YouTube recently took the title of fourth most visited site on the internet (behind Google, Facebook and Yahoo). Whether you consider YouTube a thriving online community of people searching for information or a huge time suck – you can’t ignore that people are on it and using it.
I have seen my fair share of cute, funny, gross, odd videos and shared them with my friends. I have also seen lots of great business content – how to videos, video blogs, product demos, presentations and more. Video is a great way to really put a face to your company, appeal to visual learners, build trust with your customers and reach out to your audience in a new way.
B2B Video marketing
B2B companies often drool over the shiny new toys that their hip B2C siblings get to play with but video translates into both B2B and B2C. In the B2B buying process, often the most time consuming piece of the process is the research phase. B2B purchases are large and usually take more then one person to make the purchasing decision. What better way to build trust with potential customers than with video?
A picture is worth a thousand words.. and video is worth like a zillion words.
Here are a few ideas for your B2B company when creating an online video:
- A message from your president
- Demo of your products
- Training, how to, or a presentation
- Highlights from tradeshows
- Client testimonials
As with any marketing effort, developing a plan and measuring results may be the most important part! You and your marketing team need to decide what content your audience wants to hear from you, how you are going to shoot your video, what you want to achieve etc. before you turn on your video camera.
Kyle and I did a short presentation this week at the Social Media FTW conference here in Portland on using YouTube for business. Below are our slides from the event. We are also hosting a roundtable next Tuesday on YouTube Marketing for Business if you would like to attend and bring your burning questions.