I feel blessed that my job gives me the opportunity to Interact with CMOs across different industries. What makes me feel bad is most of us are not even aware of the fact that the way we are marketing to our Audience today is not human and is not even strategized to keep customer buying funnel healthy, but I am also excited because which means there is going to be more demand for my work.

So what is your video content strategy?

Are you adding value through your marketing to your customers?

Let’s look at how we can strategize video content across customer’s buying cycle based on my experience. As you know there are 4 stages in the buying cycle namely Awareness, Consideration, Decision and Retention. Let’s try an understand the precise video content strategy for B2B businesses, divided according to the various stages of the buyer’s journey:

#1. Awareness Stage:

As the name suggests any content produced under this stage is purely focussed on maximum awareness by engaging our prospective customers either by educating or entertaining. Before we dive into the form of content, you should know at this stage your target audience might or might not be going through the symptoms of the problem that you are trying to resolve.

The intention of producing content at this stage is to reach to maximum people and make them aware of your company hoping that they might become your customers in the future. So at this stage, we never talk about anything related to our services or products because as soon as we do that we narrow down our audience and move to subsequent stages of consideration and decision making. Let’s look at some examples of various form of content and deployment strategy to have more clarity on the concept:

a. Educational Content:

Let me take our example, we are a video agency and one of our primary target audience is chief marketing officers (CMOs). I know the basic KRA for any marketer is to generate maximum high quality leads for the business consistently, so if I can produce any educational content around lead generation that should definitely interest any CMO.

Now the lead generation is not my core service right, but I know that the content will reach my target audience and indirectly they will either come to know about me for the 1st time or if they already know about me it will act as a brand recall. But the core idea is how to add value to your target audience through marketing, the idea is to build trust which is the key to any successful business.

So I recently launched an animated video content on the Topic “Learn Proven Technique To Generate B2B Leads Through LinkedIn” and the response was awesome; It was my most successful organic post on Linkedin till date and I was able to revive some old leads through email marketing. Since this an educational form of content and people might be searching for it, it should be posted on your website, deployed across remarketing plus contextual campaigns across relevant Social Media Channels for your business and sent to your blog subscriber list.

b. Entertainment Content:

These are interesting short pieces of content designed around interest areas of our customer personas. For example Hubspot created an infographic animation video

around Gestalt Psychology and Why It’s Essential for Good Design. You can also take any topic in news currently and create content with your perspective around it. You can also create inspirational content or content to promote a social message you support. For example, you can create video content around “how to build trust with your target audience” – a topic like this will have mass appeal and it will be relevant for your audience. The deployment strategy for such content is majorly social media channels, you should definitely do remarketing and contextual campaign if you have budgets.

So what is the structure for creating Awareness Educational Content? Firstly we need to be crystal clear about our customer personas including information like:

Geography – You can cover topics around current news, festivals, national events etc.

Industry –  You can cover industry-related topics in terms of trends, challenges etc.

Company Headcount – You can cover problems associated with the different size of the company, and educate your target audience on how to deal with them.

Function – You can pick up function related challenges, and educate your audience on the same.

Seniority – You can cover topics related to specific seniority levels and create content around the same.

Professional Skills – You can cover news related items for specific skills, new opportunities etc.

Interests – You can create the entertaining and educational form of content based on the interest areas of your prospective customers.

#2. Consideration Stage:

This is the stage when your target audience has realized the problem that they are facing and looking for different solutions. Our content at this stage should help our prospective clients find the right solution irrespective of whether they chose us or any other company, the intention is to help and establish yourself as the market leader.

You need to be consistently creating content at this stage relevant for your audience and the key measuring factor is the amount of lead generated. For example, in our case, our prospective customer might be facing challenges in terms of low traffic, low engagement, low conversions or low retention rate.

So we can create video content around topics covering these problem statements to help our customers win, for example, “how to increase your conversions with effective video case studies”. Formats like webinars and how to videos are really effective at this stage. This is the most important stage in terms of building the trust with your target audience. Since this again purely educational form of content and people might be searching for it, it should be posted on your website, deployed across remarketing plus contextual campaigns across relevant social media channels for your business and sent to your contacts marked as MQL.

So what is the structure for creating Consideration Educational Content?

Firstly we need to be clear on the problems we are trying to solve for our audience and define our solutions based on the same. We can use tools like Buzzsumo.com to find relevant topics around our solutions, which includes challenges faced around specific area or department, tips & tricks of the trade etc., it also informs which topic has generated how much engagement across the digital channels.

We can create permutation and combinations of problems across different industries we are serving or if you already have clarity on the same, just convert the best performing content into videos for more engagement. For example, Epicor provides the following solutions:

• Customer Relationship Management
• Enterprise Performance Management
• Financial Management
• Governance, Risk, and Compliance
• Planning and Scheduling
• Production Management
• Project Management
• Service Connect
• Service Management
• Service-oriented Architecture
• Social Enterprise
• Supply Chain Management
• Manufacturing Execution System
• Mobile Applications

And following industries:

Manufacturing

• Aerospace and Defense
• Automotive
• Construction and Engineering
• Electronics and High Tech
• Energy
• Fabricated Metals
• Furniture and Fixtures
• Industrial Machinery
• Medical Devices
• Rubber and Plastics

Distribution

• Consumer Goods
• Pharmaceutical, Chemical, and Allied

You can take individual solutions or subset of industries+solutions and use tools like AdWords to find relevant searches to create content around them.

#3. Decision-Making Stage:

At this stage, your prospective customer has identified the solution to the problem and is trying to close down on the right company or vendor for the solution. We need to provide the customer with all the information required to take the decision or in other words all the reasons for choosing us. The number of leads converted to final customers is the measuring factor at this stage. The content produced at this stage is generally posted on your respective landing pages and distributed to your SQL’s to help them advance to the next stages. The examples of a various form of content at this stage are:

a. About Us Videos:

This would majorly cover videos like your brand story – why you exist, introducing your team to the world, how your process works (example given below), your work culture, your company values etc.

b. Product or Service Explainers:

These videos majorly cover all your services or products you are offering covering topics like how you are solving the pain points of your customers, highlighting your value propositions, your uniques features, different package options and difference between them etc. basically what you are doing and how are you doing, please look at the example below of animated product video explain the unique value proposition:

c. Case Study & Testimonial Videos:

As the name suggests these videos should cover the stories of your existing customers, what was their problem statement when they, what solution you offered and what was the outcome. It acts as a social proof and helps them to strengthen their confidence to buy from you.

So what is the structure for creating Decision Making Content? Any form of communication required to build the trust and convert SQL to the customer can be converted to video content at this stage. Apart from the above content, any form of standardized emails, newsletters, sales decks, mail campaigns, competition analysis etc. can be converted to video content.

#4. Retention Stage:

This is the stage after your customer is onboard and the objective of creating video content is to help your customer drive maximum ROI during or after your services. The key measuring factor at this stage is the repeat business or enhancement in the customer lifetime value. Video content at this stage must delight your existing customers. It should go on to strengthen your relationship with them. Here are are some examples of video content at this stage.

a. Thank You Videos:

These videos thank your existing customers for choosing you over your customers.

b. Personalized Videos:

You can use special occasions like client anniversary or birthday wishes to make them feel special. You can also use an inspiring personalized story like this one:

c. Help Videos:

Help customers help themselves, you can create helpful video content to educate your existing customers on how to drive maximum ROI of your services or products etc.

So what is the structure for creating Retention Stage Content? Any form of communication after sales is done like customer support, process follow-up emails, add-on services promotions etc. can be converted to video content at this stage. Also, educational content on how to generate maximum ROI of your product or services can be converted to video tutorials.

Over To You:

At Broadcast2World, we are passionate about telling stories through beautiful, animated video content. But, at the same time, we despise shooting in the dark. We’re equally religious about helping our clients spread humanity and achieve the best business outcomes through well strategized animated video content.

Hope you found the tips in this blog post helpful. Have thoughts and suggestions to share? Please feel free to add them in the comments section below.

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