Doing Video Marketing Well for a Business Audience
Video is a channel which is often overlooked by businesses selling to other business.This is a mistake, as videos can be a great way of driving brand engagement, generating leads and giving warm leads the nudge they need to buy.If you think about the last few pieces of content colleagues shared with you, both work related and personal, how many of them were videos? We'll bet it is quite a high proportion, because video offers a method of delivering information much more quickly than if the same information is read.We can listen at a rate of 1,000 words per minute, so audio is a fantastic tool for getting information into people's brains and processed efficiently.Add visuals to this, whether that's someone talking, a demonstration, or slides, and you're engaging two senses at the same time, driving engagement even harder.
Business viewers use webinars more than any other type of video content, with demonstrations coming in second followed by explainer videos.All of these styles can be used by any industry, so there's no reason you can't explore video as a marketing tactic.Most business orientated videos are viewed on a desktop PC screen in the morning, and Thursday sees the most views for business users, followed by Wednesday. The likely reason behind this is that viewing is being done in work hours and on work equipment, and at a time of the week when most projects are making good progress and urgent issues have been dealt with.It's worth ensuring your video looks just as good on a mobile or tablet screen as a desktop one, but it's an interesting insight into the behaviour of the business video viewer.In terms of length, under two minutes seems to be the goal, as 68% of people will watch the full video if it is under 60 seconds in length. This drops to 18% for videos longer than that.
In order to make the most of your video engagement you should be able to track what actions people take afterwards. The easiest way to do this is host the video on your own website or to embed a YouTube upload to a page. You can then track how long people stay on the page and what people do after watching your video. Depending on the nature of your video you may even include a contact form on the same page to encourage contact.
The format of your video is decided mainly by the type of business you do. If it's a consultancy or design business then a demonstration could be difficult. A webinar would be a more appropriate format or a video where one of your top talent talks through their part of the creative process.If you have a lot to say then create a series of mini-webinars, all in bite size chunks which team perfectly with the morning coffee break.
As most business videos are viewed in the morning and towards the end of the week this is the best time to notify your email list that there's new content, even if you have uploaded it earlier in the week (just remember the difference between upload date and notification date when looking at the statistics!). For a series this can work really well because people will be looking forward to the next instalment.
Make sure your video can be easily shared. People may share it socially using Facebook or LinkedIn, or they may email the link to a colleague.If you can include a call to action to share at the end of the video or in text underneath you should see a greater number of views and reach far more people, so you need to make it interesting and valuable enough for people to want to tell their colleagues or friends.
Video marketing is suitable for businesses of all sizes, and whether you have the talent in-house or you're using a third party, it shouldn't be ignored as an efficient marketing technique.
