Video marketing has risen steadily over the past few years and continues to be one of the more profitable marketing strategies. And with 87% of video marketers confirming that they achieve a positive ROI by using video, it’s hardly surprising that its popularity is soaring. 

With advances in technology, it’s becoming easier for B2B businesses, however small, to access video marketing. However, it doesn’t mean it’s a simple marketing tactic. It requires a carefully planned strategy to prove effective. 

Why Video Marketing Works

Get the strategy right, and video marketing has the potential to increase lead generation up to 66% annually while raising brand awareness. 

The main benefits from tapping into video marketing are – 

• More traffic – almost 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every day. That’s a LOT of potential customers hanging around on a channel where they could potentially see your video. YouTube is the second biggest search engine. Although Google is the number 1 driver for traffic to your written content, creating video opens up another avenue for driving extra traffic to your brand. Put a video on your website and YouTube, and you’ll create a double whammy for driving traffic. 
• Rising conversion rates – It seems people prefer to watch a video rather than read content. According to data from Elite Content Marketer, 66% of people said they’d prefer to watch a short video to learn about a product or service. Videos build credibility and trust, which in turn leads to rising conversion rates. (By up to 80%, according to HubSpot.)
• Video helps build brand authority – trust and authority are 2 key factors in converting potential buyers into paying customers. Video allows people to see behind your brand by providing a behind-the-scenes look at the business. Posting video boosts your brand’s authority and will enable you to become the go-to expert in the field. 

Video marketing brings with it a host of other benefits too. It shows your commitment to new technology, provides scope to explain your brand voice and values further, and can be a fabulous addition to your email marketing. 

But before starting, it’s essential to create a workable and sustainable video marketing strategy. 

Main Aspects Of A B2B Video Marketing Strategy

Creating a strategy for video marketing is similar to other B2B sales strategies. It takes research, customer segmentation, and buyer awareness stages. 

Create Audience Personas

An audience persona helps you create videos that resonate and engage fully with your ideal customer. In addition, knowing who you’re targeting and focusing on specific pain points helps generate more authentic leads. 

Even better, creating personas results in specific video content that’s more likely to convert. Let’s face it. There’s little point in trying to sell through very generalized video marketing. It won’t necessarily match up with your customer’s needs and wants. So personas are essential for success. 

How To Come Up With Your Customer Personas

Customer personas help you understand who you’re talking to when marketing. Sometimes known as customer avatars or target audience persona, they’re a fictional representation of an ideal customer. 

Personas have characteristics and key information attached to them, from where they live right through to the hobbies they enjoy. The more information you have, the more likely your marketing efforts will convert. 

Include the following information in your personas – 

• Demographics – age, location, job title, level of responsibility
• What do they look for in a supplier – price, quality, support? 
• Goals – is the main goal to buy or to build a partnership?
• Pain points – what are their primary needs and wants? 
• Brands – who are they working with already? 
• Other aspects, such as hobbies and interests and everyday routine.

Some B2B brands only include categories that directly impact the brand and skip the more personal attributes.

But truthfully, the more you know about your ideal customer, including personal traits, the more you can create video content that truly engages. 

Let’s look at an example. 

Imagine you’re a holistic skincare brand. You want to target health professionals to stock your products. You stick the business side of the persona – 

• Female
• Spa owner 
• Promotes holistic products 
• Currently uses a competitors brand

By excluding all the personal details, you’re also excluding the fact that your ideal customer enjoys yoga and meditation and runs her spa treatment business from home. 

As a result, your videos end up targeting more prominent corporate spas and misses out the smaller, home-based beauticians. You also miss out on selling the benefits the scent of your product has when used before meditating. 

Including the personal details provides you with more information that can help segment your audience even further, in this case, into corporate and individual-based businesses. 

Tap Into Each Step Of The Customer Journey 

Not every buyer knows everything there is to know about your business. Some potential customers may land on your website and have no clue what it is you offer. 

So what’s the answer? 

Create a range of videos that take the full spectrum of customer awareness into account. 

Each video gently leads your consumer towards the next step of the buyer’s journey. And that means each video has to come from a different context.  

Each video should be tailored towards different needs and wants, which means altering the video style, language used, and topics covered. 

Here’s the good news.

It’s not as tricky as it sounds. Break it down into each awareness stage, and it becomes more manageable. 

The Awareness Phase

When a prospect first discovers your brand, they’re in the awareness stage. It’s important to think about how they found you – was it via a search engine, social media, an ad, or your website? 

Once you know where your leads are coming from, you can target your video marketing to either increase those leads or improve the number of leads coming from the other channels. 

First impressions count, and when a potential customer finds your brand for the first time, you want to stick in their memory. And the fact of the matter is, video marketing does that best. 

The main aim of marketing in the awareness stage is to educate the consumer about the product and lead them further down the sales funnel.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the following forms of video marketing achieve this goal best. 

Educational videos – 96% of people have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service. Now that’s got to be a higher rate than those potential customers reading your written content, right? Most explainer videos are on websites or landing pages, their main goal being to educate about the brand, product, or service. 

But here’s the rub. Educational videos need to target pain points and explain how the product or service solves the problem effectively. Think benefits over features every time. 

Informational videos – informational videos work well alongside educational videos. This is where the focus on pain points and solutions go one step further. 

Think “5 ways to fix a [state a problem your customer has]”. Or “How to…” videos work well. Use your customer personas, and the video will engage the right people. 

Most importantly, when it comes to awareness stage videos, it’s vital to create a hook. There are so many videos available today that unless it captures attention within the first 5-10 seconds, it’ll be gone from the customer’s mind in one swipe. 

The video marketing game is saturated, so you need to ensure you’ve got content that stands out from the crowd. 

The Consideration Phase 

Get consumers to stay on the train at the awareness stage, and they’ll soon arrive at consideration station. 

And it’s here where they’ll start to weigh up their options and ponder whether your solution is suitable for their problem. 

Videos in this space should empathize with the audience’s difficulties. Push the benefits, smash through objections and make sure your product stands out as the winner when compared to competitors. 

Here are a few examples of the kinds of video you can use to move the audience from consideration of your product to decision-making –

• Demos. Show how your product works in practice. Focus on benefits and answer FAQs
• Social proof. Tap into all your testimonials. Humans tend to trust other humans and social proof is a solid way to move your audience along the sales funnel. 
• Brand culture and About Us videos. Humanize your brand with authentic behind-the-scenes footage. (While still focusing on the benefits.) 

The Decision Phase 

Needless to say, this is the most crucial stage of the sales funnel – where potential buyers become paying customers. 

It’s crunch time. Time for the consumer to decide yay or nay to your product. Be clear and direct with your content. Videos in the decision phase need to be specific, targeted, and concise. 

Make no mistake about it. Here’s where you need to hit them hard. You don’t want customers wandering off to look at competitors. Instead, it’s time to prove to potential customers that your product is the ONLY product they need. 

Use the following video types to get the golden conversion – 

• Compare various products. Show why your product is the best solution. 
• Offer a free trial and explain how the free trial works. Videos in this stage should always have a clear CTA. 
• Use testimonials again and push social proof. 

The Post-Purchase Phase 

Fabulous work! Your  video marketing has moved your prospect along the sales funnel and into a sale. But the work doesn’t stop there. 

The best way to think about it now is to consider the customer as a new friend — someone who’s happy to promote your brand and stay loyal to the business. 

The post-purchase phase is all about nurturing the new customer and making them feel valued. After all, a happy customer is more likely to refer your brand to others, making your customer acquisition marketing that little bit easier. 

Look after customers by providing video content such as – 

• How-to videos. Teach customers how to get the most out of their new product. 
• Thank you videos. Works even better if you personalize the video. 

How To Use Video Marketing Without Breaking Your Budget Or Hitting Overwhelm 

There’s no doubt about it. Video marketing is time-consuming. And the reality is, creating videos needs a little initial investment. Most brands require a decent camera, tripods, lightboxes, and a microphone to get it right. 

But if you’re a small brand, don’t despair. It’s still possible to use video marketing to raise your lead generation and conversion rates. 

Let’s run through a few ways to maximize your video marketing without breaking the bank or becoming overwhelmed with content creation. 

Take Inspiration From Your Existing Content 

Chances are you’ve loads of content on your website, social media channels, and email campaigns already. 

So why create new content when you can recycle the old stuff. It’s the key to working smarter, not harder. 

Find some blog posts that are easy to convert into short “How-to” videos. Or use case studies to create social proof videos. If you can get the subject to speak on camera, even better. 

Freshen up old content with a few new points, and you’re good to go. 

Make The Most Of Free Social Media Platforms 

Video marketing needn’t be expensive. Once you’ve invested in the equipment needed, there are plenty of online channels where it’s free to create and upload videos. 

Use Native Social Media Video Marketing

Stats show there are 4.5 billion social media users in the world. That’s 56.7% of the total world population. The stats also indicate that 9 in 10 internet users also have social media accounts – think of all those potential customers! 

Using video on social media as a marketing tactic is well worth it. But it’s best to use native video. 

What is native video? 

Native video refers to a video that’s uploaded directly to a specific social media channel. A shared video (shared as a link) is not classed as native and doesn’t have the same positive impact. 

Why? 

Native videos don’t require viewers to open another internet page or shift from one social media channel to another. Thus they provide a smoother experience. 

What does this mean for your brand? 

The happier your viewers, the higher the engagement rate. 

Native Video Leads To Better Insights And Data

Producing and uploading corporate videos directly to channels like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn means more accurate data and insights. 

All social media channels enable the account holder to see a certain amount of data. For example, users can see how many times a video has been viewed, who’s liked it, whether it’s been shared, and other informative insights. 

Having this data is helpful, but the main focus should be on increasing engagement rates. So how does a brand get more likes, views, and shares? 

The secret is to hook viewers in from the start. Having clean and entertaining transitions, using autoplay, adding trending music, and focusing on relevant topics all help boost engagement. 

And there’s a clue in the term “social media”. For it to be successful, it requires engagement from both sides, user and viewer. So it’s good practice to get involved on other accounts, leaving comments and sharing great content. By being sociable, others are more likely to do the same for you. 

Which Social Media Platforms Are Best For B2b Brands? 

One of the best platforms for businesses is LinkedIn. Sagefrog’s new report found 86% of marketing professionals rely on LinkedIn to generate leads.

LinkedIn delivers a professional business connection and is considered by consumers to be more trustworthy than other social media channels, such as Facebook or Instagram. 

In short, LinkedIn focuses on recruitment and business rather than everyday informalities. Other social media platforms are generalized, and your marketing can get lost within trendy food pics and personal stories. 

That said, it’s important not to dismiss other social media platforms. For example, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are useful for promoting the brand’s wider image, humanizing the brand, and allowing consumers to engage informally. 

When used within a wider marketing strategy, video marketing on social media has the potential to create a positive impact. 

Spread Your Video Marketing Throughout The Whole Business 

Social media is an excellent medium for free video content, but it shouldn’t be the sole focus. Instead, your video marketing strategy should ensure an even distribution of video throughout the business. 

Your website is a fabulous place for an explainer video. Blog pages are ideal for extra “How-to” videos. Landing pages are the perfect spot for free trial videos and social proof films. 

Use Video As A B2B Marketing Technique And Reap The Rewards 

Create a video marketing strategy and post videos that add to the customer acquisition and sales funnels, and you’ll start to see positive results. 

But remember, videos need to be targeted, specific to the consumer needs, and have a purpose. Get it right, and the business will reap the rewards of an on-screen presence.

— Author Bio: 

Torrey Tayenaka

Torrey Tayenaka is the co-founder and CEO at Sparkhouse, an Orange County-based video marketing production agency. He is often asked to contribute expertise in publications like Entrepreneur, Single Grain and Forbes. Sparkhouse is known for transforming video marketing and advertising into real conversations.Rather than hitting the consumer over the head with blatant ads, Sparkhouse creates interesting, entertaining and useful videos that enrich the lives of his clients’ customers. In addition to Sparkhouse, Torrey has also founded the companies Eva Smart Shower, Litehouse & Forge54.