B2B Video Marketing
Three best practices to consider before pursuing a B2B video marketing program.
It’s no secret that web-enabled video is booming. Driven by the combination of an increasingly sturdy infrastructure to support its delivery and the growing popularity of online streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu, consumers of all stripes are spending more time watching video on personal devices. So marketing plans and advertising budgets are being adjusted accordingly, as brands seeks to take advantage of the shift in behavior and make online video a bigger contributor in their marketing mix.
Here are the three key issues that are top-of-mind with marketers when it comes to B2B video marketing.
1. It’s Easy to Do Video Advertising Badly. To be sure, it’s never been easier to create videos. However, while the means of production is readily accessible for just the cost of an iPhone, the other requisite – and costly – inputs haven’t changed. Sophisticated videos still require a multifaceted team comprised of a copywriter, art director, talent (performer), editor, and post-production expert to create a quality asset. Any attempt at cutting corners typically results in a shoddy asset that has the potential to hurt a brand’s marketing efforts more than it helps. That’s not to say there are exceptions – there are, and they get a lot of attention. But they are just that: exceptions.
Implication for B2B companies: Due mainly to its price tag, but also because of the relative complexity required to do video well, quality video marketing remains the purview of large companies with deep pockets and the means to create compelling assets, either using internal resources or with the help of agencies.
2. Video Is The Champagne of Online Marketing Channels, But Most Companies Can Do Just Fine With The House Table Wine.
Video is a major attraction to both senior marketing managers and also non-marketing executives, and for good reason. Only over the past decade video become a viable advertising option for the mainstream. For most of the second half of the 20th century, video advertising (with all of its barriers to entry) was almost exclusively reserved for household consumer brands like Coca-Cola, General Motors, and Nike.
The development of reliable wireless broadband and the emergence of platforms like YouTube and Instagram have changed all that, of course. And this has democratized video advertising. But just because it’s available doesn’t necessarily make it a good fit. Indeed, for most small and mid-sized companies, alternative digital channels such as search and display offer more options by way of speed-to-market, testing, and optimization.
Implication for B2B companies: Though video can be used as a direct response tactic – think of all the late night infomercials and class-action-lawsuit-recruiting pitches – it’s most effective as a component of a multichannel, sustained campaign. In other words, it’s part of a solution, not the solution. At least not for most B2B companies. In this kind of a use case, video reinforces messages and offers being delivered via complementary channels, both online and off. For years, I worked on acquisition campaigns for a big telecom company. We used video as an upper funnel tactic to establish awareness, and reaped the benefits later on in the lower funnel area of the customer journey.
3. Many Brands Want to Jump Into Video Advertising With Both Feet, But Markets Need Education. Even experienced and savvy marketers are prone to miscalculating what’s required to manage campaigns that rely on video to be successful. First and foremost, budgets get out-of-whack right out of the gate, as ‘workable media’ metrics get wonky simply due to what’s required to create the video asset. That’s not the case with brands that have been running TV spots for decades, of course, but rather for companies trying to move upstream in the online advertising value chain.
Accustomed to an environment where advertising units can be churned out easily in hundreds or even thousands of variations – as is the case with search, display and even content marketing – the usual rules go out the window with video advertising. So the entire digital marketing methodology that most active online promoters have adopted, which is based on a plan-design-launch-analyze-repeat methodology, doesn’t really work with video advertising, nor does that last-touch attribution metric which we’re all, however sheepishly, still embracing.
Implication for B2B companies: Taking a measured approach to pitching video ad solutions to senior leadership is the smart path. There’s no doubt about where video advertising is headed. Along with the voice/speech category, video is on an upward trajectory that will last for years. Everyone loves video: consumers, executives, B2C, B2B, domestic, and international audiences alike. There’s no better package for message delivery.
And it’s why the entertainment industry (using TV and movies as its backbone) remains just about as relevant today as it’s ever been, even in the wake of the internet revolution that was supposed to decimate the category. However, just as it’s difficult to make a quality, differentiated TV show or movie, so is the case with online video advertising. It’s part art and part science, and requires a ‘secret sauce’ to be effective. B2B brands will be well-deserved by wading carefully and deliberately into this space.
[This article was first published in May 2019.]
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Tim Bourgeois is a director at East Coast Catalyst, a B2B PPC agency. Contact him at tbourgeois (at) eastcoastcatalyst.com to learn how ECC can help your organization with B2B inbound lead generation.