071. How to Leverage Video Marketing to Drive B2B Demand

Foreign. Welcome back to Demand Gen Studio. My name is Miranda Jenkins and joined by Emilio Garcia. How's it going?

Hi, how are you, Miranda? Doing great. Another Friday, another episode of Demand Gen Studio.

Yeah, for sure. So today we're actually going to be talking about video marketing and how to leverage video marketing to drive demand in B2B. When you think back to say, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago, video having video for your content marketing was like the, you know, best case scenario, like you were really putting in the work to create like top level content. But that's really changed in the last, you know, few years. And video is really no longer just like nice to have for B2B, but it's really becoming the driving content format for marketing. So to get started out, I'm just going to kind of go through some stats to enforce that idea. So according to Vidyard, 74% of marketers said that video content outperformed any other content types that they were using to drive conversions. And according to Forbes, 75% of business executives and professionals watch work related videos on LinkedIn at least twice a week. And then according to a study done by the B2B house in 2024, 88% of B2B buyers have watched video content in the last month to learn about products or services. 91% of B2B tech buyers and 75% of manufacturing buyers and 68% of B2B financial services buyers prefer video content, overwritten content specifically to learn about complex product or service information. And then lastly, 93% of B2B buyers say that video is very important in building trust in the brand that they're ultimately going to choose. So I think all these statistics just kind of reinforce that idea that taking the extra step and the extra effort to produce video content can really go a long way in terms of return on investment. I don't know if you have any thoughts around that, Emilio.

I think you said it quite clearly with the stats because I'm gonna reinforce something that you're saying every time that you share one is buyers. That's the key, right? You got me thinking with this topic on a conversation that I was reading on into LinkedIn about someone talking about AI, writing how it's going to become something. And that person referenced some other trend, right? Which was mobile first when initially, right. IPhone became popular, everyone started to use the browser, the websites were not prepared. And I remember when, you know, like the whole trend was mobile first, but really the users weren't there, right? Was mostly people in the frontier of technology saying, well, this is coming. But most people wouldn't use them. But you, you move to a threshold, it's usually 5%. The moment that 5% of the population start using a new technology and then it flips and it flips quickly and that happens to mobile. I had the same sensation about video because you know how right now HubSpot is, is talking about a ton about AI. Years ago, their push on their marketing platform was video. And I remember thinking, you know, this is great, gotta, you know, dabble a little bit. But thinking about myself, I'm, I consume a ton of content. Reading. I, I didn't used to or I didn't used to yet. I. Video wasn't my format and because it was in my format, I was very acceptable about, you know, I don't think it's going to replace reading blogs or just longer reading content. But it happens to me as well. Right. I flip. And, and typically what people think is, well, now you are not reading now on top of reading, I'm watching a ton of videos now. And it is as you're describing, sometimes you want to learn about something that is very complex and scanning through text is very cumbersome. And watching a short video really helps to save you from thousands of words that will be hard to explain. Very complex process. And so I love what you're sharing here, which is, I guess my point to our audience right now is video right for you? Yes. As you're saying, right. It's not a must or nice to have any more for pretty much any industry. But, but still, still gotta be for your audience, right? Look at the habits of your audience, not you as a marketer. Because us as marketers probably will it make a ton of sense. But is, is your audience consuming video right now? And if he's not consuming video as much as the rest of other audiences, I will say they probably will. It's just a matter of time. But definitely what your buyers are doing is the, the main driver. And as you share on those statistics across the board, video is here to stay, is growing, it's just getting faster. And just like any other format, like reading content is getting shorter. Right. Our attention, spam, that's not new either. Right. We went from books to, you know, white papers to blog pieces, to post, to tweets. The same is happening with video. So I think that trend is not stopping either.

Yeah. And I mean every, like your listeners, they're always going to have like the specific, different ways that we as individuals learn and absorb information. The best. But if you're like, I was especially going through college where you have to read, I always wanted to find the electronic version of every textbook that I had so that I could have the, the audio portion of it. And if you listen to audio, you know, if you absorb and remember books more, if you're listening to the audiobook versus reading. But it also adds another layer of like, connection to the company because you're seeing, you're, you know, hearing the information. You're seeing usually a, you know, stakeholder from the company, an employee from the company in the video. And you're kind of building on that emotional resonance and trust building within your company because it's giving your buyers a chance to like, you know, kind of see the back end of the company and associate a face and a voice with your company.

Yes, I agree. That's the other thing that video can do that, as you said. Right. Every, every additional layer of interaction makes a difference. So yes, such a big difference between reading what someone writes versus what someone says versus actually watching the expressions of that person. I think that's another great component. And the other one that I think is a very important one is the level of competition on the topics that you want to be an expert on or want to consider be authority. Right. Again, I don't want to overuse AI on this one, but. And I'm not going to say that video will not be taken over. It's being taken over by AI for sure already, but it is going to take the longest. And so it's way more difficult to create. Therefore the barrier of entry is higher. Therefore, if you create something on, on video, you will have less competition. And the other one that we have talked about many, many times is that is the most flexible format that you can get. Right. You can make video and transform it into audio very easily and transform it into written content very easily. Another one that I love about it is, especially when you're trying to get your subject matter expert from your company to, to contribute to content creation, it's very hard for, for them to maybe gather their thoughts on a reading format, but it's way easier to just record them. And if they don't feel comfortable in the camera, you can just use the audio. But it's so easy to extract or gather thoughts from someone through video.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think we've gone over the.

Yeah, we oversold it.

Using video. So now getting into the. Using video to really drive conversions for B2B. So when we're thinking of the conversion funnel what are your best recommendations for the types of videos to produce for high level, you know, awareness? Top of funnel and then we'll go through the rest.

Yeah, here is fortunately where you know this quote that I mention all the time about Jeff business, about what isn't changing, it matters, right? Is yes, new technologies will come and dwindle, but there's some basic principles that haven't changed because they're based on human behavior and psychology and not on technology. And this one is no different, which is whatever you're going to share about your company, about your B2B brand, have to be tailored to the level of engagement or awareness or the stage of the buyer of your service and products. So as you are asking properly there, Miranda, your videos have to match that level of awareness. And you know, there's so many models out there, but the ones that obviously everyone knows is about awareness, consideration and decision. So typically you want to create videos that match that idea and I'm sure we will, you know, you will walk through some of the examples. But the general idea, the basic general idea is you want to be known, you want to be. Sometimes they call it like, or that someone knows your point of view. So someone can identify with your point of view, which is in the middle. And finally you want your, your buyer, that person to trust the company or trust individual. And so those are the three levels of how we meet, how we meet people. Right. First we introduce ourselves and say what we are all about. Then we express our point of view and people might like it or not, and if they like it, they want to know that they can trust you because obviously talk is easy, talk is cheap. Can you walk the talk? That's the part that is hard. So your videos have to match that concept.

Yeah. So thinking about the top level awareness, I think sometimes we like to overcomplicate things, but in reality it's so, so simple. If you just think about it in terms of like, if this is for awareness, you know, topic level, you're reaching someone who's unaware of your company. What is the first thing, what's the first impression you want to give them through video? If you're thinking about it in terms of like you're meeting someone for the first time, what's the most important thing about you? That you want them to leave the conversation knowing about you and it's not going to be getting super in depth of like, you know, the, a very detailed thing about you. It's kind of the more high level, just giving them an introduction to who you Are what you're about and kind of that, yeah, that first impression that you want to leave them with. Using short, like clips on LinkedIn is a great way to do this. Just like a short brief, you know, this is who we are, this is what we do. And then down, further down the funnel you get into the detailed. This is how we do it. But top of level, I would stick to the this is who we are, this is what we stand for. You know, things like that.

Yes. I cannot stress enough how important is that and how important are the awareness level videos? Because we tell to clients this, right? If you break down your addressable market into those three buckets, the largest one by far and will always be, will be the group of people that have no idea who you are and what do you stand for, what do you do? Just like with our personal network, right? Most people in the world don't know about us. And so a brand, basically what it does is condensates the idea of what a company do, right? A very hard, very hard concept. And you just have to. That's what I love about B2C that you have such great examples of companies that do it, right. Think about these big brands, right? Nike, Apple, Tesla, you know, and it can be any kind of peloton, whatever, whatever category you pick, Jetty or whatever, it will be immediately clear to you that they invest a ton of time on just one idea. Sometimes I use the expression, you know, the, the Netflix tax, right? We can hold about a brand or a company at most maybe two or three concepts and that's it. Because we live busy lives and we are. The other thing that is hard for people to see is that we as sellers or the marketers that are representing the company, we, we dedicate a ton of our thinking about our company for sure. But our buyers, we are buyers of so many things, right? We are, you know, we buy so many things, so we only have just a sliver of our attention to put some tag on our neural network and place the brand on some place in our brain. And so you want to make sure that the most thing that you want to know, be known for is clear on those awareness videos. For sure.

Yeah, definitely. So then moving down into like more mid funnel video content, this is where you really want to start thinking about building trust with your brand, the viewer. And you can start getting into the more detailed of how we do it, talking more about products that you offer, you know, filling product walkthroughs and then also touching on case studies and customer stories to just Continue to like build that trust and kind of start showing some proof and then also thinking through, starting to get into your buyer's problem statement and, you know, developing video content around that of what are the main issues and problem statements that your buyers have going through the buying process and how do we solve them?

Yeah, here is where the bulk of you know, the marketing techniques, I guess, to express what makes you different from a company can be, can be leveraged. Right. And you said some of them is think about the problems you solve, right? That's one way of thinking about the problems you solve. The other one is the capabilities of your company. Right. What, what is your toolkit to solving those problems? Think about obviously the outcomes, right. What is it that someone's going to get if they use your service or product? And definitely the benefits or what someone will call the impact, which is not exactly the same. Right. Sometimes you get something, but the point is, what's the impact of that, what I will get out of it as a benefit or something that I will avoid. So this is where you have the most options to dive into all those and cater to different. In the branding world, they call it category entry points. Right. We think about, we hold the concept of a brand in our brains, but we retrieve it on certain situations, almost like a query that you will do on Google. So it is like building your brain a little bit of an index where the brand is in or the service is in multiple category entry points. And you want to reinforce those. And the way that you reinforce them is by expressing those problems you solve solutions that you pro provide benefits of those solutions and even the outcomes or the impact. And definitely, as you're saying, you know, how you back it up with success stories and case studies and testimonials and social proof in general, not just from your clients, but from other figures of authority in the industry. Because again, going back to what we do as humans, when we meet someone and we want to deal with that person, we don't only take what they say about themselves. We ask around, we ask other people for references. And especially if a good reference comes from someone that we respect, that will be super valuable.

Definitely. And then moving into the really bottom of the funnel, video ideas using for marketing purposes, you could definitely think about doing some videos handling objections that buyers typically have. You know, think about as they're at the bottom of the funnel, they're right there close to the finish line of getting to making the sale. And so thinking of objections that they might have or thinking through like a video explaining what's it going to look like working with us, you know, after you have. For the post buying experience. But then this, the bottom of the funnel is also a really good opportunity to think about creating video content for sales enablement that you can use for the sales team to have, whether it's like personalized prospecting videos that they can have as resources to send out when they're going through the sales process. And then also maybe doing proposal walkthroughs in video format where it just kind of helps take a little bit off the sales team and give them some good resources to use in their, you know, their sales processes.

Yeah, this is a tricky one because we, and I'm thinking of some examples of this, you know, great experiences that some companies build. But the idea is that someone knows who you are, what do you do and what they can trust you is necessary, but it's not sufficient. Because the other part of the psychology of buying is that now we, once a buyer feels like, you know, there's an option for them out there in the marketplace, now they have to fight the status quo. Right? Rarely someone will say, I have a problem and I discover a solution and immediately take action. It's not necessarily what happens right away because for whatever reason they're solving their current problem with something else. There's a substitute that is not optimal, but do the job. And, and there's a cost of changing. Just the mere fact of reaching out and saying, I want to know more about this and I want to get a quote. And not just that is typically for B2B, that will typically mean that there's additional cost related to procuring the service or the product, training, changing tools, thinking about integrations. And so there are so many things that, you know, might be objections obviously beyond trust that need to be addressed. And so if, if we can address those objections, as you're saying, to, to help people take action, that's what you want to do at the, at the bottom of the funnel. How do you make it easy? How do you make it frictionless? The, I guess one great example I'm going to use Tesla on this one, right. Is if you think about the process of buying a new car, right? You want a new car, but what do you have to do? Well, you have to go to the dealership, right. And skip appointment and talk to someone and then try to test the car and all those things. And if you want to, you can do that in Tesla, of course. But I find it interesting that they have this little button that you pretty Much make a symbolic deposit, right. I don't remember, 250 or $500. And then you pretty much start the process of buying the car. That's kind of. Or Carvana is another great example of, you know, I'm going to sell my car. Well then I have to publish it on some place and then have conversation with strangers that will kind of haggle the price if, if you can just give me a quote and someone coming here and taking my car and give me my money. So I know that those examples are more about how do you procreate the product. But that's basically what you're trying to convey on those videos at the end, right? Is that yes, you want to take the step and the things that you dread about taking action. We got you cover is the hardest part, to be honest, because you have to be intimate with the things that make your product easy to buy. Right? That's the idea. But if you can reflect that on video, that's fantastic.

Yeah, that's one area that I feel like video is an easier format to have those conversations because it has that emotional tie, you have that human connection where it can come across so much less salesy than any other format.

Oh, I remember one, one critical example. Geico, right. Even their tagline 15 minutes can save you. I don't remember what the amount is, but that's the point because they know that the biggest reason why people don't change insurance even when they know they probably will save money or any other service, right. Like your trash can service or Internet service is because it's going to take a long time. Right. You have to unsubscribe from one another. If you convey on your messaging or in this case on video, that is just obviously you have to back it up by having really a product that can do that. But that's the messaging that you want to take at the very bottom to activate sales.

So now you have all your ideas, you have all the like nuggets in your brain of what, you know, the types of video that you're going to start producing. So now we're going to talk a little bit about the distribution strategy for video content. And we at Boundify for our content that we produce, we are big believers in the idea of pillar content, of taking a main, you know, larger source of content. For us, this, that's our podcast. So once a month we have about roughly 30ish minutes worth of content that we produce at the podcast and then turning that one piece of pillar content and breaking it down to a bunch of different additional assets. So for us that's taking the clips of the podcast for social media on LinkedIn and YouTube shorts and all of that. And then we have the blog that kind of summarizes the podcast and then the newsletter where we take bits from the blog and send it out in the newsletter. So the idea of having that one thinking through the one piece of your pillar content ideally will be video format and then thinking of ways of breaking it down either even further. I don't know if you have any additional know recommendations around that idea.

Yes, some general ideas or comments I know marketers and companies struggle with is one key that you mentioned is that ratio of creation to distribution. And trust me when I say everyone that is listening here, I fall prey of every single one of these recommendations they're going to make. Right. I myself kind of like in Jumarand are witness of that that I kind of like get forget about my own recommendations when we are doing content for ourselves is that most companies worry too much about content and very little about distribution. If you have to choose create less and distribute more, that's one important important thing. Now the reason why content creation itself is so difficult is because, and this applies to any kind of creative work is we try to focus on the, in the creative part, on the inspiration part, rather than the discipline of creating, right? So it is I guess like people that write books and people that write content. If you just think that you will wake up in the morning and wait for inspiration to struck, that will not happen. You, you need to plan for it. You will not be great at the beginning. You will get better over time. And ideally you have a set of running ideas that is based on the, on the things that you want to share with the audience, but also the questions that your buyers have. So having your having your bucket of ideas and being disciplined about the content creation process itself is super important. And that's why pillar content is so helpful. Because typically it's way easier to say let me plan for creating content or creating video about this big topic where I can cover a ton of ideas at the same time and then breaking it down into smaller pieces for distribution. The way that we do it is not the only one, right? You can record a big video and then break it down into pieces talking about a topic. We collaborate with another agency that actually focus on, you know, live production video and they, they follow a different idea because sometimes you say, well, I know that I'm going to talk about all these different concepts. I'd rather Make a brief about it and then record all those sections and then edit them and release them to the world. But it doesn't change the fact that typically you select themes. It can be an ongoing set of ideas that you break down on a monthly basis or it can be something that you set up on a quarterly basis. But having that discipline of planning will help you to be consistent about the creation process itself. And on the distribution part, the reason you want to do that is because again I use an example. If you create the video and just put it on YouTube or worse, just let it go in your website, the chances of someone stumbling upon it will be very slim. So you want to leverage the channels that you have available and start sharing small pieces so people can go back to the source and learn more.

And producing video is the most like, it takes the most effort of the different types of, of content. So you want to, you know, you want to make sure that the juice is worth the squeeze and try to think of as many opportunities and avenues that you can repurpose the work and the time that you put in, you know, to create video content. My like biggest recommendation for marketers listening to this whole or just getting started with video content is just, you just have to start, you just have to like get started. So some tips for execution and getting started with video content. You can of course a great option is to outsource production with you know, high quality professional level video production. Shout out to 98 Central local here, you know, in Greenville.

Great job.

That's a. Yes, that's a great video production firm that a lot of our clients utilize. But if you're a smaller organization in your marketing budget just doesn't cover something like that. There's always in house production and you, which is what we do. We you know, we produce everything in house for now. And so if you're starting out with and you have a, you know, smaller marketing budget to put towards developing video content, do you have any like recommendations or specific platforms that you would recommend for new marketers who are going to start producing video in house?

Yes. First I wanna, I wanna really, really stress out that I love that you said that what you are sourcing is the production. I think that it had happened with written content, had happened with audio. Some people do it with video is, I think that most of the time is not a good idea. It's not that it cannot work, but it's not a good idea that you outsource the, the idea, the ideas, right? You want, you want the insights, the point of view, you want it to come from the company, ideally right from the business. It doesn't have to be from the person that is in charge of marketing. That person probably needs to be the one coordinating all this and making sure that it happens. And there's nothing wrong with outsourcing the production itself. Obviously that will step up your game because you will get access to again agencies like nine eight Central. They'll have the equipment and the space to do a very professional job. But the, but the insights still have to reflect your point of view because others are not part of the company will require more time and they probably will not never, you know, they will not closely match how you think about the problems that you solve. So outsource the production and production, but don't outsource idea if you can do it. And as you said, if you're going to start in house, there are some general things that you can think that you can use from the platforms where you can host video. But definitely, definitely take it with a grain of salt because again, what matters is where your buyers are spending time. This is probably true for almost every audience but still you wanna, you wanna customize it to your, to your audience as much as possible. So for example, platforms like YouTube and even TikTok, the reason I like them a lot for video is because they are truly video search engines. Right? Most people don't think about YouTube in terms of being a search engines search engine, but it's what it is also not just a place where you stumble upon videos like and to some extent TikTok, where you stumble upon videos out of, out of chance. You actually can search for things and there's a ton of search that happens on, on, on YouTube. So I like YouTube and places like TikTok if it makes sense because they have that discovery part that is so important for your short videos to be found. Obviously YouTube itself is also a great place to host the content itself where you can store it. It's free vats and probably your competition will show up after the next video. So if you, if you struggle with that, you can always host the video on your website or your cms. But, but consider always that. Consider a place where you host the content, not necessarily where you distribute it, right? Is your website is not the greatest source of distribution even if you're doing a grade, you know, SEO work to make sure that each of those videos has their dedicated page and get discovered by Google. Again, typically when people is thinking about videos, they're thinking about something like YouTube or even TikTok So that will be one of my biggest recommendations. That you have clear, clear expectations about a platform where you can host, but at the same time the platform where you will do the distribution. Obviously for B2B I think it's increasing in importance. We are seeing it the way the algorithm is showing up on the feed, LinkedIn is changing that, right? It's becoming more TikTok, like giving more prominence to video, especially obviously short video. And some of you have probably noticed that now it has a dedicated button on mobile for just watching short videos. But even if you're scrolling through the feed, you see more of them and they now are presented in a way that almost invite you to immerse on it and then start, and then start scrolling up.

Yep, they are, they're learning the algorithm. All of the platforms, they're learning the algorithm of how to suck us in and get us, you know, continually doom scrolling on any platform which is, you.

Know, some people are about it. We are losing something unfortunately. Right. That was the social media networks used to be places where you will connect with the your network, right? And they're becoming more and more places where you will discover, I will not say different voices, just other voices. That's the only part that is sad, right, is that probably is just saying echo chamber based on what you have watched before, but. But it's becoming a place, even LinkedIn, where you will stumble upon people that you're not connected to.

All right, well, wrapping things up, I would love to know, I'm kind of putting you on the spot here a little bit, but I'd love to know some like, you know, last takeaway insights from you for new marketers starting out with video. And then also if you have some examples of who's doing it right in whether it's B2B or B2C but just some ideas of companies that marketers can go look at to gain some inspiration on what their video content could look like.

Yes, one takeaway right away is yes, as you were saying, just get started. I'd rather go slow and steady than, you know, going in a blast and then stopping altogether. So if, if once, once a week is not possible, which probably for something that's just getting started, it willn't be hard. So just once, once a month, get the rhythm and then you can step it up. And the same for distribution, right? Start with one network, start with one short video per week and then scale up as your resources get better. And obviously we didn't talk about a ton, but use tools available to expedite that. Right. Is that you have Riverside, you have tools like the script that will help you create those videos, short videos based on the transcript. Because most of these videos are about conversations. So leverage tools to make the work faster and repurpose the content as you were suggesting. Great question about who is doing it. Great. I've always admired the work of Chris Walker from Refine Labs for sure. He pretty much started this at least for the part of the world at the corner of the world that we live in. So obviously very well done videos and great production and all that. But I also like. I also like the take of. It's just that I don't have the name of the company right now. I think it's Gong. And I've seen some others SaaS companies that are taking this approach of creating almost like small movies. Right. So we for example boundify, we take the approach of teaching, right. Of helping people learn about and solve problems. But the other thing that makes video very engagement engaging is entertaining. Right. So if you have you right. Your brand has that and there's people around that can recreate. I've seen, you know, recreating movies for B2B or creating funny stories or characters almost like you will do on. On short movies. That's also quite helpful because again, as long as you can weave in who you are, what do you stand for that will catch the attention of people. And that part obviously for the top of the funnel, which is the awareness definitely is helpful.

Yeah, that's an interesting idea to translate for, you know, B2B. I feel like you see that a lot with B2C like the Geico gecko that you like, you just can't. You can't think of GEICO without thinking of the geico. Geico, yes.

And for example, I want to highlight how relevant is that because if you. If you think that a company like let's say State Farm or these other insurance companies haven't test out that funny videos, right. Or interesting videos that just stand out because they're talking about a situation do not work. They wouldn't be doing them right. Think about State Farm ads or any other of the insurance ads. They rarely focus on. Yes, insurance and it's very boring, right. It's very complex. But the goal continues to be we can help you with issues in your life where you need laid out a ton of money for. For. Because life happens. So how do you. How do you spin that in a. In a memorable way? And building those assets takes a lot of time. But taking that entertaining, engaging part, which is hard, again, requires a ton of investment. You probably need actors or someone that is good at acting so you can leverage, you know, if you, if you like theater when you were school, this is your chance.

All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Hopefully, this was helpful and gave you all the tools you need to feel confident to move into doing video production for your company. And we will see you next time on Demand Studio. Thank you.

Thank you, Miranda.