How to Get Started with B2B Video Marketing

There is nothing more popular online than watching videos. Forrester reports that 50 percent of all mobile traffic is used to do just that. While video marketing has done plenty for business-to-consumer companies, the trick is using it to benefit your business-to-business sales. Keeping the traditional sales funnel in mind, and adding some tweaks, will help you understand who to target, what types of videos will do the job, and what outcome to expect from B2B videos.

Align Your Videos with the Customer Journey

Much as different sales and marketing approaches are needed at different points in the funnel, so are different videos. Moreover, don’t restrict videos by department. Instead, think of your B2B videos as companions for the customer at different parts of their journey.

Stage 1: Awareness

B2B awareness videos should be short and create or raise awareness of your company or brand, though your products and services don’t always need to be the focal point. The better videos in this area simply point out a challenge, problem or opportunity that relates to your business.

Stage 2: Research and Decision-making

With research and decision-making videos, you want to talk about your product or service and how it is used. They don’t need to be too in-depth or technical, but they should give your prospects enough information to understand what you’re offering and if it might be right for them. Videos to consider creating include pre-recorded demos, on-demand webinars, high-level product overviews, customer testimonials, how-tos, analyst discussions, et cetera.

Stage 3: Customer Support and Knowledge

Even after a prospect has become a customer, that doesn’t mean you should give up on making engaging videos for your users. Consider creating more detailed tutorials and training sessions. You might even consider asking customers to share their own videos or showcase how they have used your products.

Your B2B Video Marketing Strategy

The fundamentals of marketing with online videos is not unique to the platform. There are six basic keys.

1. Have one clear call to action (CTA).
2. Decide how you will measure performance.
3. Create a compelling story.
4. Build a dedicated landing page that makes video the star.
5. Track quantifiable video data.
6. Follow up with those who engage.

While these six basic keys are not video-specific, there are four tweaks you should keep in mind when working with the video platform.

First, know your CTA and how you intend to measure the video’s success before you create it. This helps guide the video’s story. What are you trying to show people? What emotions do you want people to feel?

Second, making videos is expensive. You don’t need Oscar-winning talent, but it is still an investment in terms of time and money. The story is key here, so get it right from the beginning. As a B2B, you aren’t looking for viral gold, you want to engage a niche audience and turn them into buyers.

Third, your landing page must prioritize the video and not confuse the visitor with too many bells and whistles. If you knocked it out of the park with your video, you don’t need additional clutter to impress the prospect. Keep it simple and make your video perform the heavy lifting.

Fourth, make sure you’re tracking all of your video’s metrics. Views aren’t the only thing that matter. You need to know how long the video was watched, how many visitors viewed the entire video but didn’t click the CTA, who did click the CTA, time spent on the landing page, whether visitors were on mobile or desktop, the devices used, and so on. A full analysis and understanding of these metrics will help fine-tune every aspect of your campaign, including the video itself.

Video Integration with Your CRM and Marketing Automation System

Digital video initiatives are not very useful unless they integrate with your other marketing systems. Your video is part of a marketing campaign, which means it must be connected and tracked with your existing marketing automation system such as Agile CRM.

You can achieve this through landing pages that tie to your CRM, web tracking, and even with links within videos themselves. YouTube allows cards and annotations where you can insert clickable links that can be tracked through your CRM and tied to customers, and Vimeo allows links at the end of videos for businesses with paid accounts. Then, of course, you have further options for embedded videos on your site.

Connecting videos to your CRM, the central nervous system of your business, is beneficial to the sales process as well as the service and support stages that will come later in the customer’s journey. CRM integration lets you track which videos your customers are watching and helps you determine why they are successful, which in turn gives you the information needed to improve your video strategy.

Video is king. Are you properly leveraging it for your B2B marketing?