B2B Video Marketing for Service-Based Businesses

You can spend acres of website real estate trying to explain the inner-workings and objectives of your service when you own a B2B business, but video marketing is the only way to demonstrate accurately what you can do for customers.

While it’s essential to provide text explanations of your service and its benefits to your potential customers, today’s service shopper relies more on visual media to consume information. The brain uses different processes to parse information from text versus video, and modern consumers have chosen the ease of consumption of video over the rigor of processing text.

Luckily, video marketing strategy for B2B businesses fits right into the needs of those customers. Outbrain found in their State of Content Marketing 2012 report that social media, video advertising, and content marketing are perceived by marketers to be the most potent strategies for improving brand awareness, consideration, and affinity. The goals of customers and of marketers align beautifully when video marketing integrates with service-based businesses.

Considering a video marketing strategy for your B2B enterprise? Educate yourself with our short guide to video marketing for B2B service-based businesses.

Understanding the Objectives of B2B Videos

Just as clever and successful entrepreneurs lay down solid, achievable goals before setting off into the province of business, video marketers must mold the objectives of their videos to the dreams of their clients.

It all starts with the aims of B2B service companies and the common issues across which they run. Some of the broad objectives commonly sought in B2B video marketing include:

Building Trust

In early 2017, videos on a landing page were able to increase conversions by 80% or more. It’s a sign of trust – customers felt more comfortable with businesses that explained their product or service using a video on a landing page.

It’s like working with a salesperson who can masterfully demonstrate the proper use and value of the product that he or she is selling. Words can only do so much to build your trust – most of us have to see it to believe it, and video marketing for B2B companies provides the opportunity to do so.

Offering Transparency

According to Vendasta, 95% of unhappy customers will return to a business if that business resolves the issue in question efficiently. It’s a sign that even those customers who link your brand heavily with negative emotion respond to transparency.

You can win the loyalty of potential customers and help possibly unhappy customers understand where things went wrong by offering them a peek behind the scenes into your business. Show how you perform your service and why it is legitimate, and comfort your potential buyers by explaining your commitment to the process and why it works.

Improving SEO

The methods of SEO and customer acquisition practices lead to the same result: the provision of useful information to potential buyers. Note that blogs with video integrated into them bring in three times as many inbound links as ordinary posts without video.

Outside of blogs, videos have the potential to do even more to enhance overall site rankings in Google and other major search engines. Customers who are more inclined to watch your video from beginning to end provide search engines with the information they need to determine how effective your videos are at explaining your service and how that performance compares to your competitors.

Common Video Types for Service-Based Businesses

When you look up services in your area, you may notice businesses that offer services using B2B video marketing in the following ways:

Process Demonstrations

Process demonstrations enhance transparency, which improves customer awareness and loyalty.

But beware: people won’t be interested in a step-by-step re-reading of your business process manual. Pull the interesting parts from your services, show them in action, and enlighten your potential customers. Answer their frequently asked questions as you explain your process, and delight them with factoids and other engaging information.

Results Videos

Show what life is like after customers have received your service with results videos. Display the positive emotions of customers who are pleased and how your service improves their lives, workflow, etc.

You can achieve the effect using animation, actors, or the words and demonstrations of real-life pleased customers. When you can genuinely show your potential customers what’s in store for them when they put down money on your service, you gain an edge most of your competitors don’t have yet.

Testimonials

Maintaining a positive online presence and building a happy customer base are matters of course in business. But B2B companies that use video marketing have a distinct advantage: they can post permanent positive reviews that connect emotionally with customers through testimonial videos.

74% of consumers have said that seeing positive reviews for a local business makes them trust that business more. A testimonial video stands as an immovable positive review that appeals to an emotionally potent part of the brain in consumers. It’s a testament to a remarkable achievement made by you and your company, and your potential customers will laud it, too.

How-To Videos

How-to videos have a two-fold advantage:

• They show customers how to use your service effectively
• They get customers engaged with your service without overwhelming them

Your prospective customers can, at their own pace, enjoy and learn from how-to content provided by and branded with your company. Letting customers get hands-on with your service provides them the freedom they need to determine how effective your service will be to them on their own time.

Get Started Right Away

If you want to take advantage of the benefits of video marketing for B2B, formulate your strategy as soon as possible. If you can gain the edge on your competition, they’ll have a tough time catching up as you continue to evolve your B2B video marketing strategy, and the SEO advantages will have a strong head start, as well.

Leverage Marketing’s video marketing team is fully prepared to write, shoot, and edit all types of marketing videos for B2B enterprises. Watch our videos and find out more straight from us!