Rise of the video in B2B marketing 

B2B videos were traditionally created for conferences, seminars, and sales events. However, the B2B video dynamics changed with the rise of YouTube and mobile videos. According to reports by Forrester, by 2021, more than three quarters (78%) of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video. Despite this enormous potential growth in the videos, still very few B2B marketers are using it to reach out successfully and interact with their customers. According to a recent study, only 23 out of 60 companies got a passing score for using videos to engage customers beyond just repurposing speeches or advertisements. Video also humanizes B2B marketing messages, and in a way, other marketing tactics cannot. Videos offer a distinct customer engagement advantage for those marketers who use it to showcase their company’s big ideas, engage a new generation of buyers’ who prefer interactive content, and better connect to buyers’ needs and motivations than through any other medium.

Plan on implementing videos in B2B marketing

Without a complete integration into your content strategy, videos can feel like an expensive assortment of disparate assets. B2B marketers have had success with videos when it fits into a larger content plan. Videos should be used to reinforce your message across the entire life cycle, along with using it as a medium for sharing product demos or client testimonials. Discussed below are three steps describing how you can incorporate videos into your customer life cycle:

Step 1:  Aligning production of videos to your customers’ needs across the life-cycle

Understanding the customer life cycle, B2B marketers can determine the type of video content that will most effectively engage buyers at each stage. More experienced B2B marketers also adjust video length and product quality based on customers’ changing requirements and content consumption preferences over time. What’s important is to keep the videos short in the pre-sale stages when targeting a broad audience. Buyers during this process are discovering solutions and exploring options, and therefore brief content is the key. It’s essential to keep the message concise and direct because it’s easy to lose viewers in the first 15 seconds. As they keep moving inside the sales funnel, provide them with webinars and other informative content. But make sure, the latter strategy is applied once they move further down the pipeline.

Step 2: Humanizing your video content by establishing compassion and empathy with your customers

Videos can tap into the buyers’ psyche and engage them more than any other medium. For most marketers, this will require brushing their storytelling skills to create a video that makes an authentic human connection. Stories and narratives not only create exciting or entertaining videos, but it also shows that you understand and share your buyers’ issues and concerns. Demonstrating empathy with your customers can catalyze new business opportunities as well as facilitate selling and cross-selling conversations. You can create content-rich and empathetic videos to captivate your buyers, create immersive narratives that mirror your buyers’ daily challenges and build a consistent theme to your videos through compelling storytelling.

Step 3: Picking a video platform to further the value of your videos

Online video platforms (OVP) help B2B marketers manage their video content and also track how well it performs. To prove that buyers are engaging with your video content and to determine how it affects the purchase process, B2B marketers should turn to technology that can help them:

• Consuming and organizing video content: One thing’s for sure- videos can be more expensive to produce than a white paper, datasheet, or any other social content. To maximize video usage, B2B marketers invest in an OVP. For instance, most OVPs let companies publish videos on different social channels based on metadata tags. Brightcove, a leading online video hosting platform, enables marketers to customize videos with different bumpers and trim the videos without involving an editor. It effectively creates a short social trailer that drives audiences back to companies’ websites. OVP cost varies widely, with a solution available for most budgets, so making this investment is essential, especially for B2B marketers who must tell a complex story.

• Delivering high-quality, engaging experiences: OVPs can integrate content across multiple social channels to cut down the number of times marketers need to upload and publish a single video. Top platforms also embed interactive elements into users’ audio-visual experience to personalize the video content and keep the viewers engaged. These characteristics make an OVP extremely essential in turning content into an experience that buyers will watch and remember for a long time.

• Attributing value to the video: The success metrics for video has changed considerably. The number of views or the view count doesn’t tell you anything beyond how many people clicked the play button. Top marketers must know and understand who all watched the entire video, who left after 5 seconds, and how long did they spend on a particular segment. You can integrate modern OVPs with enterprise applications like CRM and marketing automation platforms (MAPs) to inform lead generation efforts with specific video attribution data. The online video hosting platform, like Vidyard, is equipped to do multitouch attribution and can see which videos were viewed and were able to attribute revenue influence to specific content assets.

Conclusion

What works with videos is the fact that they are engaging and convey more in less time. Also, video content is more likely to rank up higher on search engine results and generate more traffic. Considering videos have a human connect, they make branded content more trustworthy. However, creating video content is not enough; it is the right strategy that would reap good returns.

The post Want To Get More Leads? Unleash The Power Of Videos In Your B2B Marketing Strategy appeared first on XDBS Worldwide.

There is a convincing explanation why marketers are focused on e-mailing you more, and that is- because e-mail remains the most effective way to acquire customers than any other platform, for instance, LinkedIn and telecalling.

According to a report by Mckinsey, nearly 91% of all US audience still use e-mail daily, and the rate at which e-mails prompt the recipients of the mail (buyers) to make the purchases is estimated to be 3 times that of social media.

It doesn’t mean we support marketers bombarding you with mindless spam either. E-mail marketing for your business involves creating e-mails, tracking their performance, and finding out ways to improve your e-mail engagement. After all, you do want to garner the maximum amount of attention from your subscribers, and thereby improve conversions.

In most cases, the e-mail user opens the mails at least once a day if not more and through the mailbox to see for essential or exciting e-mails. Quite naturally, an e-mail with a sender name, a catchy subject line, and a relevant subject is more likely to be opened. The rest are often left unread, and the cycle continues.

To conduct and run successful e-mail campaigns, you need to comprehend what your subscribers expect from you, and you can achieve this by monitoring their pattern and behavior on your website and responses to your e-mails.

Taking into careful consideration the perspective of a subscriber, let us see what points you need to consider and how these points play a vital role in the success of an e-mail campaign.

Sending the e-mail from a valid name, e-mail address, and a compelling subject line

Usually, a good practice is to use a valid ‘from’ name and an e-mail address that is easily recognizable by your e-mail subscribers. For better open rates of your e-mails, it is always advisable to have an identifiable ‘from’ name along with a registered brand name domain associated with the email address. . Instead, direct the customers onto the customized landing pages which will bring them directly to the items or offers featured in the e-mail. It increases conversion rates by more than 25%.

As of today, around 45-50% of users access the marketing e-mails on their mobile device. Even then, many marketers fail to optimize their landing pages.

The subject line of an e-mail is the first and foremost thing that your subscribers read to figure out what the email is all about. The subject line should be short and to the point and should convey the essence of your e-mail campaign.

List Segmentation

List segmentation is an integral part of e-mail marketing planning. The pre-requisite is to begin by grouping your e-mail subscribers into various segments based on gender, personas, interests, demographics, purchase pattern, etc. to send targeted, customized, and relevant e-mails.

To do this effectively, you may ask your subscribers to fill out a form with details about their preferences and interests, either at the time of sign up or in an e-mail.

Creating Compelling Call To Action

For e-mail marketers, its all about convincing the subscribers to click on the offer and get a good click-through-rate. To do that, you must write a convincing and credible CTA and include it to enhance conversions.  If the subscribers find the copy relevant and persuasive enough, they are more likely to click on the CTA. Moreover, they expect to see something extra on the landing page, and therefore, it is vital to link your CTA to the correct and relevant landing page. It takes the subscriber one step closer to take the desired action.

Make your subscribers feel special− write a personalized e-mail

It is the age of personalization, and that’s why you need to now personalize beyond the first name. A tailor-made e-mail is more likely to make an impact because this experience resonates with your subscribers, and it increases the chances of conversions. While it is a good practice to send personalized messages on special occasions like subscriber’s birthday or anniversary, you should also customize regular e-mails through the data that you gather by studying their browsing behavior, preferences, purchase history, etc.

Personalized e-mails make the subscribers feel special and help in building trust with your business.

Timing is Pivotal

You can create something that is pure genius, but you have to get your timing right.- Lang Leav

Plan out the best time to send e-mails. One way is to A/B test and then determine the click-through rates, and tune your e-mail frequency and sending time accordingly. Another way is to ask your subscribers on what days and how often they would like to receive e-mails from you. Various studies have shown that Tuesdays is the best day to send out e-mails across multiple industries.

Refrain from spamming their inboxes by sending too many e-mails. It’s advisable to test your e-mail send day and time and frequency by measuring your metrics and then determining what works best for you.

Conclusion:

Create a system that converts readers of your website into e-mail subscribers. Usually, this system involves an incentive of some kind. These incentives can be a content upgrade, lead magnets, or a free offer. You offer your readers a free bonus in exchange for their e-mail address. With your e-mail service provider and lead magnet incentives, you can create a series of automated e-mails, newsletters, promotional campaign. Before you take up your next e-mail campaign, incorporate these above-listed points, focus on the right target audience, and make sure to test your e-mails thoroughly before sending them out.

The post Email Marketing − Onwards And Upwards In The Mail Inbox appeared first on XDBS Worldwide.