The era of B2B video has begun.
The vast majority of B2B marketers have turned to video, and LinkedIn has become the go-to social media platform to promote it.
In fact, LinkedIn is only second to email as a favorable channel for sharing B2B content at 84% saying so. Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook are a distant third and fourth at 64% and 37%, respectively.
Below we explore why B2B marketers are choosing LinkedIn, and provide best practices for the social media platform that you can begin using immediately.
Let’s get started.
Why LinkedIn Video Marketing?
When LinkedIn announced its pivot to video, it released a survey that found that almost half of B2B marketers said finding a quality environment to engage with decision makers was a considerable challenge when running video campaigns on other social media platforms.
That leads us to the main reason why you must use LinkedIn to maximize the efficiency of your B2B video marketing campaigns.
Decision Makers are on LinkedIn
Ultimately, you can publish B2B video that receives thousands and thousands of views, but if you aren’t putting those videos in front of potential buyers, yo’are just publishing into the void.
According to HubSpot, LinkedIn is 277% more effective at lead generation than any other social media platform. Additionally, 80% of B2B leads generated on social media come from this platform.
In general, almost half of all social media traffic going into B2B company websites is from LinkedIn.
LinkedIn gives you direct access to the decision makers you are targeting, and they are using this platform to view content before making purchasing decisions. The platform reports that the average decision maker is reading 10 pieces of content before finalizing a purchase decision.
Equip Yourself to Create an Effective B2B Video Marketing Strategy
The Age of the LinkedIn Influencer
If you work in B2B marketing, the term influencer may be a bit of a tainted term. After all, in B2C marketing, influencers on social platforms like YouTube and Instagram have begun dominating the space.
Well, the same is beginning to happen on LinkedIn for the B2B space.
Just look at your LinkedIn feed and chances are you will see a video — most likely a vlog of some sort at a trade show. On the surface, it looks like any random video on a social platform, but if you dig deeper you’ll see that it has thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of views.
Influencers on LinkedIn range from CEOs and other C-suite executives to entrepreneurs and journalists. And they’re becoming so popular, since 2015, LinkedIn has been releasing its ‘Top Voices’ lists that identify the biggest influencers on the platform.
Nicholas Thompson’s video above is one example. As the Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine, he posts daily on LinkedIn with a video series where he discusses the most interesting tech story of the day.
The rise of influencers gives B2B marketers a new opportunity: to advertise not just the company brand, but the personalities in that business as well.
3 Best Practices for Posting LinkedIn Video
Still, in 2018, of the 81% of B2B marketers using video as a strategy, only 55% plan to share video content on the social media platform.
The field is wide open to leverage B2B video on LinkedIn, but before you get started, here are three best practices you need to be aware of.
1. Become Familiar with LinkedIn Video Metrics
Whether it be a video ad or post, you can see a whole host of metrics when publishing natively on LinkedIn. Here are the metrics that you must familiarize yourself with before you get started:
- Brand awareness metrics: impressions, views, and view rates
- Brand consideration metrics: view rates, completion rates by quartile, clicks, and full-screen plays
- Demand generation metrics: conversion rates, leads, and cost per conversion
2. Post Natively to LinkedIn
When publishing content on your company page — or as a user — it is beneficial to re-upload that video natively on LinkedIn, rather than just posting the YouTube or Vimeo link.
This may not seem like a big deal, but native videos often have a 10 times higher reach compared to posting a YouTube link.
3. Optimize for Mobile Video
Of the 9 billion reported content impressions on LinkedIn every week, 57% percent are on a mobile device.
That means you should be thinking like a silent film director, especially considering that a large portion of LinkedIn members will watch your video content with the sound off.
Subtitles, graphics, and any sort of text are a great way to quickly engage potential buyers while they are scrolling through the app on their phone.
Read More About Creating B2B Content:
- Inside an Effective B2B Video Marketing Strategy
- Don’t Sleep on Podcasts in Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy
- The 3 Benefits of a Hybrid B2B Audio Content Marketing Strategy
At Jumpfactor, our expert staff of content creators, SEO analysts, and digital marketing strategists are equipped to help you generate new leads on a variety of platforms. Contact us today to learn how we can help you get started with creating great content.
