Does your content marketing strategy include video? If not, you could be missing out on a great tool for building customer confidence, engagement, and trust.
According to a research report by Aberdeen Group, companies that include video on their sites enjoy significant advantages over companies that don’t use video, including:
41% more web traffic from search
27% higher click-through rates
34% higher web conversion rates
49% faster year-over-year growth
Video offers flexibility and value at every stage of the buying cycle—and with a variety of possible forms including storytelling, interviews, and even animation, it can help you simplify even complex concepts and accomplish great things for your business and your customers.
Build Awareness: Interviews and Concept Videos
For prospects who are just learning about your brand and what it offers, consider videos that introduce your company, products, or services. These pieces can take several forms:
Q&As with a subject matter expert or company representative
Product-focused pieces that highlight features or business value
A look at customer or industry needs and potential solutions
The goal of this type of video is simply to engender interest. Ideally, viewers will want to learn more and will continue viewing your videos, reading through the page (if the video is embedded on your website), or follow a specified link. These videos can be a useful addition to a home page or campaign landing page.
Example: Showcase Your Experts
In-line, multilingual videos are used throughout Rio Tinto’s US Borax Agriculture website to help teach people about Boron deficiency, the benefits of using refined borates, specific product characteristics, and field trial and regional stories. View this sample video >>
Support Customer Consideration: In-Depth Look Videos
Once customers are aware of your brand, they’ll be looking for proof of value and results. Video helps you deliver by showing viewers how great you are, not just telling them. Consider delivering one of the following:
Short stories that document a real-life success
In-depth tours of service or product benefits—and results
Customer interviews
Webinars or expert presentations (e.g., a TED talk or keynote delivered by one of your executives)
Product demos
These videos give you the chance to showcase the unique value of your company, product, or service. This is the time to help viewers make the connection between their potential success and your offering. It’s also a good time to point out competitive differentiators, customer success stories, and so on. These videos can play well in campaigns and landing pages or on service or product pages.
Example: Dive into Customer Benefits
Throughout the InfinityQS website, visitors can learn about how the company’s products will benefit them through videos that incorporate a variety of visual techniques, vary in length, and integrate live action and interview footage. View this sample video >>
Celebrate Customers: Inspirational and Instructive Videos
Don’t forget about those prospects who have become customers. To keep them engaged and turn them into brand evangelists, provide videos that answer their questions and confirm that they made the right decision when they chose you:
Instructional or self-help videos
New or updated products or service highlights
Pieces that show how to implement best practices
Inspirational or aspirational pieces
You might even consider using video as a component of an account-based marketing plan. Post account-specific pieces such as a “welcome” video, demos, instructional videos, or co-branded self-help (which can be handled affordably by switching out intros and outros that include the customer’s logo).
Example: Stay Up to Speed with the Latest Features
InfinityQS needed a way to engage potential new clients and existing clients with the advanced features of its latest product offering. Videos on all their site pages help guide users to explore the company’s new product, build understanding for the extended benefits and significant ROI of using InfinityQS solutions, humanize the message, and supplement the written content with back story and extra details. View this sample video >>
Communicating Complex Concepts? Consider Animation
For many B2B organizations, a primary challenge in their content marketing is communicating complex or technical concepts in a way that is easy for site visitors to grasp quickly. When you are trying to tell a conceptual story, animation may offer storytelling options that you can’t get with B-roll or stock video footage.
Example: To Make a Long Story Short…
When introducing its game-changing new product, InfinityQS needed to accomplish several challenging communication goals: connect with viewers’ pains and problems; communicate a fundamental paradigm shift; showcase the product’s benefits; and overcome any immediate concerns or objections. We found the best solution in this case was animation. View this sample video >>
Support HR: Showcase the Value You Offer to Employees
Video is a tool that is sometimes overlooked by human resources and recruiters, but it can have a powerful impact by providing a highly personalized look at a company and its culture. When recruiting candidates, video allows you to showcase your top performers, who can share why they are excited about being part of the organization. It allows people considering a role to get an impression of the people they’d work with—and a clear idea of what the employer is looking for in an ideal candidate.
Example: The Perfect Fit
When Rio Tinto’s U.S. Borax division needed a Strategic Planning Analyst at its Boron, California mine site, they knew it would be a challenge to find the right candidate. They decided to use video to provide the job description from an inside point of view, letting one of the mine engineers explain the role. View this sample video >>
Know Your Limits
Despite video’s flexibility for producers and popularity with viewers, many companies eliminate video as an option because they assume the costs put it out of reach. However, with so many production options available, you don’t need to break the bank to produce a video that can provide real results.
When evaluating costs, consider the ROI of video. Pages with video tend to perform better, rank higher, and keep visitors engaged longer than those with text only.
You do need to prioritize good production values and understand the process of creating professional-quality video. All video projects will include some variation of the following elements in their development:
Pre-production planning and concept development
Copywriting (includes any voiceover or guidance/scripting for onscreen speakers)
Storyboarding
Production planning
Production of video components
Option 1: Onsite or studio shoot
Option 2: An assembly of B-roll and voiceover
Option 3: Custom production such as animation
Post-production editing
In addition, you’ll want to consider practical questions such as:
Will you use professional voice-over talent or interview the company CEO?
Will you need product screen shots or app captures?
Does the product team need to travel to interview customers or record footage?
How long is the finished piece?
If those elements are out of your wheelhouse, don’t force them—but don’t give up on the idea. If you’re committing to video, commit to producing quality. Partner with an agency or provider that can provide those services, and talk about a variety of approaches and techniques to be sure you’ll be getting the video you really need and want.
Video is a part of all our lives, and an expected, essential component in supporting any product buying journey. So go on—take another look at video and its place in your content marketing plan.