Business-to-Business Video

Video Worth Watching

Reaching the Real Decision Maker

Video goes beyond the presentation of information. It establishes a more powerful emotional connection with your viewers than is possible with text and graphics alone. That emotional connection ensures that your information is retained by the part of your viewer in which the real decision making happens – the emotional centres of the subconscious.

Video Tips

Don’t make a video about what you want to show.
Make it about what your audience wants to see.
Don’t create a video just to create a video. Your website video has to be interesting enough and the information must be valuable enough for someone who doesn’t live and breathe your company’s mantra to feel like it was worthwhile watching.

So before planning your video, talk to people who are representative of the audience you want the video to reach, find out the questions they have, and rank those questions in order of importance. You can then proceed to plan a video that answers those questions.
Present video in bite-size chunks.
It’s a good idea to keep your videos short – no more than one or two minutes long. If you’ve got 10 minutes of video content, take those 10 minutes and chop them into five succinct videos which your viewers can access interactively in any order they choose. If you try to force them to watch 10 or even 5 minutes of video in a linear fashion you’ll lose them.
If you’re selling something, sell it subtly.
Present information to your audience as a trusted independent expert, because ideally that’s how your video will position you. Make sure your video accurately reflects the problems your audience is trying to solve and the questions they have about those problems. Then give them some solutions, at least one of which doesn’t represent any additional cost for them. Honestly explain the pros and cons of each approach, including the use of your product or service, in the most important relevant situations.

Studies show that if your video conveys useful non-promotional information you will ultimately sell 3 to 10 times more than if you focus on product or service features and benefits.
Whenever possible, use real subject matter experts rather than actors.
Sometimes your in-house experts might not come across all that well on camera and you need to bring in some professional talent. However, your video will seem a lot more real to your viewers if the people speaking in it are the people that know and care the most about the topic. So to whatever extent possible, have your own people do the talking.

It’s also best if you don’t have them memorize a script. Just interview them on camera and let them answer questions in their own way.
Include a call to action.
Ensure that your video is just the beginning of your interaction with the viewers. Invite your viewers to enjoy even more benefits by deepening their engagement with you. You might, for example, offer them a more detailed PDF version of the topic discussed in the video, point them to related materials (such as other videos or web pages), or allow them to provide their contact information in return for something of value – perhaps a tip sheet or a free analysis. Make sure your video incorporates some means of easily continuing the communication with your viewers beyond the end of the video.
Use professional production.
You don’t need to spend a ton of money on website video, but in the B2B space it’s not as easy to get away with the ad hoc hand-held videos that can work really well for B2C organizations. Think through who will be viewing the videos. Is it the hip, iPhone wearing 23 year old, or is a mid-40’s VP of one of your client companies?
Optimize video meta tags for search engine discovery.
There are two essential elements for success in online video marketing. The first is presenting information your target audience actually cares about. The second is making sure they can find it.

To ensure your video can be easily found make generous use of every metadata opportunity a video hosting site gives you. Use every descriptor field available, both within the video file itself and in the information fields you can populate when you post the video. And, of course, make sure those descriptors reflect the keywords people are using to find the kind of content your video contains. You also need to do the same thing when you put a video on your own website.
Spend more time in planning than shooting.
This may be the most important tip.

Don’t just point a camera and shoot. Remember that 60 percent of the time involved in creating a successful business video is usually devoted to the strategy, which includes conceptual development, scripting and storyboards.