They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but what about video? Well, we think it’s worth a million words — you can communicate more things in a couple of seconds of video than any sentence.
In the multimedia world we live in, audiences expect continuous, high-quality, dynamic video content — and they expect to see it in different formats and on different platforms.
When we talk about video marketing, we mean creating videos that promote your brand or company, raise brand awareness, bring your company more revenue, or otherwise engage with your audience.
In other words: Any marketing that is done through video. 🎬 In the context of B2B marketing, it’s simply companies using videos to reach other businesses and organizations.
Why is video marketing important?
Let’s start by looking at a couple of stats.
In 2019, video was the #1 form of media used in content strategy. It’s safe to add that the importance of video is ever-increasing now that we’re spending more and more time online. 92% of marketers are using video, when the number was around 78% in 2015.
Video is a valuable tool when you want to educate your audience on your product. B2B video marketing supports the entire customer journey from growing your brand and attracting prospects to lead nurturing and customer retention.
94% of marketers report that videos have helped their users understand their solution better. Any customer is more likely to consider buying a solution if they understand how it works and, more importantly, how it will solve their specific problems.
And, in fact, 72% of customers report that they prefer to learn about a product or service through video rather than any other content format.
Also, adding videos to your landing page or website can improve your organic search traffic by a whopping 157%.
Video offers the perfect chance to convey your brand voice easily. Just make sure you’re creating real value for your customers by addressing their pain points and questions, and offer tailored content for different stages of the sales funnel whenever possible.
Doing simple branded videos doesn’t require a huge production team, a hefty budget, or more time you have to spare. It can be just as easy as any other type of content.
When you start creating different types of video, it’s also a lot easier to distribute your video content on different platforms and in different channels.
Read more: How B2B marketers can make a case for video marketing
Is there a difference between B2B and B2C video marketing?
Short answer: Yes, there is.
Long answer: Yes, and it’s due to a couple of reasons.
In B2C, the focus is typically on brand awareness or product highlights. The main goal is to convince the consumer that your product or service is the one for them. The decision-maker, buyer, and end-user are all typically the same person.
In B2B, however, you’re usually targeting more than just one person at once.
It can get a bit complex. The decision-makers you’re targeting are often not making the decision on their own or even for themselves.
B2B videos also need to target the user of the product, not just the decision-maker. And as more B2B companies adopt a self -service model, the end-user is increasingly becoming the decision-maker as well.
Since many B2B buyers need internal buy-in for new tools and solutions, the videos need to have a certain quality and address quite specific pain points.
The length of your video should always be determined by the objective and the channel, but some B2B videos can end up being slightly longer than B2C videos.
With businesses, the purchase process is usually longer, so you need to be able to convince more people along the way.
B2B companies have more complex products that require a more thorough explanation. And B2B marketers may also want to support their thought leadership strategy with in-depth interview videos.
To summarize, there are many similarities between B2B and B2C marketing videos, but B2B marketers have more options in how they can use it to achieve a wider variety of goals and audience groups.
Read more: Marketing to marketers: Why B2B marketing strategies can and should be a lot more relatable
How to approach B2B video marketing?
Customer research
With B2B video marketing, it’s a good idea to start by doing some research on your audience in general.
This will help you gain an understanding of who you’re targeting, what their pain points are, and what problem they are looking to solve. You can also find out what kind of solutions they need in order to get the job done.
Many companies think they know their customer better than they know themselves, but this is not necessarily the case. By asking your customers, you might discover new things about your customers’ pain points.
That, in turn, helps you focus on your customers’ real problems and aids you in crafting a better video marketing strategy. It also makes it easier to reach the right people with your video marketing tactics. With B2B video marketing, it’s a good idea to start by doing some research on your audience in general.
In-house vs. outsourcing
The next question is whether you should do your video marketing in-house, outsource, or go for a combination of the two.
This decision is often based on things like your budget, your team structure, and what your biggest priorities are.
Hiring video editors is one great solution, but it’s often not the cheapest one. Hiring a video editor for only marketing activities can be pretty expensive as time goes by.
Another solution is to structure your existing marketing team around video marketing and bring video production in-house. You can start using a no-pro tool that allows anyone to create professional videos without a background in video editing.
This way, anyone on your marketing team can easily produce great content, from copy and images to engaging video for any channel.
You can also consider a hybrid approach, hiring a freelancer to handle some of your video marketing strategy and managing the rest of it in-house using a no-pro tool. This is also a great approach if you have a broad video strategy with different requirements, and it’s the one we use here at Wibbitz!
Read more: How to structure your marketing team around video marketing
How to address different stages of the B2B buyer’s journey in your video marketing strategy
Just like with any marketing activity, your B2B video marketing strategy should include different things for different parts of the funnel and different stages in the buyer’s journey.
While you should focus on tailoring your video content based on the prospect’s stage in the sales funnel, don’t forget that brand awareness and thought leadership play an important part in how your potential customers perceive your company and product.
Read more: B2B video marketing strategy: How to reach your target audience
Awareness stage: Top of the funnel content
At this stage of the buyers’ journey, your customers are aware of their problem and are thinking of solutions. The best way to go is to build more awareness about your company and get your brand out there to be top of mind for your prospects.
For example, suppose you have a software tool for project management. Your prospects may already be looking for potential solutions or how to deal with project management if they’ve noticed that something’s not working in their process.
Awareness-stage video marketing should focus on industry expertise and thought leadership.
You can achieve this by providing valuable information that answers your target audience’s questions, and that helps position your company as an expert in your area.
If you want to create more awareness around your imaginary project management tool, you could start with higher-level product videos that present your tool in a visual way.
Think about video content that answers the most common search queries directly, or offers your visitors some context in which your tool could help smoothen their day-to-day workflows.
Remember to include things like your values and ideas instead of technical details, focusing on providing real value and great insights.
Consideration stage: Middle of the funnel content
At this stage, your customers know they have a problem, are looking for solutions, and are thinking about making a purchase.
You should be ready to go into a bit more detail to show how your product would solve your prospective customer’s problem.
At this point, the prospect may be comparing features, thinking about costs, figuring out how long it would take to implement a new product or service, and trying to choose between different service providers.
You want to be the one they end up choosing.
Think about things like case studies in video form, interviews with customers, product explainer videos, how-to videos, and so on.
Your potential customer will be interested in how you have helped other companies in similar situations. They will also likely want to know how easy your tool is to use, what it will cost them, and if it’s challenging to implement.
Decision stage: Bottom of the funnel content
By this stage, your prospect knows that a tool like the one you have will be the one to solve their problem. They’re ready to purchase, but they need to be reassured that your solution is the right one.
Here, it’s crucial to focus on ease of use, how-to videos, and case studies to show your prospect how your tool solves their problems in practice. This can also help them decide if it’s the best option for them.
You should also consider personalized video recordings of salespeople speaking to the target customer or even video explanations of different pricing plans.
Once your customers have bought from you, keep delighting them with high-quality video content.
You can add videos into your nurturing emails or any other communication you have with your existing happy clients, and landing pages or social media channels they might visit or interact with.
Read more: Creating the best video content for each stage of the marketing funnel
B2B video marketing on different platforms
In the B2B space, the most popular video marketing channels are websites, emails, and LinkedIn.
Other potential channels are YouTube, landing pages, Facebook, Twitter, and even Instagram or TikTok.
You can use any channel that you feel will work for your target audience, but make sure you track and measure the performance of your videos continuously. This way, you can be sure your efforts are paying off like intended.
You also need to find a good video hosting tool that provides a video player. This way, you can use videos on your website, blog, landing pages, and so on.
Some excellent video hosting platforms include Brightcove, Wistia, Vimeo, and YouTube.
Brightcove is a great option for enterprise businesses, Wistia is designed especially for B2B marketers, and Vimeo or YouTube work for small businesses or if you’re just getting started with video marketing.
Most video hosting and social media platforms have in-built analytics tools that will give you some idea of performance. Still, you can also use other KPIs (like clicks, registrations, and so on) by adding a call to action in your videos to measure how your video is performing.
When you do customer research and plan your marketing strategy as a whole, pay attention to what channels your customers report using. This way, you have first-hand knowledge of where your potential customers are and what the best way to reach them could be.
Read more: Connecting with B2B audiences through LinkedIn video
B2B video marketing in different industries
We think all businesses, regardless of their field, should consider adding video marketing to their repertoire. But let’s go through some real-life examples from actual companies from different industries to further understand why.
Tech, software, startups
When you have a complex product with many technical details, video is the perfect way to illustrate your product’s primary ways of solving your customer’s problem.
The best way to start is simply by focusing on your customer’s pain points. If they’re looking for a new tool or a solution, they want a specific problem solved in their everyday work.
You should also consider video tours and demos of your product, as well as case studies.
If you have a SaaS tool or solution, you can include instructional videos in your onboarding or trial and add demos and how-to videos on your website and social media posts.
Pitch, a software tool that enables collaborative presentation software, is a great example of a software company using video marketing to highlight their features in a simple and visual way.
Another excellent example is VMware, a cloud computing and virtualization technology company.
They have many different apps and tools available, and most of them include many technical specifications and details that are complex to explain. Video is an excellent way of simplifying this and explaining the products in an easily digestible format.
Check out one of their videos below:
Splunk is a solution that offers a cloud-based platform to investigate and analyze data, with a focus on security and efficient operations. With a complex topic like this, video is the perfect way to highlight your tool’s best features.
They have a strong digital marketing presence and use video across many channels, including virtual events like in the example below:
Read more: Why video is crucial to get your tech company off the ground
Legal, finance, and banking
Many social media influencers are already emerging from these industries. While most of them are mainly B2C, B2B marketers in this space can use video just as effectively to reach their target audiences.
Video helps make topics or stories that an average person might find too dry or dense much more engaging. Additionally, it helps you humanize your brand through storytelling and by sharing information in a more accessible, friendly way.
When you do B2B video marketing well, it can help with both sales activation and brand building. For this, consider positioning yourself as an expert by creating thought leadership videos that highlight your brand as a pioneer in your field.
Start with your customer: Who are their customers? What kind of problems are they facing? What kind of solutions are they looking for? Where can you provide the most value for them?
Accounting firm Bennett Thrasher’s team, for example, has repurposed their marketing content into short, engaging videos that can target their potential and existing clients on LinkedIn. They’ve also worked on company news stories in video format. Check out one example video below!
Other companies that have already jumped on the video marketing bandwagon to bring more humanity to their brands include financial information and analytics pioneer S&P Global and French international banking group BNP Paribas.
See S&P Global’s video on leadership in COVID times below.
Manufacturing, industrial, and infrastructure
While it might seem easier to market a SaaS tool with features you can easily highlight, don’t forget that manufacturing equipment and solutions also solve problems for people at work.
But think outside the box: Your videos should not be about your equipment and how it functions. They should focus more on brand building and positioning or larger concepts like solving operational pain points and complexities.
You could think about including the perspective of engineers and other professionals who benefit from the tools in their day-to-day activities.
Case studies in video form are a perfect way to showcase how your tools have helped other companies, as well as more general videos that show how your solutions are solving problems in practice.
Air Liquide, a global industrial supplier of gases and services to various industries uses video marketing to bring their services closer to their customers and making complex topics more approachable. See an example of their video marketing below.
How to get started: Step-by-step
Now that we’ve gone through the why and how, here are some practical tips to help you get started with your B2B video marketing activities right away:
- Start with customer research and asking your existing customers where they look for information or follow industry news.
- Decide on the best approach for video production: in-house, outsource, or hybrid?
- Choose the right tools for you. We really recommend no-pro tools like Wibbitz if you don’t have an in-house video editor.
- Start crafting your video strategy by identifying the first main objective you want to leverage video for. Brand awareness? Thought leadership? Helping increase sales conversions?
- Decide on your distribution and publishing strategy and think about the right channels. Remember to make this decision based on what best serves your target audience.
- Start publishing and analyzing results. Remember it takes time to develop your strategy, and will take some trial and error just like other forms of content. Don’t let that discourage you, keep at it and you’ll start seeing the power of video for B2B marketing!
Read more: How to create next-level B2B marketing campaigns with personalized videos – Wibbitz
Are you ready to start producing high-quality video content right away?
Wibbitz is an awesome online tool for creating marketing videos, from customer interviews to product demos — no previous experience necessary. And the best part? You can try it for free.