It’s Time for B2B Brands to Go All-In on Video

B2B brands plan to increase investments in several forms of content this year, including social, blogs and website content. But buyers want more, so savvy brands are also prioritizing investments in video/multimedia.

Walker Sands’ new report, The Future of B2B Content 2019, finds that 69 percent of B2B marketers believe their target audiences will prefer video/multimedia content over written content in the coming year. And they plan to partner with more outside agencies to create this work. Ninety-five percent of B2B marketers say it’s a priority to partner with external agencies for content strategy/production in the next 12 months — 40 percent call it a high priority.

Admittedly, developing an effective video marketing campaign can be a challenge. Producers must strike the right tone for both the brand and audience, create engaging content and drive the desired outcome — all in a matter of minutes or even seconds.

As a video lead on Walker Sands’ Creative Services team, I’m constantly looking for new ways to help B2B brands achieve results from video. Here are a few video campaigns that inspired me in the past year:

• Smokeball — “I Invented It.” This PR campaign for legal productivity software firm Smokeball draws from actress Calista Flockhart’s legal experience on the sitcom “Ally McBeal.” The video manages to be witty, ridiculous and informative at the same time — no small feat for what could be a dry topic. Before becoming a client of ours, I often confused the Smokeball with Spikeball, an outdoor recreational sport and a far cry from legal software. Including Flockhart in its campaign cemented the Smokeball name in my mind, and may just catapult the brand to household-name status.
• Slack — “So Yeah, We Tried Slack.” The geniuses at Sandwich Video put a silly spin on a straightforward product to show how Slack streamlines scattered workplace communication. The combination of employee testimonials, humor and exceptional motion graphics helps viewers understand how Slack’s platform fundamentally promotes effective office communication and productivity.
• Starbucks — “Giving Back” and “Starbucks Presents: To Be Human.” Last year, the coffee chain turned a public media crisis into an opportunity. After two African American men were arrested in one the company’s Philadelphia locations, Starbucks closed 8,000 stores nationwide for day-long racial sensitivity training and later released portions of its training videos. The incident also inspired the company to launch a new YouTube video series drawing from staff and customer testimonials on topics around global connectivity.

We’ve entered the stage where brands finally recognize the important role video/multimedia plays in B2B content campaigns. Our research shows that your competitors will likely use video/multimedia to communicate with key audiences this year — and so should you.

Contact us today and let’s start a conversation about how Walker Sands can help create video/multimedia assets that inspire your audiences to take that all-important next step.