Achieve Your Vision in 2020
Clients can be fickle. Trends can be volatile. And in B2B marketing, one maxim seems to find a way to ring true year after year: Content is king.
Of course, any decent marketing strategy includes a variety of content types paired with different goals and metrics. But true genius marketers know that in order to remain top of mind in a constantly shifting, ultra-saturated media landscape, a winning strategy goes beyond your own goals and ideas.
This type of marketing plan places a hefty emphasis on your audience – best approaches to engage them, encourage them to heed your calls to action, and maintain a steady, mutually beneficial relationship. B2B marketing professionals may find this especially challenging since it requires a level of research and granularity to determine a target audience and their particular needs.
Sound complicated? It doesn’t have to be.
When it comes to successfully weaving video into your B2B marketing strategy, you really only need to remember 3 key principles.
1. Don’t sell your brand in your B2B marketing videos – instead, tell your story.
76% of businesses say that video has helped them increase sales.
Build a narrative around your message, and it will automatically transform from something that blends into the background to something more memorable and intriguing. Strategy consultant Blair Wadman calls this education-based marketing, and it’s a perfect fit for B2B video content. He advises B2B marketers to take advantage of social media channels like LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook to post videos that teach your prospective customers something that can help them overcome a challenge or become better versions of themselves.
This grows your audience, and more importantly, by offering them something valuable and asking nothing in return, your followers will come to know more about you. Plus, they’ll grow to have confidence in your recommendations, your knowledge, and ultimately your business.
Acclaimed entrepreneur Neil Patel takes this one step further – by lending your expertise and consistently providing a compelling story to your audience, you’re fostering continual engagement that grows steadily over time. That alone is a goal worth shifting your strategy to hit!
Bonus: a good story can become more than just a video.
Give your brand a memorable story to tell, and it’s medium-agnostic. It becomes the foundation upon which to build content like blog posts, infographics, live events, and beyond.
2. Build trust – be authentic.
The list of effective video types for B2B video marketing success is relatively short.
Our friends at Vidyard have organized them by stages in the customer funnel.
At the top of the funnel, you’ll find the usual suspects: entertaining, yet educational videos aimed at boosting awareness, ultra-targeted videos for a variety of social channels, and helpful explainer videos. These types of videos are often found in any robust content marketing plan, B2C and B2B alike.
However, as you go from capturing awareness to nurturing and converting new customers, you’ll see something a little different.
- Thought leadership videos.
- Culture videos.
- Customer testimonials.
- Product demos.
- Comprehensive webinars.
By producing and sharing videos that give potential customers a peek at your recipe for success, you build their trust. And by showcasing real customers, tangible products, and actual challenges, you level up on authenticity. 86% of us prefer an honest, authentic brand presence on social media.
Don’t be afraid to live stream, either! Perhaps the ultimate form of video marketing authenticity, 80% of consumers prefer watching live video from a brand over reading a blog; 82% prefer live video from a brand to social posts.
3. It’s an experiment – measure and adjust your strategy as needed.
One of the many valuable attributes of video content marketing: it lends itself well to metrics, reporting, and behavior analytics.
Set Key Performance Indicators early, and often, when developing your B2B video marketing strategy. In the 2020 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report, 80% of respondents say they use metrics to measure content performance, while 43% measure ROI on content marketing. Of the 43% measuring ROI, 59% say their ROI is excellent or good.
Work with a hosting platform that can provide you regular metrics and analytics.
Before you even start writing a script for a video, determine your main goals. Here’s a great piece from Google on best practices.
Curious about what makes for a solid KPI when it comes to B2B video? Try starting with the basics.:
- Number of views
- Engagement (how long someone watches your video before clicking away)
- Rate of play (whether someone clicks play on a given thumbnail or link)
- Social sharing
- Conversion
And always consider how you are measuring success at the inception of a video content marketing campaign. For example, if you’re counting clicks on a CTA, be sure you have the production capability to swap out that CTA for one that performs better or one targeted to a specific audience or platform.
Leaders in content marketing agree that video will become even more popular as a B2B marketing strategy, and overall, in 2020.
Apply these 3 tactics to your strategy for B2B marketing videos now to have perfect vision (when it comes to B2B video) in 2020 and beyond!