The Inbound and Content Marketing blog

With modern businesses investing heavily in their online presence, video represents more than the opportunity for creative venture – it’s an active response to the expectations of a web-savvy audience.

Hubspot research proved 69% of marketing, sales and business professionals had used video marketing before. A further 31% are planning to use it in the near future.

This steady rise in popularity has transformed video production from novelty to necessity for the most successful inbound marketing strategies. The upshot is, join in, get smart or get left behind.

So how do you fold it in to your overall inbound marketing strategy?

For many people, being videoed is up there with their worst phobias. Even the most dynamic personality can find themselves trembling in front of a camera. And for others it’s a breeze. The quietest person in the office can be transformed once the spotlight’s on them.

But whether you’re a natural on film or feel queasy at the thought, there’s no denying the power of video when it comes to B2B marketing.

"A minute of video is worth 1.8 million words," according to Forrester Research's Dr. James McQuivey. And over 70 per cent of marketers say that video creates more conversions than any other medium.

Adding video to your digital marketing mix can help you reach and influence more people at each stage of the buyer’s journey.

However, despite its track record for success, lots of businesses are still wary about investing in video production – and why shouldn’t they be? It sounds expensive and seems like a mammoth task to add to the workload.

But you don’t have to possess the budget and expertise of a Hollywood producer to create video content that will capture the attention of your audience.

Over the history of the Internet we have seen countless social media networks launched, blossom, and in many cases, fall by the wayside. In the past five years alone we have seen the launch of Instagram (2010), Pinterest (2010), Snapchat (2011), Google+ (2011), Vine (2012) and Ello (2014) – to name the more well-known entrants to the market.

The best B2B videos are interesting – even fun – to watch, valuable to the viewer and easy to share.

But what is the best way to make sure your B2B web video is seen and shared? Just like your blogs and your website, you can optimise your web video so that it is easily found, and you can position it so it is easily shared.

For example, results from the Content Marketing Institute’s 2013 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report shows that video is one of the content marketing tactics that has seen the biggest increases in adoption rates among marketers, with an adoption rate of 70%.

It’s the vehicle of choice for a growing number of business owners and executives in need of information.  A recent Forbes report, Video in the C-Suite, showed that

• 75% of executives surveyed watch work-related videos on business websites

So if you’re a keen reader of marketing blogs or news articles, you can’t have missed the plethora of “predictions”/“future trends”/”objectives” type posts that inevitably appear at the advent of a New Year.  Some extremely useful and credible, and some frankly not so…

Rather than try to search arduously for our own “new predictions for 2013 that no one else in the field can possibly have thought of”, we want to recognise here the thoughts and aspirations of some of the best minds in inbound marketing and applaud their convictions for the coming year.

So here’s our list of the five most salient and sage predictions and objectives for 2013 from the thought-leaders in our industry:

Though a video production may seem at first glance to be not dissimilar from traditional interruption marketing, the reality is that it offers a much more versatile way to reach buyers. Here are five ways in which a good online video production can enhance your marketing efforts.

Online video increases brand awareness

Video marketing has become one of the most powerful and exciting tools available to B2B organisations in recent years. It's particularly effective at engaging time-pressed buyers and executives, and can quickly generate great interest in what your company has to offer. But what can you do to ensure that viewers convert into new clients?

1. Start with an attention-grabbing  concept

Without great concepts for your videos, none of the other points matter. Brainstorm ideas around the key stages of your sales funnel.

The study also revealed that one of the most watched types of video marketing was the case study, with 56% of executives saying that video case studies were what they watched most often on business-related websites, while 19% said that they were the type of video marketing they watched most frequently on YouTube.

These days, many B2B businesses are scrambling to enhance their online presence with video marketing services. This can be an effective marketing strategy, but in the rush to create and upload content quickly, they often end up putting out sub-standard video marketing which fails to achieve the intended purpose.

When producing B2B video content, it’s important to think about how you can make it appeal to buyers, in order to encourage them to take action. Here are five video marketing tips to take into consideration when planning your online video marketing strategies.