy to see why. Hubspot’s State of Video Marketing Report cites video as a tool that successfully helps drive business performance.
- 97% state that video has helped increase user understanding of their product and service
- 76% say it has helped them increase sales and traffic
- 80% of B2B marketers stated that video has increased dwell time on their website
That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
According to Vidyard, 74% of B2B marketers say that video converts better than any other form of content. However, just 37% of sales teams are using videos throughout their sales process.
With the majority of sales teams leaving video on the table, B2B marketers who are already taking advantage of video marketing have a tremendous edge over their competitors.
Examples of Great B2B Video Marketing
B2B marketers understand the long sales cycles that plague B2B companies. When a lead can take as long as two years (in the case of B2B healthcare buyers) to materialize, you must create video content for each stage of the buyer journey.
Below, we explore examples of videos for each stage.
Examples of Videos that Attract Buyers (Top of Funnel)
Explainer Videos
HubSpot’s What is Artificial Intelligence (or Machine Learning)?
Explainer videos are often tied to high-volume keywords and aim to attract as much traffic as possible. However, they aren’t solely based on brand awareness — explainers engage your buyer personas by answering a particular question or pain point that your business can solve.
Whiteboard Videos
Vidyard Chalk Talks
Whiteboard videos are an extension of explainers. Vidyard, for example, nailed this type of video with its weekly Chalk Talk series. Each 5- to 7-minute episode covers either a benefit of a certain tactic — in this example, video analytics — or simply explains one of their services.
Don’t Miss using B2B Podcasts In Your Content Marketing Strategy
Examples of Videos that Convert Leads (Middle of Funnel)
Webinar or Live Videos
SAS Women in Analytics Webinars (link)
Webinars could be considered the eBooks or whitepapers of video content. They’re often a rich resource of valuable insight for those in your industry. Webinars achieve numerous objectives:
- Since they are locked behind a landing page, they attract warm leads.
- Tapping reputable guest speakers for your webinars improves your company’s reputation and visibility within a respective industry.
- Over time, your webinars turn into a library of informative visual content that can be repurposed.
How-To Videos
Method CRM’s Adding a New Case Tutorial
B2B how-to videos offer specific insight into overcoming a certain challenge with your service. With this type of video, you are showcasing what a customer would be purchasing if they chose your service, and how it can be used to solve one of their pain points.
Additionally, similar to a webinar, this type of video can be locked behind a landing page.
Content Offer Promos
Lenovo JANE
This type of B2B video is all about demonstrating a pain point.
For instance, with its durable Yoga Books, Lenovo is targeting businesses with mobile — and sometimes destructive — employees. The video above provides all of the examples of when a durable laptop, like a Yoga Book, would be incredibly useful.
These are the types of videos that you would post on a landing page or service page to provide further incentive to click through.
Product Demo Videos
This is a Generic Brand Video, by Dissolve
In B2B niches, it can be difficult for buyers to visualize exactly what your product or service does. Product demos offer a tangible look at what a buyer can expect from your service and incentivize them to convert.
For example, Dissolve cleverly showcases its stock footage capabilities above, and at the end of the video, links directly to a landing page so a potential buyer can immediately get started.
Examples of Videos that Close the Deal (Bottom of Funnel)
Testimonial Videos
Blissfully: A HubSpot Customer Success Story
At this point in the buyer’s journey, your leads just need that extra push. Testimonial videos — and case study videos — can give your sales team the extra ammo they need to close the deal.
This is another opportunity to showcase how your product or service can solve a particular pain point through legitimate examples, and that personal testimony from a client you have already helped can often make a strong case why a buyer should choose you.
Case Study Videos
“So Yeah, We Tried Slack…”
Similar to testimonials, case study videos can be that final push a buyer may need to purchase your product or service.
Slack brilliantly demonstrates its platform in the case study above, offering buyers not just visibility into the actual Slack service, but also the type of positive culture that Slack promotes.
2 Reasons Why B2B Video Marketing is Essential
B2B Video Marketing Anchors Your Content Marketing Strategy
Like any other form of content, B2B video enhances your content marketing strategy.
By creating your buyer personas, you’ll be able to identify the types of content that those buyers will most respond to. That’s the beauty of B2B video — whatever your target audience is looking for, there is a type of B2B video that you can create to engage with them.
Just remember: don’t just create video for the sake of creating video.
Humanize Your Video Content and Get Creative
Let’s revisit what we’re calling the “Jean-Claude Van Damme” component of video marketing.
In all seriousness, your B2B videos can be as creative as you’d like, and single videos can accomplish different objectives. Just look at Volvo Truck’s “The Epic Split” video.
Volvo Trucks is one of the largest B2B truck companies in the world, and they’ve nailed the brand marketing component of their content marketing strategy. The above video has raked in over 90 million views.
“In bigger marketing campaigns, the aim is often to create broad awareness, but at the same time to create leads. We have been successful in creating leads in marketing campaigns simply by linking from video-based content in social media to a dealer landing page. This gives us very good ROI.” – Agneta Malmcrona, the global content manager at Volvo Trucks to Contently.
Not every B2B business is going to have the resources for this large of a campaign, but the example is still very relevant. Creative videos like this make for great social media content — especially on LinkedIn — and can bring additional traffic to specific landing pages it links to.
Unleash your content creators and allow them to create to the best of their ability. An idea may seem unconventional, but it just may be the next viral video that takes your brand to the next level.
Video Platforms that Capture In-depth Analytics About Your Buyers
Lastly, B2B video marketing allows you to maximize the insight you have into the leads your campaigns are generating with next-level analytics.
Whether it be HubSpot, Vidyard, Wistia, or any number of video marketing platforms, you’ll be able to collect new data such as:
- How much of the video each lead watched
- How many times a video was viewed by the same lead
- Time on site
- Conversion rate
- And, all the generic stats you would receive on platforms like YouTube like the number of views, etc.
This data is extremely powerful for sales enablement, and will allow your sales teams to improve lead scoring and lead qualification, better understand prospects and customers and maximize the returns on your video content.
Read More about Creating B2B Content:
- How to do a Content Audit for SEO
- How to Optimize New & Old Blog Posts for SEO
- Steps to optimize your website
Start Creating Effective B2B Video Today
Producing high-quality B2B video is more affordable than ever before, but it still requires numerous resources to get it done the right way.
After all, you don’t want to commit to a significant video budget only to create content that proves to be ineffective and a waste of time.
To help, you’ll need a third-party partner with experienced content creators and content strategists to guide you through every step of the process.
At Jumpfactor, our full-fledged staff of content creators, SEO analysts, and digital marketing strategists are equipped to help you generate new leads with a B2B video marketing strategy. Contact us today to learn how we can help you create incredible B2B video.
