Videos are going to be a key component of B2B marketing in the coming years. With attention spans going down as stated by so many studies, the ability to create short, visually appealing content will help any business stand out in 2024 and beyond. Especially, if you are selling a product, videos are the best tools to do this.
But getting the right results from videos is not easy. In this blog post, let’s explore 7 hacks that will help generate positive outcomes from your B2B video marketing efforts. In the process, we will discuss a ton of tools including some of the coolest AI-based video marketing tools. I have also linked to a few additional resources that will help you get started with and refine your B2B video marketing strategy.
Benefits of B2B video marketing
In addition to creating visually engaging content, there are several other benefits of doing video marketing. They include:
- Videos help you show the people behind the scenes in a business working hard to make a difference to its customers, partners, and employees.
- Videos can better communicate the features and benefits of your products and solutions.
- Videos are one of the best formats to create informative and educational content.
- Videos can be used as supporting content in outbound marketing campaigns, sales interactions, and presentations (like an investor pitch for example).
- Videos embedded on your website can improve overall engagement.
Apart from these, here are a couple of stats that prove that video is a must-do for B2B businesses:
- According to DVI Group. websites with videos get 3X the number of visits compared to the ones that don’t.
- They also say that visitors spend 88% more time on sites with video.
Many B2B companies are already on the video marketing trend wheel. If you haven’t started yet, this is the time.
B2B video marketing hacks to explore in 2024 and beyond
Video marketing is huge. Attempting to cover everything related to it in one article is pointless. Hence, I have handpicked for you a few hacks that solve some of the biggest challenges and bottlenecks related to B2B video marketing. Here are they:
B2B video marketing hacks to explore in 2024
- Text-to-speech conversion
- Text-to-video conversion
- Adding video subtitles
- Converting video viewers into leads
- Leveraging website traffic
- Using videos to grow website traffic
- Attracting early video engagement
1. Text-to-speech conversion for B2B video marketing growth
One of the biggest dependencies when it comes to creating professional videos is the voice-over. One thing is that it’s expensive. Depending on the voice-over artist you choose, a 3-minute video can cost you anywhere between $60 to $1000.
Another limitation is that voice-over artists on average have a turnaround time of 3 to 4 business days. Hence, if you want to get things done quickly, this approach will not work.
This is where AI-based text-to-speech conversion tools become a life saver. You can use tools like ElevenLabs and Speechelo to convert the script into a professional voice-over in minutes.
Check out the below video that gives a quick overview of ElevenLabs (please note that this is not the official video from the creators of the tool):
ElevanLabs has plans starting at $5 per month which is ideal for anyone planning to get started with text-to-speech conversion. Speechelo, on the other hand, offers a lifetime subscription for $47 (this could change depending on the time of the year and the offers they have running). I have observed that ElevenLabs offers more natural voiceovers compared to Speechelo.
2. Text-to-video conversion
AI doesn’t stop at text-to-speech conversion. Today, you have tools that can convert text into fully finished videos using on-demand AI avatars or your own AI avatar. Examples of such tools include:
See the below video from Synthesia to understand how this works:
If you are already creating a lot of videos, this is worth giving a try. Most of these tools offer free trials for you to get a feel of what the output looks like. Since AI-generated videos are still not 100% natural, many businesses use them today for internal training purposes. It’s all about how you wish to make the best use of them.
3. Adding subtitles to B2B videos
One of the cool applications of AI in video marketing is creating subtitles. Using tools like Veed, you can add subtitles to videos with just a few clicks and edits.
This is how it works.
You upload the video to the tool. You go to the subtitling section to generate the subtitles. Since AI is not 100% accurate yet, you will have to do a few last-mile edits and checks. That’s it. You get subtitles added to your video with ease in just a few minutes.
The same technique can be used to transcribe the voice-over in the video into text content. This is particularly helpful in repurposing long-form videos into blog posts.
4. Converting video viewers into leads
Did you know that you can convert a percentage of video viewers into leads?
With tools like Hippo Video and Sprout Video, you can configure a form to pop up that requires the users to fill in certain details to continue watching the video. To avoid annoyance and to make sure you get only relevant leads, the form is usually set to appear only when a user watches a video for the second time.
We discussed this hack in detail in one of the editions of The Skalegrow Newsletter. Check it out here.
5. Growing in B2B video marketing with website traffic
Are you already getting a good amount of traffic to your website?
Then this hack will help you leverage that traffic to grow on YouTube.
Wondering how?
This involves embedding related videos to pages with the highest traffic. This helps in multiple ways:
- Makes sure the video appears in search results.
- Improves the engagement on the page.
- Above all, adds to the views of the video. This will in turn encourage YouTube to organically push your videos further.
The only thing to note here is that you need to host and embed the video using YouTube itself to take advantage of this. We discussed this hack in detail in this newsletter edition. Check it out to learn more.
Also read: The Only B2B Video Marketing Strategy You Need
6. Use videos to grow your website traffic
The last hack was about converting website visitors into video views. What if you could do the reverse – increasing website views using videos?
Sounds too good to be true? But this is very much possible. This is what you need to do for this:
- For every video you create, publish a dedicated landing page by embedding the video.
- Optimize the page for SEO.
- Make sure the text content is a minimum of 200 words.
By doing these, you get to create multiple SEO-optimized webpages with very little effort. This also ensures that your videos appear in search results, further enhancing your website’s SEO.
7. Attracting early video engagement
Creating videos and using SEO to increase their reach are great ways to start. But to scale fast, you need to promote videos using other channels as well. If you wish to please the YouTube algorithm, you need to get good engagement in the first 24 hours of publishing a video.
Here are a few things you can do to achieve this:
- If you have an email list, send out an email blast linking to the video. This will attract some views. You can even go to the extent of aligning the publishing time of your videos and email campaigns to ensure you get early engagement.
- Send out an internal communication once a video is published. Engagement from your employees can help. While it might not be practical to send out a communication to everyone in a large organization, see if you can do it within smaller groups. Every bit counts.
- Promote it on social media platforms. One challenge here is that some platforms suppress the reach of posts with external links. LinkedIn does that for example. In such a case, see if you can use other avenues (like a LinkedIn newsletter for example) to get more reach.
Also read: Using AI to improve SEO effectiveness
Final words about B2B video marketing hacks
Video marketing is a long-term endeavor. Expecting results from it in the short term is not wise. Initially, see it as a method to attract your target audience and convey your positioning and unique selling propositions in a visually appealing way. Using the hacks we discussed in the article, you will be able to scale your video marketing efforts for maximum reach and effectiveness. Also, make sure to complement these with a well-planned video marketing strategy.
In addition, if you are worried about spending too much on video marketing, I recommend you check out our article on lean B2B video marketing.
Skalegrow – a new age B2B video marketing agency
We are living in a world where attention spans are reducing. Being highly visual in nature, videos are a great way to address this challenge. There was a time when videos were not as important for B2B businesses. Not anymore.
Most successful B2B businesses use video today to communicate their value proposition, talk about their products, educate their audience, and more. Skalegrow specializes in helping B2B companies do these effectively with the following differentiators:
- We focus on understanding your products and solutions first and then convert them into engaging videos.
- We offer a full package including topic ideation & planning, video scripting & storyboarding, video editing, adding professional voice-over & background music, etc.
- We also help with YouTube SEO in addition to providing the video title, description, and hashtags to help your content rank on top on YouTube.
So, if you are looking for a partner to work like your extended marketing team to create compelling videos, check us out. Learn more about our video marketing services here: B2B video marketing services.
About the author
Naseef KPO is the Founder and CEO of Skalegrow. He comes with rich experience across multiple areas of B2B marketing including content marketing, demand generation, SEO, account-based marketing, marketing analytics, revenue attribution, marketing technology, etc. He writes thought-provoking and relevant articles on The Skalegrow Blog and his weekly LinkedIn newsletter Elevate Your Marketing.
Prior to starting Skalegrow, Naseef led large marketing teams in multi-million dollar B2B organizations where he made significant contributions to the topline growth of the business. He has also appeared on numerous podcasts where he shared his thoughts on trending marketing topics such as the application of AI in marketing, startup marketing, ABM, and B2B content marketing, just to name a few. Being the founder of Skalegrow, he is currently focusing on helping its clients stay ahead of their competition by using innovative yet practical marketing tactics.
You can connect with Naseef KPO on LinkedIn.
