They said that video killed the radio star, but in truth, video is starting to kill all other marketing mediums. Ok, maybe kill is a bit strong of a word, but video content is swiftly becoming the most prevalent and popular way to market your brand to as many people as possible. This is for numerous reasons, and it’s not looking like said reasons are going to abate any time soon. So, let’s take a look at why video content is becoming so popular a tool in B2B marketing, and how you can truly optimise it to your advantage.
First let’s talk about how video content works in marketing. We all know and love online videos (sail cat will forever come to mind when thinking about iconic web videos), but a lot of the videos we see are short, fun pieces of content that quickly improve our mood and we forget even faster. In B2B marketing, unlike B2C, the aim is to be remembered. Therefore, it is important to reach a perfect middle ground between light hearted and informational. You need to get your message across, be it about a service/ product you offer, B2B news or something else, in an informative way. What you want to avoid, however, is a 10-minute video overloaded with information and figures. Chances are, anyone looking at it will simply ignore it in favour of something that won’t fry their brain and continue to scroll. Keep your videos short and to the point, then direct them to either a landing page or post that goes into further depth on that subject. Once the person is more invested in you, they can then be exposed to longer content. For starters though, try and keep it to 3 minutes or below.
Needless to say, your video content has to be visually engaging on top of being informational. Nobody is going to be drawn in by a plain white background with black text bullet points and nothing else on it. Video content is where you have the opportunity to truly have fun and play around with design (within reason that is). Use colour, animation and audio in tandem to create a unique sensory experience for the user, one that will stay in their mind for a while yet and remind them of your brand. This is your chance to be bold and stand out – leave the plain text where it belongs (in your blogs, case studies and site pages).
Speaking of written content, it doesn’t just have to be done once and forgotten. Whilst video content is indeed becoming more popular, people will always prefer different content mediums to others. This is why not everything should be brand new in video marketing – try repurposing every once in a while. If you have a piece of written content that you want everyone to see or you simply want to refresh it in their memories, try turning it into a video! This way you can reach out with the same information to everyone, regardless of which medium they engage with better. It also allows you a break in your schedule of posting new content regularly. Repurposing content is always your best bet when you don’t have any new news or information to put out (always maintain that content schedule!)
Now I’m not saying you have to focus all of your new content creation in video, it’s important to maintain a healthy balance. Only do it if the information you’re trying to get across can translate seamlessly into a video format, and only do it for information you truly need to get out into the world. But it is a proven fact that video is becoming the most efficient marketing tool in this day and age. Diode Digital recently conducted a study that found online videos as a marketing tool can be up to 600% more effective than direct and print mail together. Sounds downright appealing, doesn’t it? But let’s end this (rather one sided, you ok there?) conversation discussing why videos have invaded B2B marketing.
One thing you might not have thought of, I certainly didn’t, was the SEO of it all. Ah yes, our good friend SEO. Always there, always watching. Not only do videos work incredibly well on social media, but pages that contain videos naturally rank higher on search result pages than those that don’t. One little video on your page could mean the difference between being result no.9 and result no.549. Furthermore, adding video content to your emails will help you stand out amongst the hundreds of plain text emails your target is likely to receive over the course of a day. They will be drawn in by your video and instead of moving you immediately to the spam/delete folder, actually follow through on the CTAs you choose to include.
So, there you have it. Why video content is rising so high in B2B marketing and how to optimise it to the best of your ability. Now, go forth and conquer the small (or big) screen!
