7 tips for Video Marketing
Why video marketing should be included in your B2B marketing strategy, and how to get started?
YouTube is currently one of the largest video platforms in the world. YouTube processes more than 3 billion searches a month. 100 hours of video are uploaded every minute. The volume of uploads – at around 500 hours per minute – also shows how important video content is today. Well-produced videos can be entertaining, educational as well as useful. So it’s no surprise that video content creation is also at the top of the agenda for many B2B companies. Whether it’s a product, explainer, or image video: What is needed for successful implementation is first of all a solid video content strategy, which is what this post is all about.
1. What is video marketing?
Video marketing has now established itself as a powerful and up-to-date component of marketing strategies. Many companies in B2C and B2B already use videos to communicate their messages to their target groups.
Various formats have developed in the process: in addition to purely promotional videos, many companies now rely on informative explainer videos. This enables companies with products and complex services that require explanation to position themselves as experts in their market.
The use of video marketing in combination with the use of social media is particularly effective. Involving and entertaining video content is happily viewed and shared there, allowing your videos to achieve a wider reach. Videos about case studies, tutorials, and explainer videos are also suitable for integration into a blog. This increases the time users spend on your website, which incidentally also has a positive impact on your on-page SEO performance.
2. Success factors for your video content strategy
Success factors for your video content strategy Before moving with your video production, you should start with mapping out your available resources, your target audiences, and your choice of topics. Video production requires time for planning and project management, as well as technical expertise for shooting and editing. Thus, personnel from your marketing team will be tied to the project. You may also want to engage agency support, which will incur costs that you should factor into your resource planning.
3. Target Group
Think about who is the target groups you want to reach with your videos. Which topics are at the top of your target groups’ agenda and should therefore be addressed? Which media do your target groups use to inform themselves? Do they use social media, for example? Then you should share your video content there. What benefits do you want your target groups to derive from the video? Is there a call-to-action they should follow? This could be downloading a pdf with tips and tricks on your website or registering for one of your newsletters for example.
You can discuss all of these basic questions using a handy empathy map. We have already summarized how this works for you in the blog article “How to create a customer journey map“.
4. Content
Based on the results of your target group analysis, you can group together the topics that are relevant to your target groups. This creates a practical video content plan for each target group. For each topic area, think about exactly what added value and benefits your company offers your target groups here, and collect ideas in the team about which formats (e.g., tutorial or product film) you can use to convey your messages most clearly.
5. Engagement
Your aim is to inspire and convince your target groups with your videos.
To do this, it is essential that your videos are as engaging as they are informative. Videos that tell a story are the most successful. That’s why storytelling plays an important role in video marketing. Videos that explain a story in a coherent and comprehensible way stay in the viewer’s memory longer, because the brain processes them like real experiences. The challenge lies in developing a strong and comprehensible story.
Many videos are based on the following approach: There is a main character – the hero of the story. He or she has a certain problem. The solution to the problem must succeed because something is at stake for the hero. And, of course, your product, service, or special process can solve the problem particularly well. Transferred to your marketing for industrial applications, the solution to the problem can be, for example, time savings, higher throughput, or the optimization of a process.
6. Storyboard
With the information you gathered about the content, added value, and the right hook for your target groups, you can continue with the development of a Storyboard. Here, it is advisable to focus on your company WHY? what are your DESIRES, UNIQUENESS, and MOTIVATION.
7. In conclusion:
The increasing number of searches in video platforms such as YouTube shows that video marketing should be an important part of your marketing mix.
In the B2B sector, especially explainer and product videos, as well as success stories and tutorials, are established video formats to convince target groups of the benefits of your products and solutions. Before you get into the concept of your first video, you should first define a framework by looking at your WHY, target groups, content, and added values and combine them into a rough story. This will give you a good starting point that will help you put together a blueprint of video assets that will engage and inspire your target audiences to the maximum.
