In the B2B purchasing decision, text still plays an important role in helping people decide between two different products or services. People want to read whitepapers, they want to read case studies and they want to read website content that informs them. In fact, if given a choice between text and video, 85 percent of B2B buyers still prefer text.
But mobile could change everything.
That’s because people consume content differently on their mobile devices. It’s a lot easier to watch video than it is to read a detailed report on a tiny screen. In fact, more than half of all mobile traffic is online video.
It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that 42 percent of all B2B searches are now on mobile devices, according to the latest 2016 B2B Marketing Trends Report. From making searches on their mobile devices, the next logical step is watching videos on their mobile devices.
So, if you buy into the idea that video is going to play a more important role in the B2B purchase decision, what types of video should you be creating?
As a general rule, you should keep in mind that people are using video to research complex business ideas, not to find out information related to a specific product or service. As a result, you should focus on making the content as general as possible, to appeal to the biggest possible audience.
And the data appears to bear that out. Again, from the same 2016 B2B Marketing Trends Report, buyers were asked about their video preferences. 67 percent of respondents said that they preferred instructional and how-to videos, while the remaining 33 percent said that they preferred product and information videos.
Think about this from the perspective of what types of YouTube videos you’d actually watch. What types of search terms are people going to be typing into the YouTube search bar? As a result, you need to think in terms of topics that people are going to be searching for.
Some of the best B2B instructional videos are those that are best known as “explainer” videos. These usually take the form of brief animated cartoons explaining a very difficult concept in easy-to-grasp terms. They are typically 30-90 seconds in length, which make them quick and easy to consume, especially on a mobile device. Some of them have voiceovers, but many simply feature upbeat music and basic graphics.
Another popular format for the B2B marketing video is what’s known as the “whiteboard animation.” Just like it sounds like, it’s essentially a hand sketching out a complex business proposition on screen with a limited voiceover. The hand drawing on the whiteboard helps to make this a compelling form of storytelling. Instead of just a single person or face droning on and on about a concept, you see a story emerging on a blank whiteboard on the screen.
2017 could be the year that video really starts to make a splash in the B2B marketing world. According to a survey from Google, 75 percent of business executives already watch videos every week. So how many of them are going to be making B2B purchasing decisions?
Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.