Recap of Marketing Profs Marketing with Video Conference

Business video is one of the fastest-growing digital marketing tactics, many B2B marketers are still challenged with how to efficiently budget for and integrate this powerful marketing tactic into their strategy.  In response to this challenge, last month (July 2013) Marketing Profs held marketing with video conference on how marketing with video can be used towards traditional B2B marketing objectives.  The half-day seminar, titled Marketing with Video included three case-study presentations by industry-leading marketers. The following is a recap of the three presentations about marketing with video conference, drilling down on the key take-a-ways and impressive statistics on what B2B online business video can do to help your organization engage prospects and set you apart from the competition to drive sales and marketing with video conference objectives.

Paula Crerar, Sr. Director of Content and Product Marketing at Brainshark gave the first presentation of the day titled “Video Marketing Strategy: Different Uses for Video Throughout the Sales Cycle.” Focused on tips, ideas, and best practices for creating and integrating video into a marketing plan at the top of the funnel and for driving sales at every stage of the sales cycle.  In addition to examples, Paula provided the following compelling reasons for getting started with business video for marketing goals:

• 75% of executives regularly watch business videos because they are busy and need to quickly get the information to make decisions.  The video makes it easy for them to understand your message, value, and why you are different from your competitors.
• Video is a better format for mobile consumption – 54 million views in 2012 with views 3xs longer.
• Video is just another component in your content strategy, think of video is powerful and flexible so you can take advantage of its benefits across the sales funnel, but the types of content are different at different stages
• Shorter videos are best for top of the funnel, as people will not invest a long time.
• Longer videos can be used towards the lower parts of the funnel as they get closer to making a purchasing decision.
• Videos in universal search results have a 41% higher click-thru rate than their plain text counterparts (ReelSEO)

The keynote presentation of the day was given by Tim Washer, Social Media Manager at Cisco.  Three Approaches for Producing Successful B2B Video showcased examples that walked marketers through the approaches and steps for producing different types of B2B business videos for use across the entire marketing and sales cycle.  Some of Tim’s key take-a-ways are”

• Over the next years, video will become more and more important to B2B marketers
• Video content marketing is a critical part of SEO
• Marketers should strategize now on how to publish online video marketing content 1 to 2 times per week
• With YouTube becoming so important, what is the cost of marketers NOT being on YouTube

• Look for simple ideas to tell stories on how/where your customers are using your products and services
• Have your salespeople take pictures on their smartphones over a day or two, add a voice-over about what kinds of customers they are seeing and what they are talking about…stay focused more on the story and less on the corporate jargon

Breaking thru the clutter on crowded sites like YouTube and Facebook and ranking on Google is an under-funded challenge for marketers.   Which is why the final presentation of the day focused on Maximizing Your Video Assets: Getting Them FOUND and Properly Marketed, given by Bill Leake, CEO at Apogee Results. Showing statistics from leading organizations, Bill proved that consumers (B2B and B2C) are moving towards video consumption and there is a BIG opportunity to use video for lead generation, eCommerce conversion, SEO ranking, trust-building, brand building and more.

 

 

His references revealed that the marketing part of video is greatly under-funded as well as giving tactics on increasing the number of views and engagement results to amortize your online video production investment. Stating research from eMarketer, Forbes and Cisco, Bill’s presentation included the following information –

• Video SEO produces more sales than traditional SEO
• 65% of senior executives surveyed visited a vendor’s website after watching a video.  Executives said they were more likely to make a purchase or call a vendor – 2011 Forbes Study “Video in the C-Suite”
• Over 70% of all web usage and 50% of all mobile device usage is now video viewing – and is forecasted that 90% of all consumer IP traffic will be video in 2014 – Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2010-2015
• 44% of people discover video randomly doing a search
• 43% of people discover video via sharing
• 43% of people discover video via websites
• 39% of people discover video via search engines
• 27% of people discover video via email marketing campaigns
• 38% of people are served a video via Google universal search and is only going to increase over time
• Put videos in a root directory so Google can easily find them
• Ensure meta-data in your video directory file is accurate and consistent with your keyword strategy
• Publish abstracts and / or transcripts with contextually related links to and from the page on where the video is hosted as Google, at the moment, is not reading the video itself and relies on this page content
• Google wants your video content, they read these research reports too!

If you are interested in watching any of the presentations, MarketingProfs has them in their resource library on-demand for 90 days from July 12, 2013 at http://www.marketingprofs.com/events/24/conference Video delivers context and relevance, adds a personal touch to your sales process, and is the preferred mode of information gathering for your customers.  Take things to the next level and start integrating marketing with online business video into your mix.