Council Post: Five Solutions To Optimize B2B Tech Videos

Founder + Creative Director at Gallery Design Studio NYC, award-winning B2B communication design agency.

In my work, I’ve found that many business-to-business (B2B) technology companies struggle to maintain updated sales approaches. One major factor? In a typical B2B tech company, six to eight people are actively involved in a purchasing decision. Selling to that many people at once is a challenge!

Marketing specialists, including 71% of B2B marketers, use videos to efficiently welcome, educate and engage prospects, as well as new and existing clients. Making great videos, however, takes some thought, a lot of preparation and a little creativity.

The Challenges

Several challenges await anyone creating videos in the B2B tech sphere. You must identify content your clients and prospects need, take time to craft great videos, communicate value propositions, capture audience attention and track how effective your videos are to ensure your approach works. It sounds like a lot, so let’s break down and explore each challenge.

1. Identifying Necessary Content: As a B2B tech company, your goal is ensuring clients and prospects easily understand and use your available resources. Although you need to provide as much information as possible to eliminate confusion, you must also avoid overloading and overwhelming users with too much at once.

2. Videos Take Time: Great videos take more time. While most of us have recording capabilities at hand in mobile and desktop devices, great videos are more than simple recordings: they educate, engage and entertain.

3. Truly Communicating A Value Proposition: Tech marketers have to be completely clear when communicating value or they risk completely missing their audience. This challenge is twofold. Once you determine the video’s value, you must communicate it as directly as possible without overwhelming viewers.

4. Capturing Audience Attention: As I mentioned above, most of us carry the technological capacity to record videos in our pockets. But that doesn’t mean any video you record will be captivating. From visuals to words to content, you must keep your audience engaged and interested from start to finish. For B2B tech companies, this not only includes engaging and interesting the people involved in the purchase decision, but also onboarding and educating new and existing clients. 

5. Using Video Only For Marketing: We know videos offer clarity, a crucial element in sales, marketing and customer support. So why do so few B2B tech companies use videos only for marketing? It’s easy to assume marketing videos are a key investment, and they are. But it shows a lack of investment and foresight to limit video usage to solely marketing purposes.

The Solutions

At Gallery Design Studio NYC, we help many of our B2B clients strategize and create video marketing. Here are the solutions we’ve found to address the challenges mentioned above. 

1. Determine your clients’ needs. 

To identify good video content, conduct internal research. Survey past and current clients or prospects and gather information from customer support and sales. Collaborate with your team to determine clients’ biggest pain points so you make videos your clients need and prioritize the most urgent needs.

2. Use a set structure

No matter what, videos take time. A template or structure can cut that time in half. I recommend a four-part framework:

A) Define the problem. 

B) Highlight the challenges.

C) Provide your solution.

D) Wrap it up. 

3. Keep content focused and choose the right format.

This is the key step to not overwhelming your audience. Choose one clear topic per video. If you have several topics you want to explore, that means you have content for a video series. With a series, you can generate an email sequence. One study showed that video led to conversions four times more often than other marketing activities, making focused videos a great way to stay in touch with customers while offering them useful support. 

When it comes to formatting, choose the video type based on your content, not vice versa. Animated explainer videos can be used for concepts and high-level things. Demo videos are perfect for walking new customers through product features or providing overviews of platform interfaces. Lastly is what some consider the ultimate marketing video: live Q&A webinars. Webinars nowadays are essentially events, with a need to attend. While great for onboarding a client with multiple team members, use webinars sparingly. 

4. Keep videos short and engaging.

To capture audience attention, keep videos short and engaging. Aim for a maximum of 160-320 words for one- to two-minute videos. A report by Vidyard found that 73% of videos in the B2B and business-to-consumer (B2C) space are two minutes or less, with a meager 2% lasting 10-20 minutes. While 68% of people will watch a full video that’s under one minute, the percentage drops as videos get longer.

Keep videos engaging by avoiding one static visual. When only one person speaks to the camera, videos become significantly less engaging. Spice it up with different visuals throughout. For example, for a demo, start the video with a title frame and add in a “next steps” frame to break content up. You can also personalize content by adding a screen share of your face in one corner.

5. Use videos for a range of business cases.

Videos aren’t, and shouldn’t be, only used for selling. When a great tool works, use it! Video provides a clear and concise medium to communicate complex ideas and to translate repetitive, hands-on and time-consuming explanations. Videos are great for use cases like onboarding new customers and training team members, plus they ensure consistent customer experiences.

Customer support videos serve as additional marketing materials. Further, videos can save on the time your employees spend repeating themselves and increase their availability to help clients and colleagues. 

Key Takeaways

1. Videos are important investments.

2. Process is paramount. 

3. Measure success; don’t guess. 

When it comes to B2B tech marketing, clear and concise is best. If you ask me, no medium offers clarity and brevity like video. For an industry that hinges on making the complex simple, these best practices are key to engaging B2B tech prospects and clients. 

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