Jon Spenceley is the Community Marketing Manager at Vidyard, and is passionate about helping companies get the most out of their video assets.
According to a recent survey from Demand Metric, over one-third of large companies produce more than 100 marketing videos annually and over 70% of respondents claim that video performs better than other content for producing conversions. It’s easy to see why video is powerful with enterprise companies, but what can SMBs learn from how enterprise companies are using video?
Let’s break down how leading companies are using videos to build awareness about their company, drive more conversions, and educate customers!
Driving Awareness with Video
Twenty years ago, when most companies thought of marketing videos, the first thing that came to mind was television commercials. While companies have the power to target their marketing more effectively than ever, the world of awareness marketing is still alive and well, and nobody does it better than the enterprise suite with online video.
General Electric is a shining example of this with their Datalandia Series:
Few towns play host to alien abductions and teenage vampires, but when you’re looking to save a model town from impending doom, anything is possible. The real power in this video is that it’s designed to appeal to a wide audience. GE doesn’t dive into specifics on any of their products, they simply present some hilarious scenarios, and allude to the fact that if you want to learn more, you can see the full Datalandia series.
This type of video is reminiscent of television commercials from days gone by — when you produce a video like this, you aren’t necessarily going to generate one lead per viewer. But for every thousand viewers that find your hilarious video on Facebook, YouTube, or on the numerous blogs that have featured it, you’re bound to come across at least one or two people who would find value in the service you’re discussing.
Adobe is another great example of awareness marketing with video, in their Click Baby Click video:
My mom thought this video was hilarious, and shared it to her Facebook page a few months back. She has absolutely no use for marketing analytics software, but someone in her sphere of friends might.
Video is an incredibly easy content asset to share, and using it to build awareness about your product is a no-brainer.
Using Video to Build Pipeline
While awareness marketing is great for getting eyes on your content, as buyers move through your purchasing funnel, they want more targeted content that speaks to their job function. Customer testimonials and case studies are a great way to showcase how your solution solves problems for your customers, and VMware is a great example of a company that showcases their customers well.
Their Customer Showcase section of their YouTube channel profiles customers in a huge spectrum of industries, from high tech to healthcare to finance. These video assets can be sent to prospective customers to show how VMware can solve their unique needs in their unique industry.
Diving deeper into their video library, VMware have set up custom playlists around industries they tend to work within – if their sales team is working with a major government contract, and the buyer wants specific examples of other governments they have helped, the VMware video library has everything from webinars on government use of VMware technology to thought leadership content from government representatives on how technology fits into their roadmap.
Sales video content is designed to be laser-focused on customers, and showcase how your solution will benefit their team, reduce friction, increase sales, or drive more business. A smaller company that is executing on this extremely well is Taulia:
This video showcases Procurement Peter, and dives into how Taulia’s software platform makes the life of procurement teams efficient, thus leading to a faster procurement process. If you’re not in procurement, this video won’t tell you much, but if you are, you’ve just found a short, easily shareable asset that gives you all the info you need on how Taulia will make your life easier.
Keeping Your Customers Happy
As software products become more complex, asking users to read through a 200-step support document to solve their problem is like asking them to send you a book report on War & Peace. Showing is always better than telling, and video excels at customer retention and support.
An awesome example of video content for support is Salesforce.com:
Boasting a huge library of support video content both externally available on YouTube and internally available through their support focus, Salesforce.com uses video to teach their customers about new product changes, walk customers through complex analytics and reporting operations, and showcase new products available to Salesforce.com users.
As customers are looking more and more for self-service support opportunities, building out video support content is a high priority for many enterprise companies. Smaller organizations can benefit from jumping on this early, and building out video content to support their product and help onboard customers.
Attach Value To Your Videos: Attend our Free Webinar
Video may be the most powerful way to interact with your customers, but unless you’re tracking how prospects are interacting with your videos, and setting reasonable goals around what you want to accomplish with your video, you’re missing out. Vidyard is excited to be partnering up with Magnet Media for a free webinar on Using Video At Every Step of the Customer Journey.
Building on Magnet Media’s wealth of experience creating video content and content strategy for enterprise companies like Symantech, Google, Adobe and more, we’ll be looking at lessons you can learn from how enterprise companies are working with video, and how to attribute real revenue back to your video assets. Join us September 24 and register now!