NEWB2B Video Marketing: Top tips to supercharge your content strategy
When preparing the serious launch of a new business, product or market, companies require multiple tools in their toolkit. Video is a powerful tool that's often underestimated and overlooked. Recently, there has been a growing buyer appetite for online videos. In fact, the number of consumers watching online videos has almost doubled since 2018 (HubSpot, 2022). With B2B buyers watching online videos to influence their purchasing decisions more than ever, a clear and thoughtful content strategy is critical. In this blog, we’ll investigate how video can be an important part of a B2B marketing strategy at each stage of the buyer’s journey, and how it can help convert strangers into loyal customers.
Studies show that video marketing generates 66% more qualified leads. As well as this, 88% of video marketers find a positive return on investment (ROI) from using video.
These statistics show that video has become an essential means of communicating with your B2B prospects. Integrating video into your marketing strategy might feel overwhelming and you might be asking – where do I start? We recommend you start with one video for each stage of the buyer’s journey: Awareness, Consideration and Decision. The goal is to provide the right message to the right person at the right time.
In this blog, we will show you how to use different video content for each stage of the buyer's journey.
Awareness – Top of the funnel (TOF): Educate
At the awareness stage, your persona is experiencing a problem or looking for an opportunity and are currently unaware of you and your solution. The goal is to build brand awareness with your target market and for this reason your content should include accessible videos that focus on educating the buyer on a specific challenge or goal they have, and encourage engagement. It is important not to push your products or services at this stage.
Why are educational videos effective for B2B marketing?
- Create brand awareness
- Drive more traffic to your website
- Increase conversion rates
- SEO: Search engines favour videos
Some examples of educational videos include inspirational and thought leadership videos and entertaining short clips. Why not get started and create your own educational video….here are some tips!
1. Be laser focused on your ideal customer persona
Creating videos based on your ideal customer persona will help to make more targeted and effective videos. Remember, if you’re speaking to everyone, you’re talking to no one!
2. The quality of content is important
When creating video content, pay attention to quality and authenticity. Any data provided must be accurate, and the video elements should look sharp. Remember, quality and trust come hand in hand. To create a compelling video you may consider outsourcing your video production services or alternatively, you could use character animation software, or template based apps.
3. Don’t get too promotional
Remember, at this stage you are focussing on educating the prospect and building credibility. You want to empathise with their pain points, and provide valuable insights to help them alleviate their challenges.
Here is an example of an educational short video by Hootsuite: a social media management platform.
Consideration – Middle of the funnel (MOF): Video customer testimonials
At the consideration stage, the persona has a clearly defined problem or opportunity. The goal here is to create demand for your product as well as nurture the lead until it is sales-ready. Content at this stage should discuss potential problems the persona faces and provide a solution clearly demonstrating how you can service their needs. Client testimonials and case studies are a great way of doing this, and are a major factor influencing purchasing behaviour (read our blog on how to create killer case studies + free guide). Testimonial videos work by connecting existing customers with potential customers, providing evidence of where your product has been delivered successfully before, therefore building trust and credibility with the buyer.
Make your video testimonials stand out by:
- Keeping them short and concise - aim for a video that is 2-3 minutes long
- Have 3-4 key questions answered by the customer lead
- Include key sound bites within the first 30 seconds of the video
- Ensure the client covers why they selected your company as a partnerer
Here is an example of a client testimonial video for Explainly: an animation company that specializes in 2D and 3D animaed explainer videos.
HubSpot Testimonial - Explainly
Decision – Bottom of the funnel (BOF): Product focussed how-to-videos
At this stage of the buyer journey, the persona has decided on their solution, strategy, method or approach. They might be compiling a list of potential vendors and products that are providing a solution to their problem. The main goal at this stage is to convince the buyer that your product will meet their needs in full and better than your competition. Video content is a great way of doing this, and statistics show that 73% more visitors who watch product videos will make a purchase (HubSpot, 2020).
Online customers are highly concerned about product quality when making an online purchase as they are unsure whether a product will match their expectations or not. Including a short product video will therefore eliminate doubt and build trust surrounding product quality, increasing brand credibility.
The more you gain trust, the more sales you get.
As we have discussed, video content is a powerful tool to attract, nurture and convert new prospects along each stage of the buyer journey. Make sure to revisit your buyer persona and goals when creating your video marketing strategy!
What's next?
Click here to read our blog on how to create killer content, plus grab our FREE guide
