The Complete Guide to B2B Video Marketing
Why you should read: See how conversational intelligence can unearth the right insights to save countless hours and provide premium client experience at scale.
Our hero:
Head of product, Caleb & Brown
✔ 1000s of hours saved
✔ 100% of calls analyzed
You asked for it, so we've created this complete guide to B2B video marketing in 2020.
88% of marketers say that video marketing provides their business with a positive ROI - up from only 33% in 2015.
Considering this trend, isn't it time you developed a B2B video marketing strategy?
Perhaps you don't use video because you believe it's too expensive. Perhaps you think it's difficult to measure your return on investment, or simply because you don't know where to start.
You're not alone.
We'll show you how to get started with video marketing, what types of video to create, where to distribute them, and why you need to start now.
Why should your B2B business invest in video marketing?
Video is no longer used solely for internal sales and customer service training. It's an integral part of communicating with your B2B prospects and growing your business' bottom line.
The following numbers tell a story:
- 95% of video marketers intend to increase or maintain their video budget in 2020.
- 87% of LinkedIn video marketers describe it as an effective channel.
- 88% of video marketers report a positive return on investment (ROI) from video.
- 72% of people prefer video over text to learn about products and services
Video marketing is versatile.
It enables you to engage your audience on social media, educate your prospects through product demos, sell your product or service with customer testimonials, and provide webinars that help buyers in their decision-making process.
If you thought video marketing was simply a tool to raise brand awareness on social media, think again.
Video is incredibly useful throughout your entire sales funnel as a means to generate leads and drive conversions.
Benefits of B2B video marketing
There are innumerable benefits in video marketing, but let's take a look at three ways video content benefits your business.
#1. Video improves search rankings
You may have noticed that video results frequently appear in Google searches and they're often near the top of the page.
For example, a search for "video marketing" on Google produces video results in the second position on page one.
Logically, you're missing out on free exposure if you're not publishing video.
Just make sure to use SEO best practices when uploading your videos.
#2. Video improves demand generation
Video is a useful tool for engagement and to aid your lead generation efforts.
The last annual survey from Animoto shows that 93% of businesses had landed a new customer due to a video on social media.
Further, adding video to your website homepage, landing pages, or product pages increases the average time your visitors spend on a page.
81% of video marketers agreed with this and 80% of all those interviewed said that video had directly helped increase sales.
It's clear that when you keep your viewers engaged you are more likely to increase your conversions.
One way to capture leads from your video marketing is to create a value-packed webinar that requires visitors to sign up. Boom! Instant lead capture.
Salesforce uses this technique for its product demonstration series.
Another method is adding a call to action (CTA) in your video which redirects your prospects to other conversion points such as downloading free content, signing up for a trial, or booking a demonstration.
#3. Video aids account-based marketing (ABM)
The focus in 2020 is towards more personalized ABM strategies.
If your B2B business is targeting specific prospects, it makes sense to send them customized content in a video format.
CEOs and other high-level decision-makers receive hundreds of messages every day, so you need a way to get noticed. Why not jazz up your email marketing by adding video to your email messages?
How to create a B2B video marketing strategy
17% of non-video marketers say they don't use video for marketing as they don't know where to start.
This is exactly why you need a video content strategy.
How many times have you developed a marketing campaign or started working on a sales initiative without having a fully formed plan?
Even your blog posts, case studies, and whitepapers are coordinated and scheduled, so your B2B video marketing deserves the same time and attention.
First, ask yourself this question:
Who are you marketing to?
B2B companies often find it harder to create video that has a broad reach, but this doesn't diminish the value of video to your ideal client.
By now, you have probably defined your target audience.
You understand their pain points, their content preferences, and the style of message that resonates with them.
Focus on that as you plan your video strategy.
Here's a step-by-step walkthrough to create a B2B video marketing strategy:
#1. Set goals for your video marketing
What is the purpose of your video?
Always keep your ultimate aim in mind when making decisions about your video.
It's best to have a single goal in view because this will keep your focus on the content and style of the finished video.
Consider which stage of the sales funnel you're targeting with your video content.
#2. Decide on a video marketing budget
Will you create your video in-house or use a vendor?
Before you dive in, you should look at the time and cost of video production.
Video is more affordable than before and it's the reason that 46% of first-time video marketers started using video in 2019.
If you hire a professional video production company, you'll avoid the investment in specialized equipment, videographers, scriptwriters, and even location and travel costs.
Know your limitations and understand your opportunities.
#3. Choose a type of video and decide where it fits into your overall strategy
If you're just starting out, experiment with different types of video.
Select a video format that best meets your desired aims.
For example, a brand video is best in the awareness stage and a case study is most often used in the middle and late stages of your buyer's journey.
#4. Decide where to publish your video
The platform you choose depends on how you currently reach your target audience and the goal of your video.
If you've produced only one or two types of B2B video, it's probably better to start with a single channel and build from there.
A brand video is ideal - both for your website homepage and to raise brand awareness on your Facebook page.
Place your case study video on a page dedicated to your customers or use it as trust-building content on LinkedIn.
#5. Create your video
Expert video production requires more than simply grabbing your camera and asking a colleague to tell the world about your product or service.
If your audience values quality, you need effective visual content that is professional and well produced.
This is the point to decide whether you're prepared to invest in the necessary equipment, resources, and time required to create your videos.
If you're unable to commit to that course, consider hiring a video production company to guide you through the entire process and explain what to expect on filming day.
#6. Publish your video
Several publishing platforms have limitations on the suitable types of video or even the length of video you may publish. Check to ensure your video fits those requirements.
#7. Promote your video
Wherever you choose to promote your video, keep in mind that your job is not finished.
This is especially true on YouTube and your social media platforms. It's here you have the chance to boost engagement in your marketing video by responding to the viewer's comments and feedback.
#8. Track the success of your video
This step is extremely important for two reasons.
Firstly, if you don't track your results, you have no idea how successful your video was relative to your goals.
Secondly, your analytics will help you improve your future video marketing efforts - especially if your results were below expectations.
For example, if your aim was lead generation, then metrics like your click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate will provide an accurate measurement of your video's effectiveness.
Best B2B marketing videos to produce
Case study videos
These videos are designed to convert potential clients by showing your expertise, and how you've achieved results for someone similar to your prospect.
Where to use a case study video - Middle and bottom of the sales funnel.
Here's a case study video example from office communication platform Slack:
Testimonial videos
B2B consumers trust other buyers and their experiences with brands. Using testimonial videos is an effective strategy for B2B companies to put their best success stories in an engaging, easy-to-digest video format.
Where to use a testimonial video? All stages of your sales funnel.
Here's one of our happy customers giving a testimonial about Testimonial Hero:
Brand videos
These videos should emphasize your branding and your vision, as opposed to heavily promoting your products and services.
The end goal is to motivate your target audience to learn more about you and how you might help them in their business.
Use your video marketing to increase recognition of your brand, and remember to include your logo and name for visual impact.
Where to use a brand video - Top and middle of the funnel.
Here's a brand video example from social media management tool Hootsuite:
Product or service videos
These videos are designed to highlight a specific product or service. They demonstrate how your B2B prospects and customers use your brand's products. This serves the dual purposes of generating brand awareness and allowing viewers to visualize the product benefits.
Where to use a product video - Middle of the funnel
Here's a product video example from project management tool Trello:
Explainer videos
Explainer videos are all about educating and informing your viewers. Your business is free to choose what to explain to your audience - whether it's answering common questions, discussing new product features, or promoting an upcoming webinar.
Where to use an explainer video? - Top and middle of the sales funnel.
Here's an example of an explainer video from Practicus:
Aside from live video (either as a webinar or on Facebook) other types of video include:
- Event videos to highlight your presence at industry events
- Interviews with industry experts
- Animated video
- Whiteboard video
- Augmented Reality (AR) video and
- Virtual Reality Videos
How to use your B2B video
Social media video marketing
In 2019, LinkedIn emerged as the most successful channel for B2B businesses, with an overwhelming 87% of LinkedIn video marketers describing it as an effective channel.
Although YouTube is the world's most popular channel for video, Facebook is more effective for B2B marketers, with 85% saying it's been a success.
This image shows how marketers plan to use video in their social media marketing in 2020.
Video marketing on your website
While video may be placed on almost any page of your website, your B2B audience is most likely to view the following content:
Explainer and product videos
When asked how they'd most like to learn about a product or service, 66% of B2B audiences said they'd prefer to watch a short video. This compares to 18% who'd rather read text on your website.
Testimonial video
Your customer's stories provide powerful social proof to your website visitors.
77% of people who watch testimonial videos say that they helped convince them to buy a product or service. Showcase your product and service solutions by letting a happy client share their success story with your audience.
Video in your email marketing
While using video in email has experienced a significant increase in popularity - up from 36% in 2016 to 55% in 2018 - this marketing tactic is still underused.
If your audience comprises millennial buyers, 46 percent of this demographic prefers video content. Try adding video to your next email campaign to compare and test your engagement levels.
Video hosting platforms
Hosting your own video requires an enormous amount of storage and bandwidth costs. This is the major reason most B2B businesses choose a cloud-based hosting platform.
Viewers access your video by going directly to the host website, or you can use an embed code to insert the video content on your website.
Here are several of the most popular online video hosting platforms:
- Vimeo - allows you to insert calls to action and email capture for B2B lead generation
- YouTube - it's not purpose-built for business video hosting, but it is a free service
- Wistia - provides extensive customization and analytics
- Vidyard - unlimited video uploads coupled with SEO optimization
Conclusion
Video is a great way to break down difficult concepts, help your potential customers learn more about your business, and create content that can be repurposed into other formats.
Why not brainstorm a few ideas and do a little research to see if video can help meet your marketing goals and grow your online audience?
Dan shares on:
Brokers no longer need to spend hours each week tagging conversations manually and adding notes after each call—ZRA does all that for them.
During customer calls, brokers, salespeople, and customer success agents can easily see AI-generated notes from previous interactions and continue the conversation, whether it involves offering the customer more information about a particular token or solving a simple troubleshooting issue like two-factor authentication.
Using ZRA has streamlined customer processes, from sales to customer service calls to onboarding. “When we go through a customer onboarding process, we need a lot of information from the customer to remain compliant,” Dan explains. “With Zoom Revenue Accelerator, our onboarding team can easily see what’s been collected and what’s missing.”
After each call, ZRA will automatically create a summary and generate a list of the next steps to complete the onboarding. “Our onboarding team can now save time. When engaging with a customer, they can focus and prioritize that customer conversation.”
With automatic, AI-enabled insights into customer calls, Caleb & Brown now uses the intelligence gathered from conversations to guide business decisions. “When we want to start a new customer acquisition campaign or explore a new business line, we have insights into what matters most to our customers,” Dan says. “We can adjust our acquisition strategy and the key messages we use in our comms to match what we see.”
ZRA makes data sharing between teams easier, so brokers can share customer feedback with product and engineering teams—something they couldn’t do easily before. “In the past, it was quite clunky to pull a clip or audio file to share with other teams. Now, they can easily search through transcripts and provide those snippets as text snippets. It’s been a huge improvement to our workflow,” Dan says.
The enhanced collaboration—furthered by the adoption of Zoom Chat and Zoom Meetings—has also improved security. Teams can communicate faster and use ZRA to share data and call recordings to identify bad actors and confirm client identities quickly.
"Our teams can look at the data and make sure the voice and conversation style matches previous conversations. The auto-generated transcript that ZRA provides makes it much easier to search previous conversations." — Dan Johnson, Head of product, Caleb & Brown
In addition to tightening security, ZRA has made it easier for Caleb & Brown to track potential compliance issues and conduct quality assurance.
Along with ZRA, Caleb & Brown adopted Zoom Phone.
As a distributed company with global teams, it was important to ensure that distance didn’t impact customer experience. According to Dan, their previous provider “had significant latency issues and delays in the conversation. It made conversations quite disjointed and felt very unnatural.”
Switching to Zoom Phone solved those issues, and with the seamless integration of ZRA, they’ve gained data analysis capabilities they didn’t have before.
Since they’ve started working with Zoom Phone and ZRA, Caleb & Brown has gathered valuable data from every single customer call. “Previously, only a fraction of those calls were analyzed and reviewed. Now it’s 100%, and our team doesn’t have to do anything—the software does it for us. It’s quite magical,” Dan says.
This analysis has led to significant time savings and given the team a deeper understanding of their customers.
“Understanding those conversations and what topics matter most to our customers at scale has been absolutely phenomenal. We can’t put an exact number on it, but days, months, years of work have been saved.” —Dan Johnson, Head of product, Caleb & Brown
Caleb & Brown have gotten so much value from Zoom Phone and ZRA that they’ve expanded their Zoom ecosystem.
One such integration involves Salesforce. ZRA integrates directly with Salesforce, which means agents no longer have to spend time searching for the information they need. When a customer calls, their profile pops on the screen, allowing agents and brokers to swiftly navigate through that customer's data for additional context for a particular request. “If a customer wants to update their address, for example, the agent can click see and change that information directly in Salesforce. The useability is phenomenal,” Dan says.
Another addition is Zoom Contact Center, which provides a better way for the global support team to service customers. Rather than having support team members to have unique phone numbers, they leverage intelligent routing to streamline call volume through a single phone number. This capability makes reporting much clearer, as it's easier for leadership to understand the types of conversations being had and who is having those conversations.
With so many solutions to offer, Zoom enables Caleb & Brown to improve productivity, know their customers better, and get deeper deal insights to drive more revenue.
“One of the biggest benefits of working with Zoom is their complete product line. Having one provider that you can go to for many solutions makes things quite easy.” —Dan Johnson, Head of product, Caleb & Brown
