Is video the next great content channel for B2B? 76 percent of B2B marketers saying they will use video in their content marketing sometime this year. Video is shown to be as effective as blogging for B2B marketers, but given the costs associated with producing high-quality video content, companies need to strategically design video campaigns to deliver maximum impact.
If you are planning to add video to your B2B or healthcare marketing toolkit, take a look at these clips and consider what works and what flops before designing your next campaign.
In this video, Salesforce reminds us that humor and creativity isn’t just for B2C marketing. Here, Santa describes how he uses Salesforce to keep track of the Christmas wishes of 2.2 billion kids. It’s a clever way to tell the story of Salesforce’s marketing solutions, including the tool’s ability to build profiles to manage individual relationships, and provides a clear call-to-action back to salesforce.com.
VeriSign’s “Shopping Cart Whisperer,” created in 2008, is an early example of digital B2B video marketing done right. The campaign, which shows the character “Liberty Fillmore” comforting abandoned shopping carts and points to the domain www.NoMoreAbandonedCarts.com, was viral hit.
The Shopping Cart Whisperer was focused on how VeriSign could help businesses address the many online shoppers who abandon their virtual shopping carts because they don’t feel safe. The creators did many things right: the video is funny, highly resonant, and keeps the audience engaged until the end. However, this content is not evergreen.
While the video is still fun to watch, its lack of branding, while perhaps a strength originally, means that the video is no longer directing viewers to VeriSign. The www.NoMoreAbandonedCarts.com domain is not longer live, and VeriSign is not named anywhere in the video. Though the content lives on, it lacks a call-to-action that would allow VeriSign to continue to reap the benefits of their initial investment.
Jellyvision’s ALEX is a virtual guide who takes employees through an interactive program to help them better understand their benefits, company policies and other HR topics. The “Meet ALEX” demo video introduces the program and the virtual counselor to prospective users. The video clearly and concisely lays out the benefits of ALEX and demonstrates the usability of the tool.
Unlike the other two B2B videos discussed here, this one takes a straightforward (read: less humorous) approach, and is focused on communicating ALEX’s value propositions in a direct yet engaging way. For an innovative product like this one that is working to define a new category, this is a smart approach.
What can we learn from these B2B videos? All three provide engaging content that draws the viewer in, but Jellyvision and Salesforce succeed at maximizing the potential for ROI, while VeriSign falls short. If considering an unbranded campaign in the style of the “Shopping Cart Whisperer,” you must weigh the costs and benefits of presenting an unbranded video that viewers may or may not follow through to your campaign site.
Photo credit jsawkins via Flickr Creative Commons
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