Online Video for B2B Marketing
Prior to the proliferation of the web, direct contact between a sales rep and a prospect was the most common way to research new products and services. This approach was highly inefficient and often resulted in a significant amount of wasted time for both the sales rep and the potential customer. Today, prospects and customers are inundated with information as they conduct product and service research on the Internet. Because of this flood of information, B2B communications are changing as organizations look for ways to cut through all the competing noise to reach their target audience and convey their brand story. Video is increasingly becoming a preferred medium in the B2B space because it offers a concise and appealing way to tell those stories.
Video for B2B Marketing Sales is Efficient, Effective and Economical
Integrating B2B video into your marketing is uniquely powerful as a sales tool because it can be effectively used to engage prospects at all stages of the sales cycle. During the early stages of the sales cycle, video can be utilized to generate interest in your products and services as well as establishing your brand as a thought leader in your space. Once a prospect has shown interest in your products and services, product demos videos can highlight the unique features of your product. This is also a good time to introduce video case studies as a way to demonstrate the value of your product to by leveraging customer opinion and thought, rather than marketing speak. Video is also effective as a tool to close a sale by providing more in-depth product information once you have discovered a prospect’s specific pain points.
But video can only be effective if and when a prospect sees it. Marketo, a leader in Marketing Automation, developed a valuable Top 10 ideas list examining how B2B sales and marketing teams can promote their online videos.
1. Search optimize your video with text summary
2. Replace static ads with viral pay-per-click (PPC) displays
3. Capture sales leads with longer form video
4. Bolster conversion with YouTube promotion and Call-To-Action overlays
5. Integrate video into your email marketing
6. Increase downloads of marketing collateral with a video-enabled landing page
7. Leverage social media
8. Feature videos on your website
9. It’s all about control… and a consistent brand. Introduce your brand and link to your site.
10. Create sales videos to engage and qualify buyers​
This doesn’t mean that for video to have a positive impact on your sales pipeline you have to do all of these tasks. These are just great starting points for how video can be integrated into your current sales and marketing efforts
Professional Video offers Greater Benefits
Your videos represent the heart and soul of your company. Because video is a visual medium, it is especially critical that the quality of your videos are an adequate reflection of the quality of your organization and its products and services. If your video is visually unpleasant, doesn’t have a clear and concise message and looks like it was made for a high school visual arts class, your video could easily do more harm than good.
Access to HD equipment and basic editing software are two main reasons businesses cite as key to the decision to try to develop videos on their own rather than working with a professional video production firm. At the outset of a project, this might seem like a cost-effective way to add video to your sales and marketing efforts. However, this approach is usually a fool’s errand. Most organizations that try to do it on their own eventually turn to a professional video production firm to save the project. A professional video production firm will be able to save the project but they will never be able to get back the time and money lost — which could have be better used managing and growing your business.
By Bill Johnson