035. Leveraging Video Content for Your Demand Generation Strategy

Hello everyone, this is Emilio Garcia. Welcome to another episode of the Man Gen Studio. I'm really happy to have the opportunity to talk to you again and to share with you our program for today, leveraging video content for your demand generation strategy. I, I think you're going to enjoy it and you know, I think I'm going to share with you what we will discuss about this. So let's start with a little introduction on, on the topic itself. Why is this important? Well, um, obviously, um, right now, you know, everybody will agree that video is definitely not something new. So something that's been, you know, for years now being discussed as something important for marketers and sales teams to implement across the board. But at the same time, there are some things that have changed along the way that make it hard to implement, especially for demand generation programs. How do you incorporate them on your demand generation strategy? So while the adoption has been increasing tremendously, both from producers and consumers, there's still some doubts on what is the best way to take advantage of it. And that will be the goal for today. We will talk about a little bit of how it fits your demand generation strategy in general. Some digital, some video trends that are important for a demand generation specialist and finally some of the formats and the intended audience and outcomes that you can expect from some of the, of the type of videos that you can produce. Right? That's the other thing. Everybody knows the video is important, but sometimes the question is what kind of video should I make? And the format impact the audience, the goal and what you can accomplish. How do you measure success? So we will cover all those aspects. Definitely a statistic that I want to start with is that according to BrightCup, approximately 74% of B2B organizations are using video to engage with your customers. So it's a trend that definitely is taking, you know, like it's becoming mainstream for sure. Now what are some of the ways, and I will, I will share just very quickly, three of them. Some of the ways that you can use video to improve your demand generation program or strategy. The first one is that you can use them to transform your videos from, you know, something that becomes more brand awareness, to add some element of lead generation to them so they can become lead generation sources and eventually obviously revenue sources. And the best way to accomplish that is to add to some level some CTA or call to actions to it to them. Now this is especially tricky because video compared to other formats where for example, you have your landing page and you have your form and you have a clear offer, you Gotta experiment. How do you do that? Depending on the format and also the value that the video will offer, right? So very traditional ways is that you put just a wall in the form form to get access to a video. Ideally for something that is very high value, right? Think about a on demand webinar or information or case study or something that you have put a lot of work, especially if this, if it's research and if you want to people to have access to that, then the traditional form to put before the video is the way to go where it's a very clear expectation. Especially if you laid out what the video is going to be about, right. Like an outline or something like that. However, technology has improved over the years that you know, tools like Beachar or Wistia or Even, you know, HubSpot video now allows you to add elements of interaction at some other points in the in the engagement. For example, if you have a video where you explain in the video what will be the scope or share some initial tips or idea about it, then you can put that CTA later on the video to provide some value before you ask for that information. The other way is that maybe you do not you. You don't interrupt the performance or the video itself, but you allow to have an option, a pop up kind of like similar to what YouTube does. So you someone can subscribe or learn more in a document or a series of videos later on. So that's another way that you can incorporate that lead source element into your videos from, from where you have built in the past. And the best way to take advantage of that idea is to look at the videos that have the highest engagement. Either because you have a lot of volume on them or because a lot of people watch them fully. Those will be prime candidates to transform them from just brand awareness videos into lead generation ones. And you can obviously experiment on those, you know in the best way that you do you want to do it now. The other way that you can leverage video nowadays that was not available at the beginning is that there are again many tools now including YouTube and order order, you know, marketing oriented tools like BGR or Wistia or CRMs like HubSpot where you can analyze what people is doing with those videos, right? How long they are looking at them, what parts are more important. So you can use video analytics to identify which leads are warmer, right? So if you have your CRM and either your email marketing tool or your sales kind of like sequence, you are trying to understand which leads make sense to start reaching out first. Then you can use video to identify those leads and it's a great tool because you have a big, big granularity right on time span, all that. So you can create all these rules around for how long someone has seen a video, how many times they have seen it before triggering a behavioral condition to reach out to them. So take advantage of that. Right. Again, where it will make sense will be for videos where you have the most data and attribution on them and then use them as a way to trigger sequences or trigger email marketing automations. So definitely that's another way that you can leverage video for your demand generation program that in the past wasn't available that much. In a very similar sense, the other way that you can use it is to accelerate the performance of your ABM program. Right. So by definition, in theory, abm, while it has a big marketing component, relies heavily on the outreach of the sales team to go after those target accounts. And part of that usually involves sending some emails beyond phone calls or trying to reach through traditional mediums like mail even. But when you are sending emails, you have the opportunity to use video to either talk directly to the prospect or share some customer success stories or case studies in a different format. And just because it's not as common, that will bring a level of engagement that you will not see with traditional text emails as part of your program. So you can use it to accelerate your outreach portion of the ABM program and therefore the success of the overall endeavor. Right. One thing that I can share with you is that usually, you know, as statistics shows, personalized media content can increase response rates by almost more than 5% or 400%. Sorry. So your response rates are going to be higher just because you have that element of, you know, a human talking to another human that is harder to convey on an email, especially if I call one. Right. You might have that information from your analytic tools that the buy committee is looking on your company, but you still don't know who is the person that is searching. And even if you knew them, they don't know you. So BDU helps you to close that gap on, you know, a stranger reaching out through email. And that's a great way that you can use it. So those are three ideas that you can incorporate in your program. I will also want to cover some of the trends after this many years on video. They have evolved over time. Right. Some of the of the digital advertising trends for video that are helpful to understand as you adapt or change the way that you create video, especially for advertising that you know It's a big channel for demand generation. So one of the obvious one is that because of the explosion of social media platforms and how heavily they are relying on video now for some of the advertising formats now we have so many formats compared to the past, right. And one of the biggest impact that you can have on your experimentation is length. Right. So and what I'm saying here is experimentation is always important because you might think, and I think that the general trend is that videos becoming shorter and shorter, just like, you know, reading content. Right. I will say that probably we are migrating from the idea of, you know, like in content, big books or you know, kind of like encyclopedias to maybe kind of like blogs and tweets. So similar trend is happening in video where long term format is, is moving into shorter and shorter videos. And so that's a trend that especially with TikTok has been taking, you know, a spit even on B2B. So experiment with Linked. That's one of the best way to test it. Especially because there are some channels where specific lens are linked are the only ones allowed. Like when you advertise in YouTube at the beginning of another video, if you pick the right length, the viewer will not be able to skip it. But obviously has to be short enough for that not being a nuance. This happens on Facebook, right. There are some lengths on video where you can insert those video in between someone is watching something. So that's definitely a trend that is worth exploring. And the best way to do it is that for whatever offer you are putting there on advertising, when you are doing video campaigns, think about multiple banks, two or three and use them and compare the results for whatever goal you are measuring. Right. Is it a brand awareness or just conversions? Now definitely another one that is really, really important. But we continue to forget, especially if we are to, you know, the, the working on desktop and computers as most markers still are. Right. The tools that we use every day are not necessarily all the time on mobile, but our audiences use mobile especially for video a lot. Right. One of the latest studies by Lemonlight says that 62% of people rather watch video on mobile devices and tablets. And I can see, you know, from my own experience with new generation, the newest generations, that that percentage is even higher. Right. So really, really important to have that mindset that whenever you are creating video, think about mobile first and then desktop, which automatically changes the, the video format, right. So this vertical video becomes really important when doing advertising because that's mostly the format that most of your viewers will, you will see for Your advertising. And finally, really, really important to understand that video is impacting not just marketing, but sales. Right. And as we were saying, consider or as part of your effort, think about what kind of videos your sales team can use as they during their reach out process, during the portion of the, of the sales process where they share content with prospects and opportunities about the success stories of your company. Bidio can be a very helpful tool to convey you know, about the company, about the products and services that you offer, about your success stories, about the onboarding. Right. What happens after their purchase. You can leverage video beyond marketing to accomplish that very well. So there are some trends there. And finally another question that we get all the time related to how do you can better leverage video is well, I know that I need to make some video for my company and to leverage these new trends, but what formats should I select? Right? And the important thing to think about is that for every format that you have in mind, think it as a series or a playlist on YouTube. Right? That will be a great way to think about it is once you pick one, it doesn't mean that you can only do one, but once you pick one for that playlist, stick to it, right? Keep it consistent because people usually will be expecting that format on and on. The best example, if for example, you start a series where you have interviews and then you shift into tips or Q&As or similar format changes, your audience will get confused because they were expecting this initial format that you have. So try to stick to it. And if you want to try a different one, then create a new kind of like playlist or a new series or a new show, if you want to call it that way. So create these streams of formats that you can have in multiple streams, of course, course. But it's important to lay them out together. Now let us explore some of the formats and their purpose. The first one will be company culture video. This kind of video is usually very good for brand awareness. It's usually part of your company website and describes either your company or some of your products that will be the use cases and, and your audience here is people that is, you know, learning about your company and your products and sometimes is potential employees. So you have two audiences to break it down and think about that. When you're creating them, are you talking to your prospects? Are you talking to your potential employees? These are the kind of videos that bring a lot of data because a lot of people watch them and usually they're short and you know, again, top of funnel. Think about top of funnel. And the way that you measure success is usually just consumption because that's pretty much the goal for them both at the website level and the video itself. Now another format is the interview or the question and answer video. This is a great format to engage with your community or create a community and to make them part of your, of your company in some ways. Right. So it can be that you're interviewing people that is knowledgeable in the industry and that way you, you know, build relationships and potential referrals and recommendations within the community or you can be interviewing your potential clients or customers. In that way it becomes more of a brand awareness slash consideration kind of effort. And depending on those ideas, that will be the measure of success that you will have. Right. In theory, one of the things that happen is that as you reach out to some of these, for example, industry leaders or potential prospects, they will start asking about your company and business opportunities will come from that. So it's also a great way to leverage their networks because usually they will want to promote the content that you create together to take advantage of that too. Right. It's, it's a great format there. Now the next one will be the explainer video. This is probably the one that requires the most editing and you know, time invest on creation. They are great to showcase the expertise that your company has to explain features and especially if you have a product, things that customers can accomplish with them. They're hard to produce, but they are great for that consideration stage if you're explaining how the product works before the purchase. And they're also a great tool for customer success if you are producing them to help new customers embrace the product and, and improve the chances of retention and especially satisfaction because usually you will lower your customer success requests or inquiries because they have access to material where they can learn how to use your product. And obviously it adds up on top of the reading content. So depending on those scenarios. Right. It can be a great consideration tool. It can be a great customer success retention tool for you. Now, live videos, like the ones we are doing or the one that I'm doing right now, the great thing about them is that allows you to, you know, they are usually the ones that feel more authentic and approachable because they have lower investment in terms of production. Not necessarily all the time. Right. There are video productions on live video that are heavily on, you know, people and hardware and editing even. So that doesn't mean that it's not necessarily polished, but usually you have the ability to, you know, just like I'm doing right now talk to your webcam sometimes put in some presentation and even if you have a large crowd have the opportunity to interact with them in real time. So is great also for you know, brand awareness to you can use it to mix some of the ideas that we have discussed before writing. You can make live video into interviews. Explain to some extent explain your video and real explain your product in real time. But the but the greatest benefit of live video is that you can reach so many audience at the same time. Right. You connect other social media platforms beyond your own website and then you have this that discoverability and awareness that you can have at the beginning and then it becomes a resource on demand that you could transform into a series. So great tool to leverage video in that way. The order format very well known, right. Webinar online events more traditional. This is the one that is usually created more for lead generation, right. It gives the opportunity to for example send a newsletter to your database or to just through the landing page promote it on social and request those emails and maybe some information about the prospect so you can follow up with a lead nurturing campaign if it makes sense. Obviously it requires a lot of preparation in terms of the topics that you're going to cover. Usually includes interviews great lead generation source. And while it's a more traditional format, it still makes sense for some scenarios, especially if you have more technical things to discuss with a smaller audience. And it's a great tool to start conversations after if some of the attendees have questions. Right? Right. So that will be a great resource. The next one will be case studies video. Obviously for this format you are taking your success start with customers a step up from just having reading content because here you have the opportunity to actually record your customer talking about your company and their experience with their product or service that you offer. And that's very, very valuable. It gives more authenticity to those case studies that you can build. Obviously here you are targeting people that are down the funnel closer to making that decision. And BDU can complement and support the case studies that you have on your website. Think about them also to sharing with opportunities in emails. And again it gives more strength to your case. And so it's a great way to showcase the success of your company and also strength the relationship with your current ones. So great way to use them. In a similar way testimonial videos are thinking about the bottom of the funnel very similar to the case studies. The only difference is that it's more about the overall experience and you can leverage them for the same idea. So those are some of the formats that you can experiment with. As you can see, you can go from you you can use video to cover brand awareness with, you know, company culture videos with even some live events. You can cover the lead generation portion with webinars mostly and sometimes interviews or how to videos and and definitely you can cover the bottom of the funnel and customer retention with case studies, testimonials, and how to videos. So you can cover the whole buying process and use video to complement some efforts that you might have already with reading content. It's a great way to do that. So I hope you have found value in this episode. Don't miss the next one. Subscribe to the Magent Studio on the link that I'm showing here and until then, I wish you have a great day. See you.