4 Steps for Creating a Successful Video Marketing Strategy for Your B2B

Video marketing is one of the best ways to reach and convert customers. Currently, 85% of viewers say they are more likely to make a purchase after watching a product video.

Google loves information in all it’s many forms and that’s why delivering multimedia content to your audiences can boost your rankings on search engines. So, if you want to increase discoverability and become first to establish a foothold in this new medium, start producing engaging, high-quality video content today.

Not sure where to begin? Here is the best way to implement video into your existing content strategy in four simple steps.

Why Should Your B2B Company Use Video in Your Content Marketing Strategy?

Video marketing is the perfect way to create a connection with your target audience and develop messaging that resonates with potential customers.

The combination of moving images paired with sounds and dialogue is most akin to our first-hand experiences, so we’re more engaged. It makes sense, right?

It’s also the content we’re most likely to opt-in on. This is valuable intel for B2B marketers: over 50% of consumers want to see videos from brands more than any other type of content.

Why is video so compelling? Video shows your brand’s authenticity – and makes it much easier to digest a complicated concept or idea.

Unlike the standard business blog, it’s also much harder to fake. Unless brands have a good grasp on their customers and dynamic subject matter experts at their disposal, they tend not to dive into video creation.

And once we’ve gotten their attention with video, we want to hook them in right? Well putting videos on landing pages can increase conversion rates by over 80%. The reason for this is video conveys a lot of information quickly. Videos on landing pages often explain the benefits of “signing up” or “opting in” in a much more attractive way than a lengthy list of bullet points. Reduce friction, improve the user experience, and you’ll always have more sign-ups.

It’s a no brainer. Including video content in your content marketing strategy is a great way to show authority, improve prospect engagement, answer customer questions, and increase audience retention. So, how do you do it?

How To Add B2B Video Marketing Into Your Content Strategy

The first step you want to take when adding video marketing to your content strategy is to evaluate your existing content. Consider which areas could use enhancement or clarification.

Next, choose which type of content you want to repurpose into a video.

Start by heading to your blog.

Check your analytics to find blog posts that have a decent number of views but could use more engagement. You can assess this by looking at time-on-site, or setting up a Google Analytics goal of “scroll depth.” Meaning, if they visited the page but didn’t review at least 50% of the content on the page, the content wasn’t hitting the mark.

You could also look at performance by the most traditional of content conversions: newsletter sign-ups. Try targetting pages that could use a boost in conversions.

How to Repurpose Your Best Blogs Into Video Content

Strategy Blog Posts: Turn them into a “talking head” explainer videos.
Best Practice Blog Posts: These can easily be made into how-to videos.
Personal Success Story: This would make a fantastic case study video.
Support Blog Posts: Create a screen share video that walks customers through how to complete a certain task.
Personal Opinion Piece: Make this into a video blog series by asking different employees their opinions.

And what exactly is a “talking head” video? Check out this clever summary with tips from Business Film Booth.

BONUS: Even More Video Ideas for B2B Marketers

If you don’t have a blog, there are plenty of other ways you can repurpose content for videos.

You can take written testimonial or case studies and create a video that puts the best soundbites on the screen, punched up with color, music, motion and other imagery. Another option is to turn webinars into video tutorials or chaptered videos.

One of the easiest ways to make videos is to have your customers do it for you. User-generated content (UGC) is hot right now. Anyone with a phone and social media profile is a publisher. Ask your customers to share their opinion about your business in a testimonial video, and in return, get some free press for their company. Make it as easy as possible for them by offering an outline with talking points and a quick guide on how to record a video.

Don’t forget to reuse content from your social media channels. Ask your social media manager to pull discussions from Twitter threads, polls, surveys, and memorable quotes to create community social videos that round-up the best opinions and ideas.

Lastly, decide how you’ll create video content in a streamlined process. Look at employing someone in-house, creating videos yourself, hiring a freelance contractor or working with an agency.

4 Easy Steps to Develop a Video Marketing Strategy for B2Bs

A video marketing strategy is more than just one great video.

1. Understand Your Target Audience’s Pain Points

A successful video marketing strategy begins with identifying who you want to consume your video content.

Although it has been said before by many a marketer, it’s worth repeating: empathize with your target audience. Bring yourself through their day from sunup to sundown. No, really. Imagine yourself turning off their alarm, brushing their teeth, packing their kid’s lunches, etc. Be their shadow.

When you bring yourself through their day, you can understand their goals and how your company or your product fits into their daily life. (Or maybe you don’t, and then that’s worth addressing too.)

How to make a boring B2B video: make it too general. Remember, your product or service doesn’t need to help everyone. The only viewers that matter are your target audience.

Ask yourself: is the problem we’re solving for the problem our audience faces?

When and where does this problem occur?

If you can’t be specific about the problem, you can’t create content that shows you know who they are. This is vital for engaging video content.

Begin by studying your business’s buyer personas and research their preferences when it comes to video. If you haven’t created buyer personas yet, get on it. Think about how your team can use video to answer their questions and show your product as the perfect solution to their problems.

They’ll buy from you if they feel understood.

2. Gather Topic Ideas for Your Videos

Begin by asking your sales and customer support teams for common queries they’ve received from customers.

You can use these questions to figure out where people are getting stuck whether it be in the sales process or using your product.

Themes should start to emerge – and when they do, you can map them to the customer journey. This will help you decide where video content can best assist your target audience and how you can use it to move businesses toward making a purchase.

Determine what types of content can answer your target audience’s questions at certain stages of the sales cycle. For example, an explainer video showing why a company needs your product would be ideal for a business first learning about your brand whereas a how-to video teaching your audience something new might be better for a prospect who is further down the pipeline.

Every time you gather topic ideas, nail down which buyer persona the video content is serving and what stage they are at in the customer journey.

3. Perform Keyword Research to Optimize Videos

Make sure to select target keywords that are relevant to your video content and what your B2B is selling.

If the keywords are irrelevant, you’ll attract the wrong audience and experience lower conversion rates. Or if you stuff keywords in a title only to not provide this information in the video, audiences will bounce quickly.

It’s best to search for target keywords with a high search volume and low to moderate competition.

If many other B2Bs are marketing videos with a certain keyword, you won’t generate optimal results from your videos.

You can use specific keyword research tools like SEMRush or Ubersuggest to discover phrases that have a moderate search volume and more highly targeted audience with low to moderate competition (versus generic terms with high search volume and high competition).

Check the topics you’ve selected against the video tab in Google Search. Assess your competition.

Another option is to check out Google’s “related searches.” This will help you understand related issues your prospect faces. What’s showing up on page one? Rather than looking at it from a competitor standpoint, use this information to determine how you can be unique.

“Related searches” could also be great inspiration for a video series or playlist! Address each related question in a video.

Figure out how the problem has been addressed and if you can offer your own spin on it. With these queries in hand, you can begin creating a video series.

Before you start though, create a distribution strategy. Work with your demand gen manager, social media manager, and PPC or ABM agency to map the steps of the customer journey and ensure maximum visibility. After all, you shouldn’t invest time or effort into creating content unless you know you’ll put effort (and budget) to getting eyeballs on each piece.

4. Produce High-Quality Content

Although producing creative video content in B2B can be difficult, it’s not impossible.

Engaging videos lead to potential customers interacting with your brand and move them closer to the conversion stage.

So, how can you hook viewers and convert customers?

Produce videos that are relatable, educational, and interesting.

But most importantly, play on emotions. Pulling an emotional response from your target audience shows you really know what they care about and earns their trust. This in turn, leads to them investing in your brand.

Lastly, if you find yourself saying “you can also” too often, start rewriting your script. You’ve created another boring product video summarizing features. (Just because the product can do that, doesn’t mean they will. Start with WHY and make them care.)

Parting Advice

Adding video marketing into your content strategy doesn’t have to be painful.

You can start by going through your content marketing resources and deciding where you can pull relevant, engaging content that can be repurposed into a video.

Once you’ve tested the creation and production processes, deciding what worked and what didn’t for your team, you can invest more in video marketing.

Of course, you’ll want to have a solid plan in place- which doesn’t really differ too much from our standard content strategy template. Know your audience, research what content helps them right now, make something even better.

Using our detailed steps above you’ll be well on your way to developing a video marketing strategy that gets hits, and hits your marketing goals too.

If you’re looking for more video inspiration, check out our top picks for video marketing blogs:

The Best Blogs on Video Marketing (2019)

OR, check out how we break down B2B videos that are bringing creativity and fun to the field. Each post features three or more examples and creative concepts you can steal!