When is the last time you watched an online video about a product, service, or company? Most likely, very recently. Video is not an up-and-coming marketing tactic. It’s well-established and proven effective.
With broadband nearly ubiquitous and video technology optimized for display on almost any device—desktop, tablet, smartphone—your customers can access video as easily as they can text. They’re looking for videos everywhere in their online experience: on company websites, YouTube, embedded in social media, and on industry research sites such as Biocompare.
If video isn’t yet part of your marketing portfolio, now’s the time to get in the game. According to the “B2B Content Marketing” research report published by the Content Marketing Institute, 79 percent of B2B marketers used video as a content marketing tactic in 2016 and 62 percent rate it as an effective tactic.
Consider these other statistics compiled by the marketing firm Hubspot:
- 90 percent of users say that product videos are helpful in the decision process.
- Video can dramatically increase conversion rates. Video in an email increases click-through rates 200-300 percent. Including video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80 percent.
- One-third of all online activity is spent watching video.
- 59 percent of executives would rather watch video than read text.
Videos Support Marketing Goals
One advantage of video is its versatility in helping you achieve a variety of marketing goals. For example:
- Generate leads for a sales team.
- Strengthen brand awareness for a company through increasing brand familiarity, while connecting audiences with the company’s value proposition, mission, or personal story.
- Educate the market about an industry trend or breakthrough scientific technology.
- Demonstrate a product or technical concept.
- Post-sale, train customers on using products or technology, or on new features and unique applications.
Popular and effective types of B2B marketing videos that can help prospects along their buying journey include:
- Interviews or Q&As with influential people in your industry that demonstrate thought leadership and reflect positively on your brand.
- Customer testimonials/case studies. These types of videos provide excellent reference material for your sales team. Prospects often access customer testimonials before making a buying decision.
- A video tour of your company, showing off your advanced production capabilities, processes or operations. Remember that customers are not just buying your product, they are buying into your entire company.
- Videos of recorded webinars and keynote addresses for customers who were not able to attend an event. These can be edited and segmented to provide key information on major points of interest.
- Product-focused videos to help communicate the features and benefits of key products and solutions, including the product’s unique value proposition.
- Technical content from printed brochures, instruction manual, and whitepapers can be brought to life in a more engaging way using video.
- Scientific posters can be re-purposed as video using images and voice over narration for a more dynamic presentation of the content.
Videos Work for Life Sciences Marketers
Joan Horwitz, Marketing Manager for Nanotechnologies and Nanomeasurement Systems at Keysight Technologies Inc., has added instructional and product videos produced by Biocompare to her marketing mix. The videos have helped Keysight connect with a younger generation of customers that specify and recommend the company’s products.
“Biocompare has done a terrific job for us,” she says. “They understand our product and how to present it. They understand the market, our customer, and what our customer wants to see. They communicate well and make suggestions.”
Another Biocompare client, Thermo Fisher Scientific, uses video as part of a multichannel marketing strategy that supports the entire buying journey, from awareness, to buying decision, to customer support.
Kurt Kemling, Global Marketing Communication Manager for vertical markets from life science research and biopharma to clinical and environment food and safety, said, “It’s not enough for us to hire a vendor for high-production value video. It’s important for someone like Biocompare to host and promote it to their audience in an unbiased way. They stand out as a leader in this regard because they’re scientists first, not just camera operators.”
Videos can Vary in Length
Marketers have learned how to write for the web by understanding that their audience doesn’t read web pages beginning to end bur rather scans pages for content of interest. Good web writing includes headlines, bulleted lists, and short statements.
There’s no such scanning option with video. You have to keep your audience engaged, opening credits to fade out, whether your video is two minutes or twelve minutes. Most experts recommend videos be under three minutes, and the Hubspot research noted that while 5 percent of users will stop watching a video after one minute, 60 percent will stop after two minutes.
But this statistic can be misleading. Users don’t stop watching if they are engaged. Therefore, the most important factor to consider when making a video is whether it is compelling and relevant to its target audience.
It’s good to keep in mind the words of suspense-master Alfred Hitchcock, who once said that a good story is a lot like life but with the dull parts taken out. Trim your videos of anything dull, and you’ll keep your audience interested, perhaps even on the edge of their seats.
If the content unavoidably necessitates longer video timeframes, think of platforms that allow you to chapterize and index your content so that viewers can easily navigate to and from the sections of a video that interest them the most. Because of the length of time these viewers may possibly be spending on these types of videos, make sure to inquire as to whether these video platforms provide convenient call-to-action functionality as a part of the video experience for longer format video productions (ie. Technical Seminars, Webinars, Poster Videos, etc.)
Where to Post Videos
Life scientists use a variety of channels to research purchases, and marketers should as well. Video lends itself to a multichannel strategy:
- Post videos on your company website and on a video-sharing site such as YouTube.
- Third-party channels such as Biocompare are popular destinations for life scientists, and videos can help educate prospects and increase the likelihood they will contact your company.
- Video is also a great addition to any tradeshow exhibit, as the moving visual captures the eye and draws people into to your booth.
- Video embedded directly into email can help you create differentiation in your customers’ crowded inboxes.
- Video can also be used as a valuable engaging content type for lead-nurturing campaigns.
Wherever you post your video online, there are metrics you can track to help you determine how successful your video is. These include:
- Number of views.
- Length of view (it’s important to know how many viewers dropped off before the video reaches the end).
- Number of shares.
- Number of comments.
- Number of follow-throughs on your call-to-action (many videos end with a call to action, such as contacting a supplier or accessing additional content).
Choose the metrics that are aligned with your marketing goals, and track them for as long as your video is part of your campaign.