Five Types of Video Content Marketing That Will Boost B2B Conversions

Need to refresh your content marketing strategy to boost sales?

Then perhaps you need to revise your approach. Selling becomes a lot easier when you have a presell strategy in place.

To understand preselling you might want to walk around your local Costco or supermarket where you’ll notice a few people handing out samples. People seem to taste the samples politely and then just walk away.

You might think this an ineffective way to sell, but companies that invest in this know that samples have the power to dramatically increase sales.

But what exactly are samples?

Samples are essentially experiences. Experiences of a bit of your brand and the outcomes it can create.

For example: when selling a BMW, the dealership invites a potential customer to take a test drive (the sample). The potential customer may have had little to no connection with the brand but, by taking the test drive, their worldview shifts just a little bit.

Think about it—

• Is it easier to sell a BMW with a 10% discount or give a free test drive and sell 30 of the latest model?
• Is it easier to sell a $70 bottle of wine with a $5 discount or give samples of wine from 5 bottles to sell wine at $70 a bottle?

Preselling offers advantages, and samples or experiences are just one way of implementing this strategy.

In the online space, we already know that video content has a higher engagement rate, so preselling via video content marketing is a great way to boost your B2B conversions by giving future customers a sample experience of your brand.

However, before you dive into creating video content, you need to ensure your efforts will have the best chance of succeeding.

Align with content marketing objectives

Any type of video that you produce should serve a purpose and align with your content marketing objectives.

Objectives could include:

• driving traffic to your site
• building trust in your brand
• boosting conversions
• generating sales or even developing a more engaged audience

Video content has never been easier to create, but you still need to ensure that you invest your resources in content that supports your objectives and moves the needle to drive conversions. Otherwise, you are producing video content merely for the sake of producing video content.

Once you know your objectives and what you want to achieve, you can decide on the best type of video to help you get the results you want. Below you will find some types of videos that can help drive B2B conversions.

But before you dive into that, let’s briefly explore how you can develop video content ideas.

Brainstorm video content topics

Once you’ve decided on the types of videos you need to produce to help meet your objectives, you need to brainstorm potential topics. This can seem quite overwhelming at first, but you can easily get ideas to kick off your endeavor with a few simple tactics.

These include checking your web analytics, e.g. from your blog or other content. You can look at your web analytics to identify your top-performing content pieces and use the information you get from there to inform topic ideas for your videos.

Speak to your customer support team and your sales team about topics that keep coming up.

You should also keep a close eye on competitive social accounts to see what kinds of content they share. Make a note of content pieces that are performing well, as those are the types of content you want to cover in your videos.

You can also research keywords or key phrases via free tools, such as Answer the Public.

Simply type in the keyword that you want to look up and click on “Search”, which will create visualizations to find out questions that your audience can pose.

Alternatively, you could use a tool such as BuzzSumo to analyze top-performing content in your niche. Just enter the broad keyword and you can see some of the latest top-performing content regarding that specific term to help you produce videos.

5 types of video content marketing that will boost conversions

1. Livestream video

These types of videos make sense if you have a large following on a social media platform. It can also make sense if you are able to partner with people who do have a significant following.

The advantage of live streaming is that it allows you to enter into a dialogue with your users. They’re quite effective for things like:

• Product announcements
• Behind the scenes tours
• Product information segments
• Interviews

The optimal length of live streams really depends on the purpose of the live streams. Short live stream videos can be quite engaging for your audience. On the other hand longer videos can provide value and interaction with your audience even through something as simple as Q&A.

Social Media Week, for example, evolved from an in-person, 3-day conference to a month-long virtual event that had over 300 speakers, 150 live talks, panel sessions, workshops, and product demos.

A key objective for organizers was that networking was still possible. They achieved that by hosting hangouts thereby allowing attendees a chance to meet each other, interact, schedule meetings, and engage with vendors.

Tips for adding live videos to your content marketing mix:

• Set up and test your video equipment and tools to make sure that the technology works.
• To create a quality video, you also need to ensure that you have optimal lighting and sound. So, invest in the right technology.
• Promote the live streams well in advance via social media accounts.
• Livestream broadcasts to a regular schedule. In other words, think of it as regular, scheduled programming for your audience.

2. Customer testimonial videos

These are quite effective, especially on social media, because they’re relatable and show your business from the perspective of someone who is using your products or services.

As you know, people trust the reviews of others who have had that experience. It also provides social proof that someone other than yourself is talking your brand up. Hearing about your products or services from someone who isn’t a PR or mapping expert in your company enhances the trust and increases the chances of turning your prospective buyers into actual customers.

Most people, when researching a solution, whether it be a product or service, tend to look for reviews to make an informed buying decision. This is where customer testimonial videos, such as the one below for Slack, come in.

These videos increase the level of trust because prospects can see your customers, hear their voices, listen to them explain why they are happy with their experience, and the outcomes they have had as a result of using your product or service.

Tips for including customer testimonial videos in your content marketing mix:

• Identify your best customers so that you can target the same sort of people.
• Ensure that the lighting and the sound quality is excellent.
• Reduce the story to a short, two- to four-minute vignette that captures the essence of the story and can be shared with your prospective audience.

3. Tutorial videos

Tutorial videos if done well tend to frequently be shared on social media channels.

Why?

Because the hallmarks of these videos are that they are – relatively short, answer a specific issue, tend to be clear, educational, and entertaining. You’ll notice that quite often the most important information appears first in the videos in order to grab your audience’s attention. While the entire video usually isn’t longer than a few minutes.

These types of videos work well because they are related directly to your products or services, and can be based on broad topics that relate to your audience’s interests or industry.

Ahrefs, the SEO tool, for example, produces a series of tutorial videos on their YouTube channel that gets quite a bit of interest from existing customers as well as prospective customers.

Tips for incorporating tutorial videos into your content marketing mix include:

• Craft tutorial videos that provide value to your followers. A good way to do that – ask your followers – What tutorials would you be most interested in watching?
• Keep an eye on the comments and respond as quickly as possible to messages.
• Make the videos short and to the point so that they are easier to follow and digest.
• Be sure to provide a clear call to action at the end of the tutorial video to take them deeper into the buying cycle or usage of the product or service or by making them aware of other relevant videos.

4. Behind-the-scenes videos

Behind the scenes videos are a great way to humanize your company and make your team more personal.
You could:

• Highlight a day in the life of a particular employee or employees.
• Showcase highlights from day to day operations in your offices manufacturing processes, etc.
• You can even interview employees, talk to vendors who are closest to you or speak with some of your best customers.

All these should really be designed to allow future customers to get a better idea of the culture, your personality, and your values.

These videos are designed to build your branding and trust with your audience. When customers interact with brands for the first time, they may not have a firm sense of the brand identity. These videos help solve that in a way that grows the relationship between the brand and the customer.

Vistaprint, for example, showcases their work culture in this video

Tips for including behind-the-scenes videos in your content marketing strategy:

• Share the personality of your brand and don’t be shy about it.
• Share the little things that employees do, no matter how simple, that your customers might find interesting.
• Share insights into your process or product via a virtual tour.
• Share the story of how your products or your brand came to be. You can even share your employees’ stories of working for your brand.
• Consider featuring customers, vendors, or employees in your behind-the-scenes videos.

5. Informational videos

Informational videos can cover pretty much any topic but are essentially videos that are educational, unique, clever, and insightful. When looking to produce such videos, you want to be sure that they provide information to the viewers and are worth their time.

These videos also have a high probability of being shared. So, if the videos are not produced properly or come off as boring or dry, this will not give you the best chance of being shared.

A good example of an informational video is the Dollar Shave Club promotional launch video, which uses humor and a quirky personality in order to engage its audience.

Tips for adding informational videos into your content mix:

• Create a video with a personality that matches your brand identity.
• Keep the video short and to the point.
• Analyze which videos perform the best and why. Use the information to create future videos.
• These videos could be key content in your marketing mix, so invest the time and resources required to produce high-quality productions
• Pay attention to what people are saying about these videos as that could inform what they want to see more of.

Build out your presell video content marketing strategy

Build up your presell video content marketing strategy by producing different types of videos regularly. By sharing the videos across multiple platforms, you can build up an audience that meets the right customer profile requirements.

Remember: a healthy mix of video content marketing on social media platforms is essential to making sure your presell strategy attracts the right audience and boosts conversions.

Hero photo by Voyage Pro on Unsplash

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